Learning a language is like throwing pickles at a window.
Maybe this is the weirdest analogy you've ever heard. I'm not even sure why I've heard of this before, it isn't something I remember doing as a kid. But, for some reason I can vividly imagine a couple of kids picking up those circular pickle pieces they put on burgers in fast food restaurants, throwing them at a window and watching them slide down, competing over whose pickle is fastest.
That is the thought which came to mind earlier when thinking about learning language. Though, the context is much different. In the case of learning a language it is not so much that the pickles are racing against each other, but you racing against the pickles.
Each time you learn a word or grammatical concept or phrase, it is like throwing another pickle at the window. Learning a language is like trying to get all of the necessary pickles for a certain language to stay. The pickles on the window represent the parts of the language you're able to use. If enough pickles are on the window, you can accomplish your language goals.
If there were just one, it would be simple. When it starts to slip, move it back up. But, I don't know of any useful language with just one "pickle". So, you're in a race against pickles, trying to throw as many new ones at the window as you can, while moving back up, or re-throwing existing pickles at the window. And, just like in real life, not all pickles slide off the window at the same speed.
After a while, your window of pickles is so massive it isn't even possible to keep track of all of the pickles any more and you can only hope that you're putting new or existing pickles up faster than they are falling off.
The humbling part for me is wondering just how large my window of pickles is for English and how that compares to my window of Japanese pickles. Estimates on vocabulary size range from 5000-80000 words. I'm more than reasonably sure my vocab is larger than 5000, but unsure how far from 80000 it is. I'd be supremely interested in an analysis of the number of unique words I've used in my blog posts alone. There are a great many topic I haven't written about and a great number of words I rarely have a use for, and yet I'd wager it is more than 5000 already. But, it is difficult to be sure, because, to be sure, as there are a multitudinous number of words which recur with greater frequency than others. So, it is highly plausible for me to have spewed forth millions of phonetic compositions, and yet used such a scant number of unique ones as to have not nearly amassed even 5000 of that assignment.
And yes, that prior sentence was purely an attempt at throwing extra, words into the count should I be able to figure it out one day. But also to illustrate that while I could have stated that in a much simpler fashion, my vocabulary also allows me to, if desired, make a statement overly long, and complicated.
I can't do that in Japanese. I probably don't even have the vocabulary to say many of the things which I can say in the most common way possible. At the moment, that isn't my goal. To start I'm really just happy enough learning how to convey roughly what I want and to be able to roughly understand responses.
Anyway, so how to you keep the pickles up? The best way I'm reasonably sure, is immersion. Whether it be immersive studies or living where the language is the primary language. If you're bombarded with the most common words and phrases long enough with no respite you'll be spending a lot more time tending to your pickles and you'll get a more targeted education in most cases.
Beyond that? SRS systems like Anki. They're like having an algorithm trying to help both teach you and guess at which pickles are falling.
Anki (and all SRS systems I've seen) have some serious drawbacks. Some could be fixed by content, others could possibly be fixed by the system itself. For instance, earlier on, when there are fewer pickles, it is easier to add new ones and remember old ones. So, you quickly end up with words and phrases in Anki with these MASSIVE dates on when they should be learned again, then, after a few more weeks you start plateauing. But those first words and phrases which you're now forgetting are being de-prioritized over new ones you're struggling with. You will see them again, and the app WILL help. But, because your retention slows as you add to the bulk of things you're trying to retain you lose some things which you probably could have cemented and pushed even deeper into long term memory but are now forgetting.
Incidentally, I'm slowly learning to hate learning individual words. I'm beginning to think that sentences are the way to go. Perhaps your flash cards start by expecting you to learn one word... as you progress through the deck, it expects you to remember the first word and an additional one, until it is expected that every time you see that phrase you understand it in it's entirety. This way, over time, you're more likely to hit old words sooner, especially more common ones because they will pop up on multiple flashcards. Each flash card can also be tool for teaching multiple values.
In fact, right now, that is what I'm doing. I used to give myself an "Easy" in Anki in cards with sentences if I could catch the bolded word easily. Now, even if I know the bolded word like the back of my hand, if I can't reasonably translate the entire sentence the best I'll give myself is a "Good". If I struggle at all with the key word(s) but get them, it is always a "Hard".
