duolingo - continuing hindi adventures

So I finished Letters 1 through 4 and Basics 1, passed the checkpoint, finished Basics 2, and now am at Plurals, Level 3. This is going eerily well.

I cannot say enough how utterly weird it is that I have no active memory of Hindi before, but it seems about fifty times easier. It also helps that my letter recognition is much better, as I am Very Phonics and it's so much easier to remember and learn when I can sound it out. This is likely because schools were in Fun With Phonics learning and whole word didn't kick in until about third grade when we were grounded in sound-it-out. I mean, I actually have no idea how to Whole Word anything; my brain creates a working pronunciation during the reading process. Which is why there are vast tracks of vocabulary landscape I've never heard and never spoken whose associated pronunciation is guesswork and should someone use that word in my presence, I would probably not recognize.

The translating from audio is also working online.

(And--in retrospect--it probably helps that this time around, I'm not trying to use the keyboard early and navigate a Hindi language keyboard while learning the basics.)

Additionally: I found and downloaded a ton of kindergarten-level Hindi writing practice sheets, very flashback to childhood, downloaded, categorized, and started working on those. My brain is still working on transitioning 'cool shapes that represent sounds' to 'letters', which are two very different things even though technically, they're synonymous.

A representation of the process:
Shape: आ
Brain: Shape!
Brain: Familiar shape!
Brain: Represents a sound!
Brain: Shape + sound = letter!
Shape: आ
Brain: This is a letter!
Brain: I know the sound for this letter!
Brain: *thinks sound*
Brain: *repeat for each letter through end of word*

Word: आदमी
Brain: This is a word!
Word: आदमी
Brain: I know this word!
Me: ...do we really need to go through this every time?
Word: आदमी
Brain: That is 'man'!
Me: Yes. Yes it is, thanks.
Brain: Shape Sound Letter Word = Language!
Me: Yep.
Brain: This is a language!
Me: You don't say.
Word: आदमी
Me: I know.

Repeat from start to create a sentence when my brain makes the shocking discovery the concept of grammar exists here, too.

Yes, the process is now super fast--give it credit, my brain zips through with minimal '...what are we doing again? What is this? Why are shapes?'--but it's basically rediscovering the existence of the Hindi language via logic chain every time. And I just want to grab it, drag it to a diagram of the human brain and point 'HERE IS THE LANGUAGE CENTER. CREATE A HINDI SECTION RIGHT HERE. NO NOT IN THE BRAIN AREA FOR INTERESTING SOUND SHAPE THINGS AND WHY DO I HAVE ONE OF THESE WHAT DO YOU PUT IN HERE? NO, THIS GOES IN THE LANGUAGE CENTER. HERE. RIGHT HERE.'

(Look, I have an entire brain section devoted to memorizing and storing lyrics to songs that I cannot consciously access unless I'm listening to the song and start singing. 'Interesting Sound Shape Things' is not exactly a surprise, but seriously, what's in there?)

I'm not saying I know better than people who study this shit, but I'm wondering if it's really 'childhood elastic brain whatever' or more the brain going 'I just did this with a language so I know how its done bring it', whereas later, your brain has completely forgotten there was ever a pre-language time and doesn't really believe it. It has no memory of anything like that and it would know, so stop lying, we have always spoken English.

Worse, when it does realize that hey, maybe there was something like that, denial sets in. Yeah, part of it is 'I will not admit it because it's embarrassing' but I suspect quite a bit is 'I have no fucking clue how I did this, kinda assumed it was witchcraft. This is some fine work here, though: beautiful adjective section, and here, we see how all those spelling competitions paid off. The written language section is unreal, did you know half of it isn't even preloaded into the speech centers? Audio reports we have never heard these spoken, but pronunciations are in order over here, go me. How do I make another one of these, though? Is that even possible? Do other brains know about this? This can't be normal.'

Like that.

