leosmith's recent posts

I finished my 27th German conversation today, making a total of 22 hours – the first 10 lessons were 30 min, and the rest have been 60 min. That leaves me with 28 to go to reach my goal of 50 hours before starting my travels on Nov. 1. About 10 lessons ago, I upgraded my level in italki to A2. I did this for two reasons. First, quite a few teachers won’t do conversations with learners below A2. Some have B1 cutoffs, and some even have B2 cutoffs! But those are somewhat rare. The second reason, I truly believe I’m A2. The first few hours of conversation were rough, as expected, and I thought German was going to be the only language where I never got any compliments from teachers. I’ve heard it’s a cultural thing, so I wasn’t worried. But since about the 15th hour I’ve gotten compliments in every lesson (except one, lol). The best compliment I received was that my A2 level was an underestimation and my actual level was B1. Of course I loved hearing that, but it’s not true. It give me hope though that I might actually be B1 before my travels. At this point I’ll say that it feels likely.

About that lesson where I didn’t get a compliment. It was with a teacher who talked really slowly and clearly, and corrected me brutally. It wasn’t fun, and being corrected for every little thing really slowed me down. It kept me from putting myself out there and taking risks. I decided to give it a chance because so many learners love to be corrected all the time. But I just confirmed that this really doesn’t work for me.

leosmith wrote:

bbyj wrote:

any update

No, but there is a meeting Saturday - I will try to find out the status.

He said "by next month".

I’m back to conversing daily again in German, and now it feels as expected. The bigger base, 3 months and probably about 250 hours, seems to have done the trick. I have 8 hours of conversation under my belt, and want to have 50 by the time I leave for Korea in November. I’ll be in Korea for 1 month, and I’ll probably drop down to 1 German lesson every 3 days. Then I’ll be in Thailand for 2 months, and back to Daily German conversation in the afternoon. When I hit 100 hours, I think that will be enough to wean it off slowly and put it on maintenance permanently. When I get back to the states in May, I should be in the clear to learn Italian for 6 months straight.   

bbyj wrote:

any update

No, but there is a meeting Saturday - I will try to find out the status.

I agree. This is one area that I hope will be greatly improved by AI in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.

Animefangirl wrote:

This isn't really advanced, though? More like intermediate, or upper-intermediate in a pinch.

It's not one of ours, but I changed it to Intermediate...hopefully the creator won't mind.

StewartLikesOPLingo wrote:

Left and Right arrow keys – move to the previous/next highlighted word k – mark the word as known x – "ignore" s – play the automatically generated text-to-speech audio On a unknown highlighted word: Up and Down arrow keys – move up or down in the list of hints and dictionaries Enter – select first recommended definition I'd also suggest that when selecting a definition for a new word, the red unknown highlighted word should turn green to signify you've seen it before and it's now a "Learning" word.

Sarah.H wrote:

Hello! Did any of this get implemented or are there any plans on doing so? Especially "k" for known would be extremely helpful to me :)

HolaIsabel wrote:

Totally agree with Stewart :) very needed

Ok, this is what we have now:

enter: use most popular definition

left, right to move left or right

space replay word definition audio

u → unknown

l → learning

k → known

i → ignore

Does it work for you?

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that Edition 1 of Tagalog Lite is now released and available to use here for free. This edition is vastly improved. It is co-written by linguist MrGerbear (aka Gerard Avelino) of Reddit and other forum fame. We have incorporated all your input, including using the official pronunciation system. We have also designed the book on the colloquial language. Some grammar points that were in our Tagalog Conversations but not in the book got included, and other grammar points got fleshed out to reflect what native speakers actually use. If you would like to learn with the Grammar source that has the clearest explanations and doesn’t teach you a lot of stuff you won’t use, Tagalog Lite is for you.

Sincerely,

Leo

It means "I want mine". But looking at the context, it seems like the "mine" refers to samaki (fish), so I would have expected wangu. Cases are a weakness of mine; maybe changu is a general/sloppy way of saying "mine".

I changed it to Juma. Whoever made this course linked to html files instead of audio, unfortunately.

levi.taylor wrote:

Are there effective language-learning methods other than immersion? While immersion is often hailed, could well guided study with a tutor be more practical for certain learners?How do these approaches compare in terms of fluency development?

There are many effective language-learning methods, guided study with a tutor being one of them. It's hard to compare them in terms of fluency development - I don't know of any studies that do this, but would love to read some. Your best bet may be to try various methods and stick with the one that works best for you. To get a list of methods, you can google or ask chatgpt.

Alec.MacLean wrote:

Another question: In the last sentence, what does the word "sisi" do? It seems like the sentence would make perfect sense without it, and "sisi" just confuses things.

I agree that it's superfluous, but I'm not sure if it's grammatically incorrect. Notice that they say things like "Sisi tunatoka..." too. I'm sure this is grammatically correct, but sisi is not needed and usually dropped in colloquial speech.

