ibadurrahmang language notes

Here I document my journey of learning languages and also my thoughts and ideas on languages and language learnings.

[toast-tothe-moon]

language resources on the internet i love you. i cannot believe i can just start learning a language like that. i can lookup any word in seconds. i can find grammar explanations. there are teachers who put out whole videos for me to learn. amazing. i am so lucky.

[ibadurrahmang]

A New Language (probably)

I said in the previous post that I'm gonna learn Korean until the end of this year (2025), but unfortunately, I'm in a bored phase of learning Korean. So, I'm probably just gonna learn a new language as my main focus, while still maintaining my routine with Korean in my secondary (main focus meaning it will be the first thing that I will learn before I learn Korean). I have been learning this new language for a few days now, but probably I'll reveal it when it's been a week or so just in case I didn't make it to the first week lol.

Anyway I'm planning to make some kind of review of Duolingo, but of course I'll have to try the most updated version first for some time.

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 105: Linguistics of TikTok - Interview with Adam Aleksic aka EtymologyNerd

TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are an evolving genre of media: short-form, vertical videos that take up your whole screen and are served to you from an algorithm rather than who you follow. This changes how people talk in them compared to earlier forms of video, and linguists are on it!

In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about the linguistics of tiktok with Adam Aleksic, better known on social media as etymologynerd. We talk about how Adam got his start into linguistics via etymology, the process that he goes through to make his current videos get the attention of people and algorithms, and how different forms of media (like podcasts vs shortform video) relate differently to their audiences. We also talk about the challenges of writing a book about language on the internet when it changes so fast, comparing the writing process for Adam's upcoming book Algospeak with Gretchen's book Because Internet.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

In celebration of our 100th bonus episode we've decided to go back into the vault and revisit our very first bonus episode - with updated sweary commentary! We've made this extra bonus bonus version available to all patrons, free and paid, so feel free to send it to your friends!

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about your linguistics questions! In honour of our 100th bonus episode of Lingthusiasm, and because our first advice episode was so popular, here's another episode answering your advice questions, from the serious to the silly!

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Adam Aleksic's website

etymologynerd on TikTok, Instagram, and Substack

Algospeak by Adam Aleksic

'Where Do Memes Come From? The Top Platforms From 2010-2022' by Aidan Walker for Know Your Meme

Lingthusiasm episode 'Emoji are Gesture Because Internet'

Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

'It’s Complicated - The Social Lives of Networked Teens' by Danah Boyd (pdf)

Lingthusiasm bonus episode 'Words from your family: Familects!'

'Language and the Internet' by David Crystal (2001)

Lingthusiasm episode 'Helping computers decode sentences - Interview with Emily M. Bender'

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[ibadurrahmang]

Copywork

It's been a while since I posted something on this blog. I once decided to pause my Korean and tried to start learning Mandarin again, but, for a reason even I forgot, I switch to Korean again. I don't know why but I'm still kinda passionate about it, which is a bit unusual for me because usually I lose interest in one language quickly and just dabble the next haha. So, I'm planning to go until, perhaps the end of this year? before I move to the next language (which of course I'm anticipating too).

Anyway, the other thing that I start doing in language learning, is copywork. I don't know if it's a general known term but, again, Refold popularized this. If you want to know more about what it is check out this blog post they wrote. Basically it's just copying a body of text in your target language. By copying I mean manually copying, rewriting it yourself, not just copying (and pasting) in digital writing terms.

While Refold's method is basically just find a text and copy it, I'm modifying it a bit. First I will write a text myself, preferably a writing that expresses my genuine ideas, in my case I do like a journal or a diary if you will, in my native language or in English. Then I'll ask ChatGPT to translate my writing to my target language, adjusting the prompt to focus on the naturalness of the text, and also the tone of the translation to match my desired tone. Then I'll type it to a Google Docs document, and then, I write it by hand in my book.