I feel my brain is in the denial stage and I keep wanting to find it like, some kind of brain youtube vid it can watch when I'm sleeping, where other brains demonstrate stuff like 'how to create naturalistic mappings in the language centers' or maybe a book of some kind, like 'How to Build Your Second Language Structure for Dummies' by a polygot brain, give it some confidence.

However, this is improvement. Last time, imagine the above processes, but like this.

Shape: आ
Brain: Shape!
Brain:
Brain:
Brain:
Me: Do you know it?
Brain: No...yes. Maybe.
Brain:
Brain:
Brain: Okay, it's familiar.
Me: Great! Sound?
Brain: Shapes have sound?

Imagine getting through a sentence like that.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I just started duolingo Korean and I was doing this too! But! Then it started giving me very simple sentences, and the grammar is very similar to Japanese which I learned from high school on and suddenly it went *language* to me. Sometimes. Not for single words, though. And now I'm on a phrases chapter (things like "thank you" and "you're welcome") and it's back to the shape??? sound??? meaning??? game.

[seperis]

Letters on their own are almost there, and some words I"m getting closer and I was grooving with the sentences Subject->Object->Verb and reinforcing the structure, not doing anything weird. Lot of people eating food and reading books and plurling it up; I'm confident.

In retrospect, that was a mistake.

राज जूलिया की बहन का बेटा है।

(Raj is Julia's sister's son.)

Brain: Oh hell no.
Me: We know every word here actually...
Brain: SHAPES ALL SHAPES SO MANY SHAPES WHAT SHAPES WHY.

Seriously, what is with brains?

[goss]

Haha yes. Learning Hindi has been an experience for me too. Even though learning languages does not come naturally to my own poor brain, I've picked up the basics and was thrust into teaching the little I know to the kids at school - just alphabet and simple grammar.

I started using Duolingo Hindi when it came out last year, as a way of learning how to go about teaching Hindi to English-speaking teenagers who can't even remember what they had for breakfast this morning. :b It's definitely a struggle with them, but I totally empathize, because I remember taking classes when I was younger, and mostly just enjoyed drawing the pictures that went with each letter (eg. AAM - Mango). LOL.

Anyway, just wanted to say that your posting on taking up Hindi is kinda encouraging me to want to start back up Duolingo and continue to the more advanced stages of the language, and try furthering my own limited knowledge. ^___^

[seperis]

Friend me on duolingo! I'm under seperis @ gmail! We can Hindilingo together!

I remember taking classes when I was younger, and mostly just enjoyed drawing the pictures that went with each letter (eg. AAM - Mango). LOL.

Cannot lie, that is part of the attraction. It's soothing, too.

[out_there]

I'm currently (just starting) the duolingo for Japanese. It is the weirdest thing, because I did Japanese for like a year at 13, and had a few teen years of watching anime, but I'm not a language person who picks this stuff up easily. (I mean, compulsory language education meant German, Japanese and Indonesian over those high school years. I was good at memorising word lists for short term testing, but not good at actually understanding full sentences.)

And now I'm tapping on my phone to recognise the characters, and I keep remembering the visual pictures we studied at 13 to remember teh sounds (things like a picture of a girl with long hair for "shi" and a shining little ruby at the end of the "ru" character). It's all vaguely familiar, but as soon as I turn the phone off, I can't recall any of it.

[seperis]

Oh, that's cool, though. It makes sense; memory access via context. Visual reminders like that--man I wish I could do it like that. My visual reference abilty is so poor for triggering memory; I am very text (but ideal learning is visual + sound + writing it).

Oddly, I've found that when I'm consistently hitting a wall on something and give up, if I come back later--and it has to be seriously later, like six months to a year so I lose active memory--I roll right through without a problem. It happens a lot with scripting, but I can't have any active working memory of what I was doing. It works gangbusters if I lose enough to have to relearn parts of the language or with very complex scripting with a lot of moving parts.