Rildo.Ribaldo wrote:

This tool is absolute incredible

This dictionary is not a fit for the reading tool. Dictionaries must be of the type where you put a word in and get a definition out.

It's not one of ours, but I fixed it since it was an easy one.

Well, I’ve been at German now for nearly 2 months. After about 5 weeks, I tried to shift to my patented conversation-based learning method. One week of that was enough to show me that I didn’t have enough of a base to pull that off effectively. German is much harder than Portuguese; Portuguese really spoiled me, haha. I felt that I’d progress more quickly if I stopped conversing and built up my base for another month or two, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m thinking the end of August will be about the right time to try it again.

I’ve been thinking of what I’ll do in the long run, regarding my language learning. I really like this one-language-per-day thing, in the morning. So I’m going to keep doing it, and any new language, or any big spurt that needs to be done in a single language, will take place in the afternoon, and thus be studied less time per day than was allotted in the past. I think it’s worth it, because I want my languages to maintain, and even improve a bit, throughout the rest of my life. Since I am ultimately looking at 12 foreign languages (my current 10 languages plus German and Italian), any new language needs to be learned to the level where it can be nicely maintained while only reviewing it once every 12 days before I end the spurt.

So the question boils down to what I want to do in the afternoons from here on. Here is what I’m thinking:

2023 – German

2024 – Italian

2025 – Japanese Reading spurt

2025 will mark the 20th anniversary of when I started to feel like a polyglot. It was the year I started Japanese, and began to believe I had a chance to learn all the languages I really wanted to learn (I think my total list was 7 at that time). There have been several points along this journey where I thought “If I can just get 20 years of this under my belt, I will truly be an elder of this hobby”. I think I’ll be speaking all my languages quite well by then. What I choose to do in the afternoons at that point will depend on where my greatest weakness lies. I’ll employ a Chinese Checkers philosophy with my languages, nudging all my marbles along, little by little, rather than trying to get any single one all the way home.

At that time, I’m guessing my next move will be a Korean spurt. Compared to my other difficult languages, I have spent much less time on Korean, so it makes sense that it will continue to be my weakest language in 2025. I might be wrong though. Studying it once every 12 days, and, most likely, making 2 more one-month trips to Seoul by then, may be enough to keep it out of the lowest spot.

Until next time...back to German!  

Another 4 months have slipped by, so here is an update. Mandarin has now stabilized, and it’s as I suspected – about 15% unknown. I maintain it once every 10 days, like all my other languages. The only thing special I do with it now is to add unknown vocabulary to anki after reading a passage; I don’t do that to any other language I’m maintaining.

Tagalog Lite is fully loaded, and we are creating a new landing page for it now. That should be done in the near future.

I was having a hard time figuring out what to do next, but I knew that I wanted to fix my Japanese reading, the same way that I fixed my Mandarin, so I hired some native speakers to create Japanese Conversations. We only got 1 last time, then stopped. Now we are about half way done. I hope to have it finished by the end of June.

In the meantime, I got motivated about learning German after seeing and discussing this video. They are going to start learning 4 languages for 3 months over the summer. I figure if they can do that, I can at least do German. I’ve been saying that German and Italian are “the last 2 languages that I want to learn” ever since I finished Portuguese, so here goes.

I created a German pronunciation tool, very similar to my Portuguese pronunciation tool, and started using it daily 3 days ago. This is also my 3rd day on Pimsleur. Things are going smoothly so far; it’s nice to be learning a new language again! On the other hand, I have that old familiar beginner’s feeling of being really ignorant and making lots of mistakes.

After Pimsleur I’m going to do Language Transfer & Michel Thomas for grammar, start reading German Conversations, and start conversing. It’s exciting, hehe.

These are awesome - thanks! It would be nice if they were in a course. I see Fritz has #1 too.

Sarah.H wrote:

Hello! Did any of this get implemented or are there any plans on doing so? Especially "k" for known would be extremely helpful to me :)

Hi Sarah. This is still sitting in our inbox - we are running behind, unfortunately. I added your note to the ticket.

Alec.MacLean wrote:

I am confused by the sentence "Familia ya baba na mama Hadija." I would expect "Familia ya baba na mama ya Hadija." Can somebody please explain? Asante.

This is something that threw me too when I started living in Tanzania. Mama Hadija, with no possessive, is the correct (colloquial?) way of saying Hadija's mother. In fact, the mother is probably addressed that way most of the time, rather than by her actual name.

Japanese is now complete - 100 conversations.