Because I mainly focus my language learning on understanding (not outputting), I do this exercise for my more mature target language, because then mostly I won't be taking too much time understanding the text first and just go straight focusing on writing it. I think this is really helpful for easing myself into outputting (which for me personally perhaps it's mostly just gonna be writing and talking to myself anyway, because I don't currently have any plan to talk to a stranger). I find it really satisfying so far. Especially writing it by hand, oh I love it. I don't know about you but I feel like I can express my energy by writing by hand (and also drawing). So it always feels satisfying.

Anyway that's all for this post. I'll be back for another post soon.

[ibadurrahmang]

Tools I use for learning languages

Since the core concept of how I learn languages is by understanding "messages", there's really only one tool that I actually need: a translator. Well maybe two if you count search engine or chatgpt for looking for some explanation on grammar points. That said, I use several tools (usually in the form of chrome extensions), basically to streamline the process, to make the process easier and faster so that I have more time to actually learn the language, not wasting my time on, for example, going back and forth between my learning materials and a translation website and copying and pasting sentences every time.

1. Mouse Tooltip Translator

Mouse Tooltip Translator - PDF & Youtube dual subs - Chrome Web Store

Mouse Tooltip Translator translate mouseover text using google translate. Support OCR, TTS, manga translator & pdf translator.

This is my main tool that if I can only have 1 chrome extension I'll probably choose this. What it does is actually really simple, I wonder why there's nothing like this anywhere else: it gives you a popup translation of a word that you're hovering on. That's it.

But I think what makes it even more powerful is that you can tweak some settings. Like you can, instead of a word, translate a sentence at a time. You still want to look up word by word but sometimes phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, even a whole paragraph? Just turn on selection translation. That way, when you're hovering on a word, it will translate by word, but when you're selecting some text, it will give you the translation of whatever you're selecting. It uses external translation machine like Google Translate, Deepl etc so it basically works the same way, what you select or hover is just like what you copy and paste into the translator. Pretty neat to me.

It also has several extra features, like Youtube dual subs etc but I personally don't use everything because I prefer 'one tool one function' tools so that it's not so overwhelming and easier to keep track if one malfunctions.

Speaking of malfunctions, lately the tools often experience errors and not showing you the translation, even though the translation machine websites are all okay. So that's why I use some backup tools just in case this one is not working right.

2. Edge Translate

Edge Translate - Chrome Web Store

Translate what you want.

I used this one before I found the Mouse Tooltip one. It basically works the same way like Mouse Tooltip, but it doesn't have the translate-on-hover feature, so you have to at least select the texts you want to translate. But other things that I used this for is translating PDF. I tried to use some other popup translation extensions, but none of them can actually translate a PDF that I'm opening with chrome. I don't know the technical details but it seems that when you're opening a PDF with chrome it's like a different kind of chrome that doesn't have all your extensions. So what this Edge Translate does is it acts as a PDF reader so that you can use the translator as well (Mouse Tooltip actually also has this function so it easily replaces Edge Translate)

I haven't used this tool for quite a while and it seems they're closing soon?

3. asbplayer

asbplayer: Language-learning with subtitles - Chrome Web Store

Enhance streaming video for language-learning.

I use asbplayer when I'm learning with Youtube (they can also be used on Netflix but I'm not learning with Netflix right now). Some of its features are, it allows you to use dual subtitles, to use external subtitles for Youtube and Netflix, and it makes the workflow of making Anki cards easier. However what I personally use it for is only to make Youtube subtitles selectable so I can make use of the Mouse Tooltip Translator 😂

And I think that's basically all the tools that I use. I'm not including the tools or websites that I use to get contents that I actually use in my learning, maybe I will make a post about it too in the future. In the meantime, chau~

[ibadurrahmang]

How I measure my learning

The one single metric that I use is actually, the time I spend learning the language. I believe that the time spent learning the actual language (not about the language or just the vocabularies or just the set of rules and grammar drills etc) is directly proportional to the ability to understand that language. As long as you're doing the right thing, showing up everyday, no matter what resource you use (beginner materials, children books, novels) you will gain something from that. Just be consistent, and be patient.