That's the basis of lot of my script refactoring, actually, in VBA and Bash and even Javascript. I've rewritten like, a thousand line bash scripts down to two hundred lines two years later after coming back to write something new I need, realize I forgot too much, and go back to do a review of basic concepts. Then I'll an old one and be like 'welp, we can get rid of all of that'. Which is why I have a lot of comments now in my scripts for future me that are basically 'here's exactly what this does and why, could not get this to work any better, fix it when you get back here'.

[ratcreature]

I like to think that if I had several patient tutors providing me with 24/7 language input, frequently with adjustments to my level and corrections for a foreign language, it might not take five years or more to learn like with the first one. I think the second, third or further languages do go successively easier, it's just really hard to spend enough time with it unless you move and do full immersion.

I had nine years of English in school but only became fluent after finding online fandom, because then I actually had a lot of opportunities to practice every day in an organic fashion, rather than three hours a week with only expressing myself for a few minutes. At first each mailing list post took ages to compose, but it got better very fast.

[belleweather]

You probably would do quite well in that situation -- that's how we're taught in work's language school and we go from nothing to relative fluency in even the hardest languages in 44 weeks.

[seperis]

There's a Welsh month-long immersion course that states--and as been confirmed--you will be fluent in a month. It's all Welsh, all the time, in Wales.

But their description of it sounds like some kind of really esoteric and effective form of brain torture.

I mean, I understand in a sense; when I'm learning a new scripting language, every so often there's these huge unexpected leaps, like my brain just opened and ate everything it saw and contexted it correctly--I think its when I tip into hyperfocus--and it's awesome but it also is like "I'm not sure my brain's design is supposed to read-write at that speed, something may have broken there". But scripting is the one language I'm good at and basic structures are always the same, it makes sense. When IW as a kid, it happend with my piano lessons--I'd randomly jump three or five lessons--but it wasn't a controllable thing or common.

Doing that with Welsh, in a month--I do believe its possible, but like, committing that much processing power means something's gotta give, like remembering yoour name or how chewing works, sarcasm I hope??? If it's anything like when I hyperfocus--a month of that?

...but I want to try it, though. Torture, sure, but talk about testing the performance envelope of your brain. Also, you speak Welsh at the end.

[belleweather]

Oh no, you're absolutely right. When I am a language student I am pretty much incapable of doing ANYTHING ELSE in my life to the point where I'm hardly even really a person, I'm like language-zombie woman. They have us live in corporate housing, we have grocery delivery and a cleaning service and a shuttle to get us to and from class and everything is as structured as they can possibly make it, because you kind of can't function after pushing your brain so hard for so long. I'd come home and just collapse on the couch and watch the dumbest TV in the world because you're desperate just to turn your brain OFF for a while. And then you get up and do it again.

But, in the end, you know Welsh. Or Latvian, or Arabic or Romanian or whatever... and in my case I get to ride off into the sunset and start a new great romance with another culture and language and people. (And okay, sometimes it's a doomed romance... but when it's right, it's amazing. Being able to access a culture in that way is what makes my rediculous life worth it.)

[seperis]

Oh God that sounds amazing and I want. This. So. Much.

I really, really hope to find a good immersion program for Spanish and for Hindi in the acutal countries they're spoken in. I really want the Hindi because so many of my coworkers and dev are Indian nationals or expatriates.

With the Spanish--I always hit a block because no matter how much I learn, without active, mandatory use, I cannot get it to shift out of 'mentally translate' and it's a delay that also makes learning advanced stuff harder. I've tested this; my best Spanish was when I was a clerk at the welfare office and most of our area was spanish speaking and I got very good and very close to making the jump.

There's a language school south of Puerto Vallarta--on the beach--that has one, two, three, or four week programs with classes up to six hours a day, you live in a beach cabana, and take dancing/cooking courses and I want. Two weeks there, if I spent the month or two before in duolingo getting prepped to have the vocabulary ready for deployment, I know I could make the transition. And do it on the beach. I just need it forced so my brain gives up fighting me.

(It's also ridic cheap to the point it was worrying, but it's legit, and an accredited language school; they also have world class surfing there. Like, normal vacation at my income level cheap and on a beach famous for surfing. God.)

