I have a lot of cool updates, regarding the language learning process and feelings after my recent brain surgery to remove a hematoma (blood clot thing).
Mostly just. Oh my fucking god my memory was so sucky with that thing in my head! Now that it's gone, I can tell in retrospect it felt like I was underwater! It felt like everything I didn't write or type down slipped away within minutes. My long term memory also sucked, unless I could find something I wrote to remibd myself. I think I only managed to cope because I was already used to writing a ton of life-notes to keep on top of my adhd, and to keep a 3.0+ back in college to keep a scholarship. So I was used to workung hard to keep my life together even when my brain doesn't cooperate. The adhd management skills definitely kept my life somewhat together with the thing in my brain. ;-;
God i feel better now with it out. It's wild to me how my memory is getting better each day, and my ability to hold onto information longer - just simply remembering to take my medicines at the right time (before my adhd reminder alarm on my phones go off), to remember what I want at the grocery store without needing to write a list (which I have not been able to do for years), to remember what I just recently heard enough to repeat it aloud myself after (which I truly struggled to do before - those kind of things slipped quickly from my memory before).
I've been continuing to try to learn Spanish, like before, as my little side project to test Dreaming Spanish's method of using comprehensible input and following their roadmap. Since I don't know much Spanish, so it's a easier language to test and see clear progress and learning method specific effects. I know a significant amount of French and Mandarin, so while I am also using Dreaming Spanish's study recommendations to improve my French and Mandarin listening, it is working and it's expected to work. Extensive listening to things you understand the main idea of (which is basically Dreaming Spanish's method) will result in improved listening skills, especially if you can read (and I can read in French and Mandarin) because you'll pick up all those words you know from reading in listening if you just listen Enough. So anyway, Spanish is my little side project to test more specific things about the process. Since I truly know very little Spanish.
Well, post surgery, I have been watching Spanish Boost Gaming. Because I already loved Martin's videos beforehand, he is honestly the Spanish learner content I find the funnest. I like some Dreaming Spanish videos: I understand some Beginner ones, occasionally an Intermediate one, and some of the Podcast episodes (which I think are Intermediate). I like Andres, Andrea, and Shelcin's videos the most. But I like Martin from Spanish Boost's lessons even more - I like the podcast topics he picks for his podcast episodes, I love the horror,games he often plays and I enjoy watching various lets plays of those games ANYWAY, so getting to learn while watching a lets player I enjoy is a nice way to justify the kind of goofing off I'd already be doing. So I am HEAVILY watching Martin's gaming videos.
I imagine whenever I speak Spanish, I'll sound a LOT like him.
Well, I watched Martin a lot before the surgery - and I still would manage to follow the main idea and what was going on overall (partly because I knew some of the game premises which helped for guessing the meaning of some words, partly because I do know how to read French so cognate words like "facile" I already know).
And now I am watching him after my surgery that removed the Thing in my head - and everything is SO much clearer. He makes SUCH EASY LESSONS. I am going through his Bioshock lets play, and I understand almost every word. It is just words like hacer, fue, algo, ahora, aci, fuerte, that throw me off and take several times of hearing, but to be fair words like do, was, something, right now, here, strong, are somewhat hard to identify based on visuals to guess - especially compared to nouns I can associate to items on screen like balas, descriptive adjectives like feo and guapo, and clear cognates like stupido and usar and respeto and literalmente. Martin talks so slow and clearly, so easy to hear what he is saying and look it up if I want (because I like looking up words!), so easy to figure out what the things he's saying mean based on the visuals, he stops to explain in simpler words what the game dialogue and cutscenes meant. It's so easy to follow! I haven't needed the English subtitles at all (although he does make and provide them, which I think is awesome as using English subtitles suits certain people well, and is nice to have). I watched his Outlast 2 videos 1 and 2, they were also very easy to understand now! I remember pre-surgery I enjoyed the Outlast 2 videos but found them much harder to follow, and relied much harder on the visuals to understand what was going on. It shocks me how nerfed my brain was. ToT
Spanish Boost Gaming Martin's videos are SO easy, and fun, and I am surprised they are recommended on the Dreaming Spanish Reddit's "What Are You Listening To?" Spreadsheet for Level 3 - 150 hours. I have 24 hours of Spanish as of today, and most were from Spanish Boost Gaming lol! I truly have very little prior knowledge of Spanish, especially compared to some others doing Dreaning Spanish, as I literally ONLY learned the colors (verde, rosa, rojo, negro, blanco, azul) and 1-10 which most americans learn in Elementary School, and I took 1 beginner Spanish class in one semester of Middle School where I remember learning gracias, de nada, por favor, me llamo, hola, adios, and that's it. That's all the Spanish I had in my head from prior experience! Then in college, for 3 months over the summer, I studied Spanish haphazardly mostly to attempt to clearly differentiate spoken and written Spanish from French, because in my head I was interpreting all Spanish as French... and had no clear mental pronunciation of French so it was all a mess. So I read Madrigal's Magical Guide to Spanish (and forgot most of it, but it did point out a LOT of cognate patterns which I'm sure I retained... like national, international, all the tional and al words in English also often existing in Spanish, literalmente, basicamente the -mente being like -ly in English), listened to a few episodes of Language Transfer Spanish (mostly to hear how Spanish sounded and compare that to French audio lessons I was listening to that summer, Language Transfer also pointed out some of those cognate patterns). All in all, that summer I only probably studied Spanish for 30 minutes daily so at MOST only around 45 hours. So combine that with a middle school semester, even if I optimistically focused on Spanish the entire hour every class period, that's 75 class hours. So 45+75=120 hours of prior experience with Spanish, most of which I forgot.
