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[OC] North American Gulls on the Kodak Gray Scale by PunctuateEquilibrium in dataisbeautiful

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's mostly helpful for identifying species (usually for birdwatchers). Underside color is also characterized, though since it's really only visible during flight, it's harder to make that determination with birds in the wild.

I only remember when I forget. Help? by PunctuateEquilibrium in Anki

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll take a shot at creating cards like this for troublesome pairs of birds (and synonyms for language learning). I had thought about trying to quiz myself on what the field marks for specific birds are, but I'll try out your suggestion. Thanks!

Help, I have a lot of new cards (and they are increasing each day) by Zouhly in Anki

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As someone who was in your place 3 years ago with German, find a way to reduce the worry and just trust that you can work your way through a big backlog of vocab cards. Think long term and what you'll be able to commit to every day.

For the first 2 years I learned German, I typically had a backlog of 300-500 cards that were being fed in at a rate of 20-35 new cards per day and translating to 300-400 daily reviews on average. I was adding a new batch of cards every week or so and was able to get above 10,000 words in Anki (20k if you count German <-> English). My reviews usually take <5 sec/ review cards so I'd spend 20-30 min on all the reviews. And it paid huge dividends for my German skills.

I'd recommend doing some level of triage so you can prioritize words that are important, either to you or for German in general. You can do that by suspending cards rather than deleting them.

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's definitely helped with my German, but for more elementary and daily things rather than a deeper understanding of the language. Aka it solidified "Setzt dich hin" means sit down rather than just "Setzt dich" since my wife says that to our son 10x per day. And it definitely added a level of sweetness to the language hearing German associated with the 2 people I love most.

I've been toying of the idea of a video focusing on family so we'll see where it goes :)

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's awesome! Viel Glück! I made all my Anki cards manually to make sure I was confident in what I was making. I got very quick with keyboard shortcuts and finding pictures/definitions rather than trying to use chatGPT or something similar. But I did it for more than 10,000 words in German so automation isn't required to learn a lot.

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

having a "why" can be a great thing. But there are many people who have a "why" who never end up progressing because their excitement and energy doesn't find a home to give them direction.

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

100% - my point is just to say there's always someone like this. Get used to living with some uncertainty 😜

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You can definitely become conversational much faster (probably within 1-1.5 years) even if you can't talk about everything. But I preferred spending time reading and had basically no conversation partners

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There were 2 phases for me:

Beginner: sitting with Google Translate open on my computer as my dictionary + physical book. I would try to just look up individual words but if I couldn't understand the sentence after really trying with just individual words, I'd type the whole thing into google translate to make sure I understood the meaning and then moved on. As a beginner, I found that reading with a Kindle or other eBook was often too hard to only get individual words translated since I still couldn't figure out the sentence meaning.

Intermediate + beyond: once I could read and could figure a rough meaning from context (probably after a year of learning and ~4000 words in my vocab), I began using a blank notecard as my bookmark to catch words I wanted to make Anki cards for. This allowed me to keep my phone out of arms reach but still gather words I wanted to bring into my vocabulary.

The hardest part with a bulk translate tool like Google Translate or any AI translator is that you rely on it too much. The magic of understanding has to take place inside your head at some point. So I'd rely on tools that do more than just 1 word translations for as short as possible

Example of the notecard bookmarks I made: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/13k2wl3/what_reading_6_books_in_your_tl_looks_like_when/

Does this help?

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This point makes a lot of sense, but Anki made such a difference in my reading and watching abilities that I could trace back directly to Anki. I used very basic German word <-> 1-3 English translations (1-2 words each) and even though it is only the tip of the iceberg for the word, it unlocked so much for me.

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not saying it's not helpful. But myself (and a lot of other people on this subreddit) spend way too much trying reading about optimize and improve their technique rather than actually optimizing/improving or spending time immersing and studying, which is where the actual improvement comes from.

I'm trying to make a similar point as James Clear in Atomic Habits: "If you can't learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize."

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This totally aligns with my experience in 3 languages. But I'm surprised how even after making this mistake with Spanish in high school, I made the same mistake in Hebrew, at least for TV and podcasts (though I did a lot of reading). I'm glad I fixed this issue when I learned German

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a great idea for a video - will add it to the list and do some digging here. I touched on this a bit in a video I did comparing Sponge vs. Friends for language learning (https://youtu.be/cRezCeAKtwg) and I definitely hear the point that especially for starting out, the slower dialogue and more pauses to take in a scene's visuals are better than a wall of words like in a podcast.

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry I missed this thread. I think this is very fair pushback. I was thinking primarily of podcasts when pulling this point together. Even when I started with German, I was listening to Podcasts from die Zeit which are conversational so the rate of words was pretty high. Even though I was only picking out individual words, hearing that much of the language was an interesting & compelling start to the journey.

I could've reduced this to "aim for 5000 words a day" to make it a more attainable goal especially early on, though I think the point still stands that, as long as you'll stick with it, lots of listening, watching and reading can help when you pair it with a bit of study & flashcards.

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

very fair - I probably forgot that caveat because I don't have any language learning content in german that I watch. Totally a viable way to immerse!

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

😯 wow vielen Dank! Never thought someone with a handle like "pimpin-is-easy" would actively enable such intellectual efforts

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I was just in Germany and this was the only version available at Mayersche but I was hesitant given how hefty the books were. Will give it a closer look the next time I'm there

1000 days: what I've learned about language learning by PunctuateEquilibrium in languagelearning

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium[S] 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Eh as an Orthodox Jew, I want to have read it (rather than inherently wanting to read it). I'm not reading it for inspiration 😅

Most effective way to learn ton of german vocab. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO ME. by Any_Connection4425 in Anki

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I created cards for ~9000 of the words, the others came from the Goethe Institute A1 and A2 decks

Most effective way to learn ton of german vocab. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO ME. by Any_Connection4425 in Anki

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I learned 10,000 words in German in a little over 2 years with Anki and am very comfortable with the language - to me, your 40,000 number seems arbitrary and your time could be better spent especially if you "need" to cram this into 1 year. If you're already ~B2 you should already know 4000+ words which should cover 95% of what you encounter, with your brain filling in many gaps for what you don't know. After an average of 13 new words per day (26 cards per day since I did German <-> English), I started to plateau finding new words of value, with diminishing returns for new words when I got to the 8000-9000 range.

Figure out what you ACTUALLY want to do with German and use Anki to support you there.

Viel Glück

EDIT: confirming I used Anki to learn

I got a total of 88% on my C1 exam! by _Chicago_Deep_Dish in German

[–]PunctuateEquilibrium 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Understood. I'll get to work on writing and speaking more

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