You can actually use anything to track your time, as simple as a timer or a stopwatch (which you can find anywhere now; google, your phone, etc) then after you finish, write down the total time somewhere you can keep track of, like a spreadsheet or a simple notepad, you can basically use anything really. But, for ease of use, I personally use a website called Toggl. I knew this from Refold. It has many features but I don't actually need most of it. I only use the timer and the visualization feature.

As you can see from this image, I can just click the project which I want to track the time of, and when I'm finished I'll just stop the timer and it will record the time. It's really motivating to see the numbers go up every time. And you see there are also some remnants of my dabbled languages 😂.

On the Reports page, you can see your weekly performance so you can judge how consistent you've been. Honestly, since I can't do anything on weekends I aim to spend 2 hours per day so I can still reach 10 hours per week, but I think I'm still not able to reach that and will just go with 1 hour per day (≈5 hours per week). It's slow but hopefully I'll get there someday!

And as you can see on the first image above, I actually just today reached 50 hours! 🎉 It's actually not much if you see other learners who have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours, they're insane I can't even imagine having that much time lol 😂 But yeah it's still a big achievement for me so I might as well celebrate!

Anyway I think that's all for today. See you next time!

[ibadurrahmang]

How I learn a language

Throughout my journey of learning languages, I tried different approaches to learning a language, fitting to my needs, goals, and circumstances.

When I first tried to learn a language by myself (at that time Spanish), I almost exclusively used self-teach textbooks. Reading the explanation, listening to the audios, doing the exercises. I watched some Spanish shows but I didn't mean it to learn, I just enjoyed immersing myself in Spanish sounds even though I couldn't make out what they're saying.

Then I tried to learn Dutch the same way, though this time textbooks for learning Dutch is quite rare so I had to download a pirated version of it. But I ended up not using it that much because of changing circumstances in my life and all. So I naturally shifted to what I can do on mobile: unofficial duolingo stories, Lingq, and clozemaster. At this phase of my life I only occasionally watched some Youtube videos and almost never watched any shows because it was not that many that was available in my country and nothing among the available ones interest me. But I remember I read a lot. I think that's why I understand a lot of text now but when I watch a Youtube video I almost couldn't catch anything especially without subtitles. I plan to fix this some time later.

After that I rarely dedicated my time to seriously learn one language. Though I never set my eyes off language learning, I only dabbled with a lot of languages. But I think, slowly, I began to form some solid ideas on how to learn a language, though honestly I think I'm influenced mostly by Refold principles, I will talk about this in later posts.

Now I'm learning Korean since September 2024 (not including the times I dabbled with it many times before) and decided to learn it consistently. The way I learn it is actually pretty simple and straightforward. Since I already have the basics from dabbling with it, I can already read some basic texts. So what I do is, 1) pick a podcast for learners, because they usually have the subtitles, 2) listen to a single line, if I understand everything just go to the next line, if not, 3) I pause the video then I will read the text and analyze everything, look up the words I don't know, search the internet or ask Chatgpt about the grammar I don't understand, until I get at least the rough idea about what the sentence/line means, and then go to the next line and repeat. And that's basically just everything that I do at this point. I'm really enjoying it so far and I'm learning so so much. And with this method, I think I get a lot of listening practice too that, compared to when I learned Dutch at similar stage, I can already understand spoken Korean better than I understood spoken Dutch. Though I might be wrong and biased because I still don't know the actual size of spoken Korean. But so far, I think this is the best use of my time to learn a language considering my circumstances.

Next time I will share some tools to streamline this process.

[ibadurrahmang]

Moving to Tumblr I guess

I actually wanted to document my ideas and my history of languages and language learning on an instagram account (@langramang) but man, such a big effort to just make a single post lol. So I think I'll move everything here and I still haven't decided what to do with that account. Anyway, stay tuned because I have a lot of things I actually want to talk about!