On Developing a Second Brain in Foreign Language Learning

As Steve Kaufmann, a Canadian polyglot who fell in love with language learning early on during his ongoing 77-year existence on this planet, has reiterated that achieving a meaningful level of understanding in a foreign language requires a dedicated amount of listening and...hopefully...reading time whereby one's neural pathways are redrawn to develop what is essentially a "second brain" in that language. I am probably studying too many languages at the same time with Chinese, Russian and Spanish currently on my plate, but that's a lot fewer than the number I had been pursuing. Progress is difficult to measure or report since it isn't easily quantified: sure, I can count the words I've learned, but actually comprehending the spoken language in real time is a completely different matter. I would be better served in this regard were I to habituate myself to deeper, concentrated listening and reading with available translation...Kaufmann's LingQ website can be a help with this, and until recent difficult events arose demanding my attention, had been using ChatGPT to generate practice sentences in my target languages on different levels of proficiency.  Yet I'm a little too tentative with computer apps and maneuvering through the digital quagmire that others seem to effortlessly glide through. But if I can intentionally learn to better use productive apps and functions, then this can be a great help.  In any event, I do enjoy studying these three languages, and I guess that's the most important thing... 

My Phone App's Muffed Weather Forecast for This Morning...So What's New?

I have this local weather phone app that is notorious for giving out faulty forecasts, even for the near future.  For example, yesterday I kept trying to ascertain whether it would be raining this morning for my planned 7:30 Depot Parkrun 5K race here in Gainesville.  The hour-by-hour prediction from the app kept reading 0% of precipitation until 9:00, when it rose to 45% for light rain...to subsequently increase for the remainder of the day and into Sunday.  So I wake up around 6 this morning and, naturally, it's raining and the soaked ground in the back yard says that it has for quite a while...no run today since I'm not so keen on slipping, sliding and falling on slippery surfaces: I had my fill of that hazard last week in Micanopy.  No problem, I can exercise from home and am currently getting ready to do so with the TV showing the PGA Genesis Invitational golf tournament, held in who-knows-where.  But I think there's a pretty high probability...nearing 100%... that once I get into my workout I'll probably be surfing around the channels, and I don't need any useless app to tell me that...

"Stepping Out" Today into Long, Brisk Walking

This morning I skipped Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K, which I had participated in for the previous three weeks in a row...I don't think I had ever raced for three straight weeks.  Instead, this morning I ran indoors to the NYC Marathon on YouTube and, just now, went out on a brisk 3.2 mile walk in my neighborhood as the storm clouds with their thunder and lightning quickly gathered to threaten my excursion's last mile or so.  I like working out indoors and also appreciate that here in Gainesville we have a Parkrun (check their website HERE to see if they have one in your area), but I miss getting out on my old neighborhood courses as well.  Since I have the Runkeeper app on my phone, I can pretty much walk anywhere and at any time...no need to change clothes, either, as I would if going out on a jog.  As the northern Florida weather deteriorates over the rest of spring and through the summer with scorching temperatures well into the nineties, I think long, fast walks are going to be the theme in my exercising for 2023.  I even plan to do pure walks during some of my future Depot Parkrun races, with two sets of personal records there to work on: one for running, and one for walking...

Eta Striking Through North Central Florida Today

I have an app on my phone called Wordscapes, which is a scrambled word game.  One of the three-letter word combinations is a-e-t, from which you can form tea, ate, eat...and the Greek letter eta (small η, capital Η).  And Eta, incidentally, is the name of the current tropical system (Greek letters being used for names after exhausting the traditional list) that had been situated in the eastern Gulf of Mexico...although its bands have been affecting us in north central Florida for the last five days with rain and gusty winds.  Because of a cold front descending from the northwest, Tuesday evening the hotshot weather forecasters changed their projection to having it hit today around Cedar Key and as a strong tropical storm and then make a beeline for my Gainesville area.  Tuesday night's forecast had Eta slowing down until possibly even Saturday after passing over us in northern Florida, but subsequent notifications have had it entering the Atlantic Thursday night. Also, they noted on The Weather Channel yesterday that it seems surrounding dry air has been entering the storm and weakening it...for a while early yesterday it was classified as a weak hurricane. I haven't been too thrilled with the weather we've been experiencing lately, but it could have been a lot worse: just ask the folks in south Florida and the Tampa area. Eta, which earlier had developed into a Class 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds and struck eastern Nicaragua before emerging into the Gulf out of Honduras, then wound its way...first eastward and then northward...through Cuba.  Then it brushed (and flooded) south Florida and swung back into the Gulf of Mexico...and here we are now, stuck with this Greek freak of a storm.  I hear there's another one, named Theta naturally, brewing out in the eastern Atlantic while a new area of tropical disturbance is in the Caribbean where Eta once began its twisted journey, following its original path toward Central America: let's all hope its trajectory is straighter than Eta's..