Note: here are all the languages we have in work. These can all be found in the Reading Tool:

Cantonese – 100 conversations (complete)

Cebuano - 28 (stopped work)

English (American) - 50 (stopped work)

English (South African) - 10 conversations (complete)

French - 101 conversations (complete)

German - 50 (stopped work)

Italian - 100 (complete)

Japanese - 100 (complete)

Mandarin - 100 conversations (complete)

Portuguese (Brazilian) - 100 (complete)

Quechua (Chanka) - 104 (complete)

Quechua (Collao) - 7 (complete)

Russian - 100 conversations (complete)

Spanish - 100 conversations (complete)

Swahili – 135 conversation (complete)

Tagalog – 110 conversations (complete)

Thai - 100 (complete)

You may have heard me say from time to time that if your highest priority is conversing in your L2, then conversation should be your most valued source for learning. I’m not saying it should be the only source, but pound per pound I believe it’s the best source.

To be fair, I think it does depend on what stage you’re in. Beginners may not have the skills required to do what I’m suggesting. Also, this stage goes by quickly and seems to be handled nicely by the wealth of beginner learning material out there. Advanced learners may already be very good communicators and everyday conversation might not tax them enough. In addition, they are much more likely to use native material to improve. The remainder is the period I’m talking about – the long intermediate slog. That’s when I suggest learners should really focus on conversation.

Here’s an example of what I’m recommending: taking notes during a conversation, writing down items your partner says that you don’t understand, writing down things you didn’t know how to say, and memorizing/reviewing these items before your next conversation. I’ve found this to be my single most effective exercise to improve my vocabulary and grammar in actual conversations. 

But what about reading and listening? It probably doesn’t surprise you that I recommend reading transcripts of and listening to actual conversations. I think it’s more effective for improving your conversation than reading and listening to non-conversation items (news, books, TV scripts, text messages, etc). Don’t get me wrong – there is a time and place for reading and listening to those things and they are very helpful. I’m not going to get into the other items here; read and listen to everything but let the core of your method be conversations if your main goal is to improve your conversation. 

The problem is – where do you get these conversations? You could have your personal conversations transcribed and recorded so that you could read and listen to them. That’s a good start, but it’s a pretty time-consuming task. Also, vocab/grammar would be limited compared to a conversation between two native speakers, so it may be better suited to the beginner period. And as I said above, the beginner period is handled pretty well with existing beginner materials.

That’s why we’ve created LT Conversations. These are conversations between two native speakers. We use a mixture of female-male, female-female and male-male for variety, but each conversation is between two native speakers and about six minutes long. We make 100 of these for each language selected, which gives you about 10 hours of reading and listening to actual conversations. I hope this will be enough to prepare the learner for real native material. To be clear, I’m not saying I expect the learner to understand native material completely after finishing LT conversations; my goal is that they will have the base needed to start to dig into native material designed by natives for natives. In theory, “learning” material should no longer be required.  

While creating these, I had a hard time trying to figure out whether they were intermediate or advanced. I settled on intermediate mainly because it’s pretty much impossible to get people to talk to each other normally while covering the things I want them to cover, not talk on top of each other, not use loanwords and speak clearly without some reduction in difficulty. The voice actors tend to create some sort of script to satisfy all of my requirements, even though I’ve asked them not to. I could probably work with teams more closely and intensively to get a more advance product, but that would be more expensive and time consuming, so they are what they are. Good intermediate conversations.

Now I should mention that one of the sweetest things about these conversations is that they’re located in our reading tool already to go. Put your cursor over a word and a definition will pop up; click it and it will change state and color and you can add new definitions. This makes reading much more accessible. As I hinted above, this reading/listening is meant to be just a component of your learning method. I recommend that if you’re going to be memorizing and reviewing vocabulary and grammar you should get them from your personal conversations. But that’s not to say you can’t do it with these conversations - you can go into your own vocabulary database in the reading tool, manicure it, export it to anki etc, if that’s what you want to do. But I personally prefer to let the mouseover definitions and shading do the work for me, read as seamlessly as possible without too many interruptions, and put my memorizing and reviewing efforts into my personal conversations. 

DG.Gardner wrote:

Can you add https://swahili-dictionary.com/swahili-english to the list of dictionaries available?

Added.

I corrected this even though it's not ours. I don't think Ali will mind.

From the Tech team:

If it is just thai, try editing the passage by adding a space and saving. This will trigger another parsing

Osdz.Voh wrote:

I'm having the same issue again with a new passage I just created. It doesn't seem to matter whether I create the passage inside or outside of a course, or whether I use Firefox or Chrome. The text just doesn't show up after clicking "Save and Open".

Ticket elevated.

I haven't posted in this thread for a while. I have great news - I updated the list of languages in the first post, and several languages have been added. Big thanks to member crush for his generous donation and hard work to add Quechua!

The other languages that weren't on the old list are US English, Italian and Portuguese.

Osdz.Voh wrote:

The first time that the text didn't show up I deleted the passage altogether. The second time that I created the passage the text didn't show up either, but I didn't delete it and eventually it worked after many hours.