It's biggest problem is it's not a straight shot to get down there and going to southern Mexico alone is just isn't wise when you don't know the language and up to half the trip could be by bus (eight hours from Mexico City). My best friend--whose Latina--also wants to do an immersion in Spanish but would prefer Spain which cool but is way more expensive, like a couple of years saving for two weeks. I'm not opposed to it, but there's one right here on the beach.

[niqaeli]

To be honest, the reason I don't use Duolingo, despite its interface being mostly everything I want, is that it's translative and not immersive. I'd put up with the lack of grammar being taught formally if it were immersive. Translative Spanish is, honestly, not useful to me! I don't need to translate, I need to be able to talk to people fluently.

So that said, I am now contemplating looking at how much that place in Puerto Vallarta would cost and wondering if it might, y'know, be a functional possibility at some point in the not too distant future. I could get my shit together already to make myself vocabulary flash decks if I knew I was prepping for an immersive school! And I mean, we know we can share quarters, it's probably a little safer to go traveling with two people, even if neither knows the language??

[seperis]

Hi friend! WE COULD DO THIS. I SPREADSHEETED IT LIKE A LOT. I wargamed so many types

https://www.puertoschool.com/

there are a lot of new schools popping up now though; I need to look at some of the other ones. This one's just been around a while, and it has lived in my bookmarks for so long as I wait and hope.

[niqaeli]

holy fucking shit

like, sorry, I just looked at their listed price of lodging, and $550 for FOUR WEEKS for TWO BEDS IN A STUDIO APARTMENT?! THAT'S $225 A MONTH, AT THE OUTSIDE. THAT IS LITERALLY LESS THAN I PAY A MONTH FOR MY AERIAL STUDIO MEMBERSHIP, I AM LEGITIMATELY NOT KIDDING. plus I suspect we could share a bed, honestly, I don't remember if it was a queen or a full but we have before and I don't kick or toss much in my sleep, soooooooo.

and okay so lessons apparently cost $8-12/hr, so that's like.... another $240 a week at the outside? because god, could you DO more than four hours a day five days a week of intensive language learning?!

RIGHT SO

I'm going to stick this in my medium-term plans as a thing to save up towards because that shit is like. actually affordable with planning, and not "win a major lottery"-dream-affordable?!

[seperis]

I knowww. This is why it's been on my short list forever: plus, dancing classes, cooking classes, excursions, surfing. I am not into outdooring or surfing, but cooking and dancing? Yes please.

And I think I wargamed it at four to six hours. Did you see the package page?

https://www.puertoschool.com/more_study.html

One week, including apartment, four hours a day of Spanish, plus options for extras? $455 Two weeks? $865 And I can't even tell if this is with or without double occupancy. I spent more that this on a hotel for a week. (I'm wondering if I can get work to give me educational leave.)

The only other thing is travel, but they do list all the options pretty thoroughly.

[lemon_badgeress]

this was the most hilarious write-up of True Shit i’ve read in ages, simply glorious

[seperis]

Brains, dude. What can you do but roll with it.

[kore]

And I just want to grab it, drag it to a diagram of the human brain and point 'HERE IS THE LANGUAGE CENTER. CREATE A HINDI SECTION RIGHT HERE. NO NOT IN THE BRAIN AREA FOR INTERESTING SOUND SHAPE THINGS AND WHY DO I HAVE ONE OF THESE WHAT DO YOU PUT IN HERE? NO, THIS GOES IN THE LANGUAGE CENTER. HERE. RIGHT HERE.'

GOD YES

[belleweather]

I'm not saying I know better than people who study this shit, but I'm wondering if it's really 'childhood elastic brain whatever' or more the brain going 'I just did this with a language so I know how its done bring it', whereas later, your brain has completely forgotten there was ever a pre-language time and doesn't really believe it. It has no memory of anything like that and it would know, so stop lying, we have always spoken English.

