#foreign language study

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a.i. and foreign language learning

I'm as exasperated with the slop form of a.i. as anyone else, but its personally useful applications and those in science are really promising.

I assume it's only a matter of time before a.i. gets to a point, if it's not already there, where it's able to create optimized foreign language learning systems. It's not difficult to imagine that it might render everything else obsolete.

I've gotten much further with Duolingo than I probably would have through pencil and paper study on my own, but it leaves quite a bit to be desired.

What happens when you have a foreign language speaking partner on demand, a spaced repetition flashcard system that dynamically learns from your learning patterns, and a feedback system that can give detailed explanations for your mistakes as you go, just like a living instructor would do?

If I find anything that looks like it could be an ideal language learning system, or one that at least beats Duolingo and others by a wide margin, I'll report back to my blog on what I've found.

My first initial step was to query google's Gemini and here's a partial screen capture of what it returned:

Etc.

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I've posted this before, but the above reminds me of when relatives enrolled their daughter in a Spanish immersion school.

Some conservative relatives heard about this and their reaction consisted of (paraphrasing): "Why don't we make them [them presumably being Spanish speaking immigrants] learn English?"

The idea that being bi- or multilingual might be useful vocationally or in terms of cultivating cultural literacy and greater sympathetic awareness of others, apparently didn't occur to them. Learning a foreign language was assumed to be part of a politicized plot to undermine America.

What kind of persons should we strive to be through education is likely something these conservative relatives have rarely if ever pondered. Instead, a primary impulse appears to be whether any given course of study might in their imagination elevate the wrong people and undermine "true" Americans.

A broader point. In the face of unending stories of inhumanity exacerbated by ethnic, religious, national and other differences, it seems obvious that what we lack is greater understanding of each other. Precisely the wrong prescription is to embrace ignorance and double down on the arbitrary, particular and contingent aspects of our identity.

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Minneapolis, MN.

Don't they all speak Spanish in Africa? Aren't Central and South America and Africa all interchangeable, if not the the same thing in some way? If you speak a foreign language doesn't that mean you're here illegally?

This reminds me of relatives of mine that were putting their daughter into a Spanish immersion school. Word about this got back to some older conservative relatives who said (close but not verbatim):

"Why don't we make them ["them" presumably meaning anyone living in America speaking Spanish, who therefore must be a suspect immigrant.] speak English?"

My money says this vandal is voting MAGA Christ in November.

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Just got the final Duolingo badge for the year!💕

(I can still only say that sentence in english!)

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In the newly designed French Duolingo course there are 199 units and I’m about a quarter of the way through.

The road ahead now seems longer, but since my pronunciation now seems almost effortless most of the time (putting aside the question of how I would sound to a native speaker), it also seems shorter.  

Almost every language I’ve listened to is easier for me to audibly discern than French, but this just seems to make me want to persist all the more.

Italian has 51 units, German 114, Chinese 57, Russian 51, Korean 61 - the other languages in my overambitious Duolingo lineup.

Chinese seems like it will be a lifelong effort, at least at my current pace, which is on and off - which is no way to study a foreign language.  Musical training seems to help with Chinese tones, or so I’m guessing.

I still can’t roll the Italian ‘r’.  

My strongest language learning tip still: get pronunciation down as early as possible, and everything is easier after that.  The difference between, say, trying to remember a grammatical rule or understanding what you’re reading while at the same time struggling/guessing/hesitating with pronunciation, versus just trying to remember a grammatical rule, makes a ton of difference.  Take a load off your brain and eliminate the guesswork and uncertainty in pronunciation.  

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Foreign language study update

A milestone in the past two days:

My French reading speed is very nearly as fast as my English if not equal to it at times.  My pronunciation is confident enough such that it no longer dominates my mental energy as I read, and depending on the difficulty of the text, I might be able to go for a short paragraph and understand everything I’m reading.

There’s also an increasing sense that French is becoming internalized and that I don’t have to think in English as much.  I can produce French sentences as I would in English.

Having said that, it’s clear that the road ahead is long.  Long.  Did I say long?

Goals:

1) Read anything in Revue Des Deux Mondes, Figaro, Libé, etc., without having to break out a dictionary.

2) Have a conversation on a complex topic in, say, philosophy without getting lost.

It’s sort of addictive; the better you get, the better still you want to get.  The more hurdles you overcome, the more you realize you can overcome the ones ahead.

Current learning tools:

Forvo: pronunciations by native speakers. https://forvo.com

Linguee: Vocabulary used in context based on a massive database of sentences in the target language.  Soon you’ll be bullshitting competently in a variety of social settings. https://www.linguee.com

Reverso: Verb conjugations.  A life saver.  Wouldn’t it be easier though if we all communicated in creative hand gestures and beautiful songs?  No, I don’t mean Italian. https://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-french.html

google translate: Super useful, but for some reason google doesn’t like to include the gender of nouns.  Gender abolitionism in a translation engine doesn’t put you ahead of the cultural curve, google, it only frustrates users.

google translate app for iPhone: I like to use this while sitting on the couch and reading a French book or magazine.  I’ll check pronunciation on tricky words and also definitions.  A helpful feature allows you to save words for review.

duolingo: Where would I be without it?  In a dive bar down on my luck, watching the world end, in English only.  I’m now on my way to becoming a bilingual catastrophist and dazed Francophile witness to the Anthropocene.  https://www.duolingo.com

Flashcard Hero: ..is my hero.  The best, in my view, in a crappy field of contenders.  Given the usefulness of flash cards, you’d like to think that in 2022 everything would be perfected in a flashcard app and that the choice between them might come down to things like color, style, or the size of pre-loaded vocabulary lists. Nope, not at all.  We have AI discovering new drugs and helping us design a tokamak fusion reactor.  But getting a usable and non-annoying flash card application interface right?  It’s apparently a Manhattan Project scale problem.  Flashcard Hero mostly does it. http://flashcardhero.com

Main Lesson Thus Far

Be a zealot about pronunciation from the very beginning.  Master it as soon as you can.  It makes everything easier.

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...I believe that you Americans are the laziest or the most arrogant people on earth, you do not deign to learn any foreign language.

-Simone de Beauvoir - Lettres à Nelson Algren: Un amour transatlantique 1947-1964

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watching a french film with french subtitles

One moment: Wow, I understood all of that.  Yo, I got this.  I’ll be able to pass as a native the next time I visit Paris.  “L'escargot au beurre, s'il vous plaît.”

The next moment: There’s something wrong my my brain.  I just looked up that word 3 times yesterday and here it is again.  Umm...  My memory is broken.  I’m doomed to only speaking English for the rest of my sad little American life.