Ok, thanks

Thanks for providing that info. We'll try to recreate it. Question - did the one with invisible text all of the sudden become visible again, or did you just recreate that passage?

Edit - it looks like you were able to create the passage. How did you do it?

Sorry about that - ticket written. Can you tell me exactly what steps you took in creating this passage? Also, what OS/browser?

ricardo.aprende wrote:

My suggestion is to make the notes box expandable, in order to be able to read longer notes more easily.

Hi Ricardo - we have made the note field expandable; can you confirm?

ricardo.aprende wrote:

My suggestion is to make the notes box expandable, in order to be able to read longer notes more easily.

ticket written.

ricardo.aprende wrote:

I meant the notes input box.

In that case, looking at your screenshot, I don't understand what would change. Do you mean you want the box to be expandable? Or located higher up?

ricardo.aprende wrote:

Displaying the notes in a textarea element instead of an input element.

When you say "notes", do you mean "translations"? Because there is another field for notes lower down.

Either way, everyone is different, but I want short translations that pop-up when I mouse over. That way I can read without breaking my stride; I'm not expecting the translation to be exhaustive - just enough for me to get the gist. I select short definitions; if there are none, I create my own.

Ok, I realize the answer is “it depends”, but I didn’t offer that option because I think “about” takes care of that. I ask this question because many learners seem to believe that language learning, hour per hour, is more taxing than work, and you cannot put in the same number of hours without a drastic decline in performance.

I believe the main reason for this is that people do it as a secondary activity, after work or school, where time is limited, and they are already tired from the primary activity. Putting in an hour or two under those conditions is really hard, so when they are asked “what if you had all day free?”, they still think an hour or two is the “limit”.

Another possibility is that they only consider it a hobby; their lives/careers don’t depend on it, so unlike work, they cannot fathom it being done intensively for long periods of time.

I’m retired, motivated, and I have enough resources to learn a language. Once did a 1 year spurt in Korean, averaging about 7 hrs per day. I’m sure there was some drop off in productivity from time to time, but keep in mind that, just like work, activities often change, breaks get taken, etc. My 7th hour was not necessarily less effective than any other hour of the day.

During my 25 year career, I worked many one or more year spurts of 60 hrs/week. My productivity was not lower on the last day of the week, or the last hour of the day. I was not less productive per hour when I worked 60 hrs/week than when I worked 40 hrs/week. Through trial and error, I found out that I wouldn’t want to do any more than 60 though. Based on this, I think I could put in 60 hours per week studying languages and still be plenty efficient.

Even if you have all the time in the world, how many hours you can study without a drop in performance is an individual thing. But if it’s significantly less than how much you can work, imo you are probably doing something quite differently.

DG.Gardner wrote:

Song in the beginning?

I have no idea. Daniel liked to use different songs for every passage, and I haven't talked to him for years. No lyrics, so we can't google it.

Hi Alec,

This is not actually one of ours. It was created by Joseph.Adams, so hopefully he will see your post and fix it.

(edit - he just fixed it!)

henry.james wrote:

When encountering a word or phrase that a user does not know, they can mark it as "unknown" to indicate that they are not familiar with it.

Are you talking about re-visiting a passage you have already read? Because new words show up as unknown (peach) when you import/open a new passage, so you wouldn't need to mark those. An alternate way of looking at the states is:

Peach = new

Green = learning

White = known

Sorry that it's not fixed, but I'm glad to hear that it's no longer a problem for you. We will still try to fix it (and the other issues you brought up) just in case it bothers other users.

c.gan wrote:

Thank you Leo, the bug seems to be gone now.

great!

Joseph.Adams wrote:

The Playlist on the Android App is not working for me.

Sorry about that. Ticket written.

c.gan wrote:

sometimes the reading tool will produce a translation of text from another part of the passage

Hi c - I think this is fixed now. Can you confirm?

Sorry about that - I just wrote a ticket.

Jori wrote:

Thanks for the support, have a nice day

Hi Jori. I think this is fixed now. Please confirm.

Donkey.Kong wrote:

I've noticed that some Thai words on the Android app are only displaying their first 1 or two characters

I think this is fixed now. Please confirm.

Jacob.M wrote:

On my phone, I have to use the mobile site though, because Thai script isn't rendered correctly.

Jacob - I think this is fixed now. Please confirm.

Ah, I see. I've had the same thing happen to me several times, so fortunately I'm conditioned to immediately suspect the filters.

This is for the reading tool. It pulls word definitions from Google Translate, but it will also have the option of giving you definitions from your favorite dictionaries. So if you have suggestions of dictionaries to add, please list them here.