I don't buy the childhood elastic brain theory at all. But that's just me, and I have a weird relationship with foreign languages being basically a professional learner and user of weird single-country languages at this point. I mean, I'm about to spend the better part of the next year learning Latvian. But there's definitely something to the idea that you learn HOW to learn a language and that makes a big difference. (That said, I can make some major Frankenstein's monster sentences trying to graft grammar of languages onto vocab from completely unrelated languages. I'm basically unintelligable...)

[seperis]

You might appreciate this. When I was an exchange student to Finland, I took French with te rest of the class. I did not speak Finnish; he did not speak English but did speak Spanish, which I had one year of.

My homeworks would be a trip. He'd translate the Finnish to Spanish so I could translate that to French (via mental English) but the French --> Finnish I was on my own. So I'd have (erased before I turned it in) notes on each question of me translating French to Spanish, checking against English, then referring to those to get the Finnish. And all lectures had side chats with me in Spanish.

I did not get better at Finnish or retain the French, but.

I got back to school mid-year and was ahead of most of the Spanish II class, could essay shit, it was surreal. Teacher was impressed, but confused sometimes because halfway through a sentence every so often I'd randomly translate my Spanish to French or my 'to be' verbs would go to Finnish (but flawlessly conjugated). She'd circle it; I'd have no idea what was wrong.

Her: "This is...not Spanish?"
Me: *squints* Huh.

And I mean, in context of what I was writing, it would make sense. IT generally would happen in the simpler sentences with to-be verbs and present tense--say, not unlike Early French--and my brain would see me write Spanish and say Translate That, then in that mode, the next part would mentally French-Spanish-English-Finnish. Then I'd go to something more complex and it wouldn't trigger Translate That. I would edit before turning it, never see it like 'Parlez sina Espanol? Mina olen aqui, kitoksia.'

Me: sounds legit
Teacher: wtf????

Not a good example, mine were much smoother and contextual, so to me, they were invisible. If you spoke all three languages, I was flawless in pronouns, conjugation and grammar, so yeah, perfectly understandable, sounds legit. I'd fix it if there were mistakes there. Just--not realize 'language used' was technically, a mistake or there were actually three.

And once in a while, for some reason, I'd not have a word I needed in Spanish and I'd sub in French or Finnish without thinking about it. That was less likely, my Spanish vocabularly was an order of magnitude larger, but those specific words, my brain just like went 'okay, this is Not English, close enough'.

[belleweather]

Oh man, yes. I had a similar problem when we were in Romania. I speak pretty good Spanish -- it's my first foreign language, and so it's where my brain falls back to. But I'd just spent months learning Romanian, and I spoke Romanian all day, every day at work. So I'd come home and help the kids with their Spanish homework, and keep correcting their 'mistakes' over and over...

.. until I got a phone call from the Spanish teacher at their school telling me to please stop helping them with their Spanish work, because all the answers were coming out in Romanian, and not only was it messing my kids up but the Romanian-speaking students were now really, really, really confused and could I please just STOP IT?

[niqaeli]

To be fair, "cool shapes that represent sounds" is not actually synonymous to "letter," unless we vastly stretch the definition of "letter". Though the reverse is true. But, like, musical notation is a whole thing! And notes are arguably the building blocks (ie letters) of western musical notation, but they're not... the same thing, exactly. *g*

[seperis]

True: lets say letters are a subcategory of 'cool shapes that represent sounds'

[silvainshadows]

'Interesting Sound Shape Things' is not exactly a surprise, but seriously, what's in there?

I dunno what's in yours, but mine's full of weird shit like thorn (Þ), eth (ð), and that B-shaped ss sound that aren't really used in modern English frequently enough for my brain to qualify them as letters, but do pop up with some degree of frequency in medieval or older texts, which I... read for fun. And, yeah, every time I've tried to learn a language with characters other than the roman alphabet, my brain has tried to sort them into that section, instead of letters, where they belong.

Which is most of why I keep bouncing off of learning Russian. That, or my brain's continued certainty that only some shapes have sound, and it's these ones (roman alphabet plus thorn, eth, and the ss/B thing) and not any others.