As I mentioned, it's currently 9 in the morning and Eta's center is slightly northwest of Gainesville as it heads toward Jacksonville at 13 mph.  The rain and winds at this time are nothing for concern, and I expect conditions to have improved before I set off for work in three hours...    

Starting to Use Phone Apps to Study Nature Around Me

Being someone accustomed since I was seven to look up at the clear night sky and readily identify all the constellations and brighter stars, I noticed that there are smartphone apps that do the same thing for users.  Well, I'm challenged in a completely different area: plant identification...they all look pretty much the same to me.  But I've discovered that there are also free phone apps (usually with a premium option) in which I can take a photo of a plant and they'll come up with the identification...or at least a list of the most likely matches.  I downloaded one such app and it identified one of the weedy bushes in my yard.  Maybe I'll become a plant enthusiast the way I like to look at the stars...since they're all around me it seems like it might be fun to become an expert on identifying them.  Also, since insects are all around as well why not get one of those bug-identifying apps and expand my foray into nature study...after all, we're about to enter "beetle" season in Florida.  Oh, and I see that there's an app that identifies birds from their songs...my "birding" experience was strong as a kid in South Florida some fifty years ago, but there are some different species up here in Gainesville where I now live.  And I do regularly hear strange songs without being able to see who's producing them.  Plants, insects, birds...well, that's a starter...

Just Finished Reading The Van Gogh Deception by Deron Hicks

A few weeks ago Melissa and I were walking through Ollie's, a discount store located at Main Street and Northeast 23rd Avenue here in Gainesville.  They have a large book section and I picked out The Van Gogh Deception, a 2017 teen adventure novel by Deron Hicks...for just $1.99.  I just finished reading it and thought it had all the features necessary for an exciting yarn...sympathetic protagonists, mysteries to solve, a wily and ruthless mastermind enemy, many close calls, a suspenseful ending...plus the addition of educational value as great works of art are presented as well as a guide to much of Washington, D.C. A boy is discovered in the National Gallery of Art sitting in front of a sculpture...he has no memory of his identity or why he is there.  Taken into protective custody by the police, he is handed over to Mary Sullivan, a young editor for a publishing firm, for temporary foster care.  Mary has a daughter, Camille, who herself assumes a protective role over "Art", as she calls him.  Meanwhile Dorchek Palmer, a wealthy adventurer-turned-master criminal along the lines of Superman's Lex Luther, uses his high-tech skills and henchmen to track down the young boy, who seems to be the central figure in a grand art hoax scheme with $183 million dollars at stake.  The author presents the narrative from different characters' perspectives, each section headed by the precise time and location...I liked that.  But what I liked the most about this book was how Deron Hicks inserted barcodes alongside the text whenever an art work was mentioned...using a QR reader app on my phone I was able to view the actual works on my phone screen: really cool.  And I thoroughly enjoyed the convoluted way at the end in how the story was resolved.  Two thumbs up from me on this story...I wonder what else Mr. Hicks has written...

Language Learning Apps I've Been Using

Over the last two or three years I have tried out three different sites that help with my foreign language study: Quizlet, DuoLingo, and Memrise. I’ve opted for the free versions as opposed to the premium editions that offer extra features. Of the three I like Memrise the most, but with some criticism. Quizlet is a do-it-yourself way of studying all sorts of subjects, not just languages, which accepts “lessons” from its members and has a “student beware” policy where the learner is on his own and has to make his own judgments as to the accuracy of the material being taught. Still, it’s a good way to build up vocabulary...I use their "match game" feature that pairs up foreign language vocabulary with their English translations.  DuoLingo, which I only used on my laptop, has better lessons but also one gigantic flaw: it does not supply the script for the language being presented...the student must add whatever foreign fonts are necessary in order to complete the lessons. I’ve stopped using DuoLingo for this one reason, but have a replacement for it in Memrise, which I have on my cellphone as an app. I am currently using it to take basic courses in Turkish, Hungarian, Hindi, Polish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. Of these Korean and Arabic are by far the most challenging, but running through the gamut of daily lessons just takes a few minutes for all of them combined. I do have a problem with the Hindi lessons, which do not provide me a way to enter ligatures (two letters combined as one), which many words in this language contain. Also, they used to allow me to have access to many different languages, but recently have cut off that option...meaning that I am blocked from continuing to the next level in Hungarian (I’ve completed two so far)...

Although I appreciate Memrise and still use Quizlet from time to time, I'm thinking of exploring some of the other language learning apps out there to see if there isn't something better.  I probably wouldn't be looking elsewhere, though, had Memrise continued to give me access to what they apparently consider to be "minor" languages.  But who knows, maybe there's an app out there that's better than anything I've seen yet...I'll let you know if I find it...