Complete list:

Amharic 

https://dictionary.abyssinica.com/ https://glosbe.com/am/enCantonese

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/parse_chinese.php

Cebuano

http://www.bohol.ph/wced.php

Dutch

https://glosbe.com/nl/en

English

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

French

http://www.wordreference.com/fren

https://www.linguee.com/english-french

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionnaire:Page_d%E2%80%99accueil

German

https://dict.leo.org/german-english

https://en.pons.com/

https://tureng.com/en/german-english/

https://www.linguee.com/english-german

https://www.dict.cc/

Hebrew

https://www.morfix.co.il/en/

Hindi

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-hindi 

https://en.bab.la/ 

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/caturvedi/ 

http://hindi-english.org/ 

https://www.shabdkosh.com/ 

Hungarian

https://topszotar.hu/magyarangol/ 

Indonesian

https://www.kamus.net/

Italian

https://context.reverso.net/translation/italian-english

https://www.wordreference.com/iten

Japanese

https://jisho.org

http://www.edrdg.org/cgi-bin/wwwjdic/wwwjdic

Korean

http://dic.daum.net/index.do?dic=eng

https://ko.dict.naver.com/

Mandarin

https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary

https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

Nahuatl

https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org

https://gdn.iib.unam.mx

Portuguese

https://dicionario.priberam.org/

https://www.dicio.com.br/

https://www.linguee.com/english-portuguese

https://www.infopedia.pt/dicionarios/lingua-portuguesa

Spanish

http://www.thai-language.com/dict

http://www.spanishdict.com/dictionary

http://dle.rae.es/

http://www.wordreference.com/

https://es.thefreedictionary.com/

http://context.reverso.net/translation/spanish-english/

Russian

http://www.wordreference.com/ruen

https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/слово

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/слово

https://context.reverso.net/translation/russian-english/

https://de.langenscheidt.com/russisch-deutsch/слово

https://dict.leo.org/russisch-deutsch/слово

https://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung/russisch-deutsch/слово

Swahili

https://africanlanguages.com/swahili/

https://en.bab.la/dictionary/swahili-english/siku

https://glosbe.com/sw/en

Scottish Gaelic

https://learngaelic.net/dictionary/index.jsp

Tagalog

https://www.filipinolessons.com/dictionary

Thai

http://www.thai-language.com/dict

https://www.thai2english.com/

https://www.clickthai-online.de/wbtde/woerterbuch.php

Turkish

https://tureng.com/en/turkish-english/

Vietnamese

https://glosbe.com/vi/en

Zulu

https://isizulu.net/

nomadicvegan wrote:

Could you please add the following dictionaries for Amharic? There are currently no Amharic dictionaries in Language Crush as far as I can see, so this would be a big help!
https://dictionary.abyssinica.com/
https://glosbe.com/am/en

Added

It should be accurate. What do you mean by "only 1/12th of the total actually shows up on the "known word" list"? Are all filters removed from the vocabulary list?

DG.Gardner wrote:

an extra filter to only display those options.

Hi DG - this has been added.

You can wait until you are finished with the passage and click "I know all remaining peach words" or put in a bookmark and click "I know all peach words before the bookmark".

Absolutely! You have a good start.

DG.Gardner wrote:

Im not sure about that, but I think you have the #1 spot secured with number of languages under your belt for sure!

There are actually a few here with more languages, but they are less active. I just realized we have 6 languages in common! Other than English, which is your best?

Wow - that's impressive! You're actually #1 on the weekly. I have been here the longest, but I've never been #1 on any of the boards.

Thanks - this is a known issue, and the ticket is currently in work.

Today I reached two important milestones. First, I finished passage 100 of Mandarin Conversations, officially ending this spurt. Some quick stats – 100 passages in 137 (active) days; 4017 vocabulary items; about 500 hours (including Anki reviews) total study time. My goal was to drop my Mandarin unknowns from 35% down to below 10%. I did not reach that goal. If I look at my stats, they average out in the high teens, but that’s because I haven’t gone back to change all the words I didn’t know at the beginning to “known” now. I’m guessing my true unknown level is about 15%. I’m really happy with this, and it means that I read Mandarin about as well as I read Swahili/Russian/Thai/Korean. I have mixed feelings about stopping the spurt. I figure I could reach my goal and really hit it out of the ball park in another 200 to 300 hours. And there is the fear of losing my level too. I think I’m going to take a few days off, then keep reading new passages twice a week for a while to see how that goes. I’ll keep doing all the anki reviews for the time being, but will eventually delete all cards over one month old at some point. The ultimate goal is to be able to read, consistently and comfortable, only as often as I maintain the language, meaning once every 10 or so days. But the interim plan above should safeguard my level, and give me the time I need to do the stuff required for the milestone below.

The second milestone I reached is even bigger, since it marks the beginning of the end of a 3 year project. As of today, we have finally finished going back and forth, checking and perfecting Tagalog Lite. The ball is now back in my court, and I can work on it full time. I need to update all the tables, rewrite the intro, hire a voice actress, and post the book online. I also plan on creating downloadable anki decks, so I have a busy month or so ahead of me!