I think, slowly but surely, I'm going to need to go through my Anki decks and prune and adapt them. I may need, at some point, to come up with my own decks. The only downside is, some of the ones out there have some awesome audio, and Japanese is one where pronunciation is something I need to learn as well.
That is the thought which came to mind earlier when thinking about learning language. Though, the context is much different. In the case of learning a language it is not so much that the pickles are racing against each other, but you racing against the pickles.
Each time you learn a word or grammatical concept or phrase, it is like throwing another pickle at the window. Learning a language is like trying to get all of the necessary pickles for a certain language to stay. The pickles on the window represent the parts of the language you're able to use. If enough pickles are on the window, you can accomplish your language goals.
If there were just one, it would be simple. When it starts to slip, move it back up. But, I don't know of any useful language with just one "pickle". So, you're in a race against pickles, trying to throw as many new ones at the window as you can, while moving back up, or re-throwing existing pickles at the window. And, just like in real life, not all pickles slide off the window at the same speed.
After a while, your window of pickles is so massive it isn't even possible to keep track of all of the pickles any more and you can only hope that you're putting new or existing pickles up faster than they are falling off.
The humbling part for me is wondering just how large my window of pickles is for English and how that compares to my window of Japanese pickles. Estimates on vocabulary size range from 5000-80000 words. I'm more than reasonably sure my vocab is larger than 5000, but unsure how far from 80000 it is. I'd be supremely interested in an analysis of the number of unique words I've used in my blog posts alone. There are a great many topic I haven't written about and a great number of words I rarely have a use for, and yet I'd wager it is more than 5000 already. But, it is difficult to be sure, because, to be sure, as there are a multitudinous number of words which recur with greater frequency than others. So, it is highly plausible for me to have spewed forth millions of phonetic compositions, and yet used such a scant number of unique ones as to have not nearly amassed even 5000 of that assignment.
And yes, that prior sentence was purely an attempt at throwing extra, words into the count should I be able to figure it out one day. But also to illustrate that while I could have stated that in a much simpler fashion, my vocabulary also allows me to, if desired, make a statement overly long, and complicated.
I can't do that in Japanese. I probably don't even have the vocabulary to say many of the things which I can say in the most common way possible. At the moment, that isn't my goal. To start I'm really just happy enough learning how to convey roughly what I want and to be able to roughly understand responses.
Anyway, so how to you keep the pickles up? The best way I'm reasonably sure, is immersion. Whether it be immersive studies or living where the language is the primary language. If you're bombarded with the most common words and phrases long enough with no respite you'll be spending a lot more time tending to your pickles and you'll get a more targeted education in most cases.
Beyond that? SRS systems like Anki. They're like having an algorithm trying to help both teach you and guess at which pickles are falling.
Anki (and all SRS systems I've seen) have some serious drawbacks. Some could be fixed by content, others could possibly be fixed by the system itself. For instance, earlier on, when there are fewer pickles, it is easier to add new ones and remember old ones. So, you quickly end up with words and phrases in Anki with these MASSIVE dates on when they should be learned again, then, after a few more weeks you start plateauing. But those first words and phrases which you're now forgetting are being de-prioritized over new ones you're struggling with. You will see them again, and the app WILL help. But, because your retention slows as you add to the bulk of things you're trying to retain you lose some things which you probably could have cemented and pushed even deeper into long term memory but are now forgetting.
Incidentally, I'm slowly learning to hate learning individual words. I'm beginning to think that sentences are the way to go. Perhaps your flash cards start by expecting you to learn one word... as you progress through the deck, it expects you to remember the first word and an additional one, until it is expected that every time you see that phrase you understand it in it's entirety. This way, over time, you're more likely to hit old words sooner, especially more common ones because they will pop up on multiple flashcards. Each flash card can also be tool for teaching multiple values.
In fact, right now, that is what I'm doing. I used to give myself an "Easy" in Anki in cards with sentences if I could catch the bolded word easily. Now, even if I know the bolded word like the back of my hand, if I can't reasonably translate the entire sentence the best I'll give myself is a "Good". If I struggle at all with the key word(s) but get them, it is always a "Hard".
I think, slowly but surely, I'm going to need to go through my Anki decks and prune and adapt them. I may need, at some point, to come up with my own decks. The only downside is, some of the ones out there have some awesome audio, and Japanese is one where pronunciation is something I need to learn as well.
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