(Also you can see here based on my own very small exposure to Spanish, how Easy it is for many Americans to have a decent foundation in Spanish - at least a prior 50 hours as many of us took at least 1 semester of Soanish or heard something Spanish every year in elementary school, or much more if they took the usual 2+ years of required foreign language classes most high schools require. So a lot of Americans will find it faster than starting from scratch if they dive into something like Dreaming Spanish, since they'll be able to handle intermediate stuff faster than true beginners - my dad took 4 years of Spanish in school, and knew almost every word in Spanish Boost Gaming's videos, whereas I needed the visuals and cognates to figure out some stuff. My dad's background is closer to the average American who took some Spanish classes in school, which is probably more likely the kind of people trying to learn Spanish in adulthood - aka continuing to learn).
Perhaps my French knowledge is helping ke with understanding too? I am frankly surprised Martin's videos are THIS easy. I am on the one hand comparing how easy they feel, to how underwater and confused and "only the general idea" I was picking up around a month ago when I had a big Thing in my brain nerfing me. On the other hand, I am considering how easy his lessons feel now and wondering if Everyone feels they are this easy at 24 hours... or if there's some factor within me that is making his videos more comprehensible at such a beginner stage.
Anyway, I love Martin's videos. I highly recommend them. They're so easy to understand, he teaches really well.
For my own future reference: I have been looking up a handful of words each video in Google Translate, as I get curious, because I did that so much with Mandarin it's pretty much habit now. Also I am impatient and want to know what unknown things mean ASAP even though I will still need to run into them several times to remember them long term. I am repeating after what Martin says often, even though Pablo from Dreaming recommends not to, because it's fun to me. It's fun to see if I can say it, and if I can say it close to how Martin does. So I guess I won't be able to test if waiting 600-1000 hours results in a better accent. Oh well. I'm impatient, and I bet it'll be a better accent than my French pronunciation regardless. I think I say the r's in stuff like pero and perro okay if I repeat after Martin, but not as well when saying them on my own spontaneously. I'd like to think I am good at mimicking others? So when I say something right after he says it, such as into Google Translate, the app recognizes the words I said. As for spontanoeous good pronunciation of words, I probably will wait until at least a few hundred hours to try and start making my own sentences.
A question for anyone else who watches Spanish Boost Gaming or Spanish Boost Martin's youtube videos: does he have the Spain "lisp" th pronunciation of words with "c" in a particular location? Versus the Mexican Spanish "s" sound for pronouncing that "c" part of words (words like "Barcelona"). Dreaming Spanish Andres is from Argentina and definitely has it. Dreaming Spanish Pablo from Spain definitely has it. But Martin? I am not sure. His Spanish accent sounds very clear to me, only the "ll" pronunciation, which I expect to sound like "y" like caballo being pronounced "cabayo," is "sha" in Martin's accent, so "cabasho" when Martin says certain words like horse (caballo) and key (llavo) and she (ella). I am also, like I said, used to "c" sounding like s or z in Spanish, NOT "th." So I am curious which way Martin pronounces those "c" parts of words. I am guessing he does pronounce them like "s" or I would have noticed by now, but I also did not have a brain working at full capacity until this week so! I am not sure!
If you ever see this Martin, you are basically single handedly teaching me Spanish. ToT
I am still debating if I'll post any updates about Spanish learning to reddit, or not. (If anyone is studying Chinese though, I really think ALGMandarin on reddit - in particular it's moderator - has done an amazing job at building a welcoming kind helpful place).
My life has been WILD this August, and I'm off work until it's over so. Well you know me. I always want to learn a lot ToT. Do a lot ToT. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA (i feel pretty good all things considered, mainly just like I am no longer underwater, and more alive, both of which are true about what's changed)