DG.Gardner wrote:

i meant, like if there was an extra filter to only display those options.

Ok, we will consider doing this.

Hi Jori, sorry about that. I have written a ticket to investigate.

That's a good question. The definitions you have are correct. But you will often hear them used interchangeably in native speech. It can vary by region and by speaker. And there are lots of other verbs that this happens to in Swahili. For example, kufika = to arrive, but can be used in place of kwenda = to go. Have you ever been to Tanzania = Umeshafika/kwenda Tanzania?

I would advise just using the verbs the way you think they should be used, and adjusting if the natives around you consistently use them differently. Even if you don't make adjustments, you will be understood, and you will be able to understand them, so hamna shida bwana.

Here's an update, because my italki Korean teacher decided to record our lesson. It was kind of a nice surprise – I don’t know why she did it, but I saw she was recording it and asked if I could have a copy. It turns out that videos are downloadable by all on Skype, so I downloaded it, cut out a 5 min chunk that wasn’t 100% about languages, and posted it for fun. I’m speaking quite slowly these days it seems. To summarize, I studied Korean really hard for 1 year, spent 1 month in Seoul, the following year spent 1 month in Pusan, and the third year spent one month in Seoul again. Then came the pandemic, so I missed 3 years of travel, and I only maintained it sporadically. I review it about twice per month now, and it’s my worst language. Even after all that though, I speak it at a slow intermediate level, so I won’t complain. I hope to do a spurt in it next year, and hopefully never fall down to this level again.

In other news, today was day 121 (active days), and I finished passage 85 of Mandarin reading. I have made huge improvements since the beginning, but I don’t think I’m going to hit the 10% unknown mark by passage 100, because I'm probably at around 20% now. I will probably ease off after passage 100 though, because it's been a long hard pull.

I just wanted to point out that 小红 makes a false statement. He appears to say the steering wheel is on the right in the US, but it is on the left (just like the China). I am guessing he just remembered incorrectly his time in the US.

小红：对，而且美国好像也是右侧的驾驶，但是驾驶室跟我们不太一样。(Yes, and the United States also seems to drive on the right side, but the cab is not the same as ours.)

小明：嗯… 好像你要左侧驾驶室的话，你驾驶的方向盘就有可能在右边。(Hmm... It seems that if you want a left-hand cab, your steering wheel may be on the right.)

小红：好像美国是靠右侧驾驶，然后右舵，就是方向盘在右侧。咱们国家是在左侧方向盘。(It seems that the United States drives on the right side, with a right rudder, that is, the steering wheel, is on the right side. Our country has the steering wheel on the left.)

DG.Gardner wrote:

I’m not sure if it’s possible , but it would be cool if there was a way to have a filter to find the readings in the library that have video/audio connected with the reading instead of searching through them all .

There are icons that show this already. Or do you mean have a "more filters" button that allows you to only display passages with video/audio?

deleted.99687 wrote:

A little bug for Yiddish I've found: The punctuation mark maqef (U+05be) is good (doesn't split words) but the geresh/gershayim (U+05f3/U+05f4) split words and shouldn't. They're used to create abbreviations basically. Example word 'Tanakh = תּנ״ך'.

Fixed.

Javohn wrote:

It is now working on Microsoft edge!

Glad to hear that! Regarding Somali, we already support it; we don't have the budget to add any more conversations for the time being, if that's what you are referring to.

Sorry about that, but it's not actually one of ours. I can tell that it came from here, but their audio is also wrong. You might try to alert them to the issue, and see if they will update it. If I get a new audio file, I can update the passage for you.

wrote:

1 - The edit box for Yiddish (no doubt also other RTL) is still LTR. The reading page is ok but the edit box is not. RTL + right-justified is needed for passage name/passage text/course name from what I can figure out.
...
3 - On the 'create a passage' /edit page: remove the space above 'Create a Passage' and increase the size of the 'Passage Text' box by a few lines
...
5 - On the 'course details' page: align the word stats better so they don't jump around from line to line (perhaps make it 2 lines by default:
Unknown Words (###%) Learning (###%)
Known Words (###%) Total Words (###%)
alternatively, shorten it:
Words: Unknown (###%) : Learning (###%) : Known (###%) : Total (###%)

1, 3 and 5 are done

almuvo wrote:

I feel very motivated when I see my known words grow but to see that I need to do a bunch of steps in the stats panel. Having them up there all the time would be great.
Attached a simple mockup.

We weren't able to do this, but we added it on the dashboard below goals.

Congrats on your progress. 加油!

you may be right...this is over my head

Jori wrote:

Yes, from a computer perspective, I think it's only a matter of font. Some fonts sticks to one subset of characters, some fonts sticks to other. It would be nice to be able to switch that.

I've messaged the tech team to see if they have a solution. But I also did some digging - it seems this is a very common issue. I opened that same passage on my desktop and I see the "wrong" font. I think it is a browser or system font change, not something to change in our software, but I could be wrong. The problem is that if you change that font to Japanese, it will probably display "incorrectly" for Chinese.

Ah, ok. This is not a Japanese vs Chinese, or traditional vs simplified, issue. As you stated, it's a font issue. These are alternate ways to write the characters, regardless of the language. I will ask the tech team to investigate, but I don't know if they will be able to fix it. For example, when I type the word しょうらい (future) on my phone, it displays as 将来 regardless of what app I'm in. I guess I've, unknowingly, memorized all the alternate forms. I wonder if it's a matter of changing a font on the phone.

Jori wrote:

japanese characters (kanji) are treated as chinese (hanzi)

Hi Jori, in what way? Definitions come from the Japanese dictionary, transliteration is romaji or you can show kana (hiragana/katakana). Are you perhaps talking about the parser or font?

Javohn wrote:

maybe it is because I am on Microsoft edge?

I tried it on edge and chrome. What device? (As a work-around, you can download the audio, but it would be good to find out what is going on.)

Javohn wrote:

The audio for this is not available on microsoft edge.

Hi Javohn. Sorry about that. I'm able to access it though. I'm using windows 11 on my laptop. And you?

Jori wrote:

if I create a French passage with the text "Brandon avait péri à l’âge de vingt ans", it switches péri (to die) to prié (to pray)

Thanks - ticket written.

We are sorry that we cannot implement all of your changes immediately, but we are doing the best with the resources we have. 

Jacob.M wrote:

I had initially suggested

ok, I updated your note

DG.Gardner wrote:

Could you add this to the translations for russian (or other languages as well)? ttps://cooljugator.com/ru

This isn't a dictionary - it's a verb conjugator. A useful tool, but not compatible with our reading tool.

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

A little bug for Yiddish I've found: The punctuation mark maqef (U+05be) is good (doesn't split words) but the geresh/gershayim (U+05f3/U+05f4) split words and shouldn't.

I'll ask about this.

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

Any news on this?

No. They couldn't find any records at all of you trying to subscribe, so it's got them puzzled because others have been able to subscribe. They are going to try to take another look at it, but they are pretty busy right now.

Hi Jori, I will ask the tech team how difficult this would be to implement and get back to you.

Osdz.Voh wrote:

In the reading tool on Android, characters are sometimes invisible, usually after ไ and ใ vowels.

We are working this issue (originally reported here).

Jacob.M wrote:

On the website when I try to switch from single page to multi-page view. I have to open and close the menu twice for the change to take effect.

Fixed.

GermanPolyglot wrote:

Now waiting for the results...

Good Luck!

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

So, I've less than a day left in this free trial... still can't subscribe. So, is my current progress going to be lost?

No. We'll keep you on premium until the issue is resolved.

I wrote a ticket for 1, and we will discuss the others in our next meeting.

Mizda.Biggles wrote:

Tried paying by CC from several browsers. The green thing just keeps spinning around. Is this a known bug?

We can't find anything in the logs on this. Can you tell us which browser(s)/OS/device?

Thanks! forwarded to the tech team

Oh, we're sorry about that - ticket written.

Here is a list of videos that show you how to use Language Crush:

Basic Navigation

Booking a Lesson

Chat

Community Forum

Reading Tool Tour

Reading Tool Passages

Reading Tool Passage Youtube

Reading Tool Courses

Reading Tool Phrases, Join, Split

Reading Tool Playlists

Reading Tool Vocab

Teacher Wizard Step 1, Basic Information

Teacher Wizard Step 2, Classes

Teacher Wizard Step 3, Schedule

Teacher Wizard Step 4, Submit Application

Write and Correct

App Quick Tour

App Cantonese

Statistics

Gamification

Time for an update. I have been in Thailand now for two weeks. I had a terrible case of amoebas (something I ate probably) the last couple weeks in the Philippines, and the swimming pool pump broke, which closed it down. After being sick and without exercise for two weeks, I was quite happy to leave Manila.

Although my goal was to finish it in Manila, the editor of Tagalog Lite was so busy that he couldn’t check it consistently during that time. But he has scheduled some time for it each week, and we are about halfway through the final check. It’s really looking good. He has now figured out a lot of complicated grammar issues that neither of us could explain very well before. When I say complicated, I mean it’s hard to explain, but still very high frequency.

I reached a bit of a milestone in my Mandarin reading spurt. I’m spending 2-3 hours a day on it, including reviews. Up until a week ago I was adding exactly 40 words per day, and only reading up to that point (plus re-reading the previous day’s segment). I would start in one passage, and finish in another. But a week ago I noticed the unknown words had dropped, and I made the decision to read a complete new passage every day, regardless of the unknown words. The first day was under 40, then I had 3 days over 40 (one was a whopping 54), so I wondered if I’d made the right decision. However, the last 4 passages were under 40, so I’m now sure things have settled down. My routine has simplified. Every day I do my anki reviews, read the previous day’s passage, read the new passage, memorize the new words and export them to anki.

Today was day 75 (not counting skipped days), and I finished passage 40. There are 100 passages total, so I will finish in 60 days at this pace. My reading has improved dramatically. My goal is to get the unknown words below 10%. I started in the mid 30’s, now I’m in the low 20’s.

I’ve also become interested in reading speed. In a Chinese Forums post, I saw people comparing reading speeds. Natives speak about 250 cpm (characters per minute), and this matches our Chinese Conversations. So in addition the 10% unknown words, I’m setting a goal of half native speed. Passages are 6 minutes long, so my goal is 12 min, first read. I tested it a while back, and I did 18 min, but that was my third read. I will do more testing as I go along.

wrote:

TTS is missing for the vocabulary review section on the website, but is present in the Android app.

Added.

That's strange. Can you post a screenshot of the issue?

I see two above the a. What is your browser/os/device?

thanks - ticket written

bbyj wrote:

Hello can you please add Glosbe for Dutch? Thank you!!

Added.

Jacob.M wrote:

On the website when I try to switch from single page to multi-page view. I have to open and close the menu twice for the change to take effect.On the mobile website it shows the "Login" button at the top of the page when I first open it, which is a bit confusing because I am already logged in when I click on the reading tool.
Also, TTS is missing for the vocabulary review section on the website, but is present in the Android app.

Thanks! I wrote a ticket to address these.

HolaIsabel wrote:

When I click the dictionary symbol it opens a pop up with Priberam and it doesn't show any other dictionary options

For Spanish translations, there should be 2 dictionaries, priberam and dicio. What is your OS/browser?

I have a confession to make – I was wrong about something that I’ve believed for a long time. I believed that if you are going to systematically memorize and review vocabulary and grammar from content that you consume, it is always better to do L1 to L2 reviews. Actually, I have always done both L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 reviews just to be safe, but I believed that L2 to L1 were not very important, and the ability to understand the L2 items would happen naturally, provided I did L1 to L2. In my defense, if you are only interested in conversation and writing, I still believe this is correct.

But I consider myself to be a well-rounded language learner, and it turns out that L2 to L1 reviews are very important for reading. You might be thinking “so what – you are doing both anyway, so you are covered”. Reviewing both ways isn’t necessarily a bad idea, unless you are trying to learn to read as quickly as possible. L1 to L2 reviews require much greater recall effort than L2 to L1, imo at least twice as much, so doing reviews both ways takes at least 3 times as much time as just L2 to L1. And this hardcore recall work is something that you should limit when you study – doing too much makes people want to quit.

I may have never figured this out, since most languages have not required me to do intensive reading. With most languages, I was able to just read extensively in the reading tool, noting pop-up definitions of unknown words, and became comfortable reading in a few dozen hours. But recently I decided to fix the biggest hole in my proficiency of all 10 foreign languages. I decided to keep reading Mandarin intensively until I know more than 90% of new texts at first glance. When I started, I was at an appalling 65%, so extensive reading by itself was not cutting it.

When I started this exercise, I decided to try to memorize/review every new word that I came across, since I was using a very trustworthy source. Mandarin Conversations are 100% natural conversations, with very little if any strange vocabulary/grammar, so I am not concerned about usefulness. I tried to do 20 new words per day, both L1 to L2 and L2 to L1, and it very quickly became hard to stay on top of.

I have read many posts of learners disregarding L1 to L2 reviews when learning to read, but never believed it would work for me. Seeing over a month of my precious time slip away with very slow progress, I decided to make the leap and give it a try. I ditched the L1 to L2 reviews, and increased the load to 40 words per day. Surprisingly, even after doubling the word count, after a couple weeks of this, review time is significantly less than the previous method, and it feels less intense.

Bottom line, if you are just trying to improve you reading in a language that uses Chinese characters, doing L2 to L1 reviews only is an efficient way to maximize the number of new words you can assimilate per day.  

So why does this make me feel so good? Shouldn’t I be embarrassed about telling people to never skip L1 to L2 reviews? Sure, but it’s not worth dwelling on such things, and the big picture reveals something much more important. My poor reading skills in Mandarin and Japanese were the main reasons why I thought I’d never be able to reach advanced levels in all my languages simultaneously. I thought it would take thousands of hours, and wasn’t willing to sacrifice that time. Now I’m looking at a few hundred hours, so the dream of C1+ in all my languages is alive again!  

almuvo wrote:

Displaying the current/last language being read at the moment perhaps?

Oh - you are talking about the app, right? I'll bring this up at our next meeting.