A4.8.9 meta: o pokroku

I gave myself a deadline of today to decide whether or not I'd continue with my Czech A4 learning schedule as planned. It's not so much a schedule (there are not really deadlines) as a big spreadsheet with lots of check boxes.

<ranty tangent about programming>

In other news, a while ago now I discovered conditional formatting in google sheets. I suppose it was only a matter of time until I discovered the IF and IFS functions and started writing nonsense strings of characters in my spreadsheets. It's so useful. I am probably reluctantly clinging to my ignorant non-programmer ways only because I know exactly how hard and painful the learning curve is gonna be. It is not going to be fun at all. Things like { } and ~ and | and < > and / \ can just stay away from me for a little while yet, but I am sure that someday, I'm going to cave in under this mighty pressure of, "auuuugh I wish I knew how to do x." And, you know, five years from then, after I've learned at least two programming languages (Danny says you have to learn multiple ones before you can really start to see the patterns in what applies to the language and what is universal to programming), watch out world.

But for the moment, I have other pursuits and projects and my self-confidence is still very fragile. I recently decided to wean my baby, which was definitely the right choice for my mental health. I've felt so much better since then - dramatically better. But it's not like lactation immediately ceases, so... I should be careful not to take on too many new projects too quickly.

Besides that, like I said, I know that learning how to write code is going to be difficult to me. I've had a few false starts on that trail (though I did get an A in that Java class in college - but it's allllllll forgotten, except things like sitting in the computer lab next to Nate, or the joy of seeing the stupid GUI work for the first time, or feeling very self conscious about being the only woman in my class..).

It's abstract. It's not intuitive. It is very logical, and I know that I struggle with organizing my thoughts that way. It takes me time and a lot of effort. My 8 year old son, of his own ambition, decided to learn python through Khan Academy. I'm still at the point where I can help him when he gets so frustrated he can't work his way through the tutorials ("Hmm. I think you need to call the variable inside the function. Try putting it there [points] instead." "Mom! You're the best!") but that is not going to last very long, and I know it.

</tangent>

I've been reading some very interesting academic articles about Second Language Acquisition. There's this big theory out there called the "input hypothesis" which basically is that SLA depends on the input being just a teeeeeeny tiny bit beyond your capacity. I have vague memories about learning about this in college, too. It's logical. There is also a lot of support of read-read-read-read-read-read-read-read-read for SLA. Just, read everything you can. That is not the current plan. The next version of my plan is going to look a lot different.

I had been feeling really frustrated because the second that my emotional limitations felt like they were lifted from me, I found myself surrounded by some very real physical limitations. I have five children, it's summer, my mom was not around to watch them at all - my days have been completely consumed in childcare and housework. I don't hate it, and at the same time, I'm looking forward to September when school starts again.

I did what I could to try to work my way through my really ridiculous spreadsheet. I started with the tasks that were the easiest to do alone. Part of the problem is that even though emotionally I feel so much better, it's still really difficult to communicate with my Czech collaborators (almost all of whom I haven't spoken to in weeks). But this week, I finally managed to drop some of them a line and vaguely explain where I've been, ascribing it to a serious health problem. Mental health is still health, even though it feels so... much... not. Ughh.

Whatever kind of collaboration is in store for me this summer, it's almost certainly mostly going to be asynchronous. I mean, it's going to have to be (see point about having five children).

In the end, I decided that I'm not going to give up this plan, in spite of its flaws. I already modified it to be much, much fewer words/"unit". I just want to work my way through it. Maybe that's just because of pride, but I don't really care; I want to finish something I start, especially when it's something like this. When this is over, I will move on to A5, which I think is going to be a lot simpler in design, and involve a lot more reading and watching films or TV shows (which are shorter, which is an advantage).

If I could program, I would write a program that would automate finding the frequency of words in SkELL. I don't even care what kind of output it would be. Copy and pasting 120 values from a single table into a spreadsheet would be a cinch compared to looking up 120 different words and doing it one at a time. 

A4.9.4 definice

I used this wonderful tool called Sketch Engine to find word frequencies, collocates, and get these beautiful visualizations. You should check it out! It is awesome.

1. již

již a priori

aktivně a již v

dlouho a již

již a ještě

velmi rychle a již

dobře a již

dnes již

jak již bylo

nyní již

zde již

kde již

pak již

letos již

poté již

kdy již

tehdy již

tu již

tentokrát již

zřejmě již

teď již

pravděpodobně již

již dříve

již zmíněné

již nyní

již dnes

již dávno

Zeptejte se svého lékárníka, jak máte likvidovat přípravky, které již nepotřebujete.

Škoda že toto vlákno již tolik nežije jako kdysi.

Část peněz je již připravena k čerpání.

Šlo tedy pouze o zvyk a dnes bych již neměnil.

České titulky již k druhému dílu jsou hotové.

Živá zahrada má již samostatné webové stránky!

Žádné jiné větší město tímto směrem již není.

2. v rámci

Šlo o nutnou oběť v rámci onkologické bezpečnosti.

Škodovka chce prodávat vstupné i v rámci balíčků do obou muzeí.

Úprava firemní komunikace v rámci společnosti i navenek. 

3. výjimka

výjimka potvrzuje pravidlo

výjimky se najdou

výjimka platí

výjimka nastává

výjimky tvoří

výjimku udělit

není výjimkou vidět

nebývá výjimku

o udělení výjimky

o povolení výjimky

kromě výjimek

výjimky jsou uvedeny

Žádný zákon z něj nesmí dělat výjimku.

Šla za policií a získala pro nás výjimku.

Česká republika je ale jednou z výjimek.

Ženy jako rozhodčí nejsou ve stolním tenisu na vrcholných akcích výjimkou. 

A4.6.13 meta: o překladu

My friend corrected these sentences, and it was interesting.

běžný místní účet is an ordinary checking account, banking lingo.

uživatel is a word which can change drastically depending on the context.

praxe means "the way things are done", like one meaning of "practice." My teaching test was called the Praxis. That is how I will remember it.

Czech is entirely at the mercy of context when it comes to articles and meaning.

We had a long discussion about how to correctly translate this:

Žádná otázka ohledně viny a trestu není nechutná.

Is it:
No question regarding fault and punishment is appealing?

Or:
No question regarding fault and punishment is unappealing?

I am still feeling unresolved about this issue, but it did spur me to start composing a poem with some rather silly triple negatives. It just does not work well in English. It is really confusing.

x i y : both x and y
i x... : even x..

sbor is a police corps almost all of the time.

I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things. Here's to good health, Czech, and finishing the summer strong before I completely remake this system into something better :-) Which is almost my favorite part of this project, honestly. #dorkiestdork

A4.8.4 definice

I used this wonderful tool called Sketch Engine to find word frequencies, collocates, and get these beautiful visualizations. You should check it out! It is awesome.

Also, I wrote a paper for my grad school application that I could call, "Why the heck are all these "good" example sentences so long!?" This caused me to switch which corpus I tend to search from SkELL to OPUS2, since I really think the result will be easier to comprehend sentences for me. But it might result in some weird stuff. We will see.

My friend Marek showed me how to sort sentences by tokens/sentence. "Nobody ever thought to make this part of the UI." Egh. Well. "We all live in a world of bad desiiiiiiign..." (Yes, I can hear the eyeballs of my computer programmer friends rolling, which is pretty impressive because I live thousands of miles away and eye-rolls aren't very loud. Hahaha)

This lovely little gibberish string will help me reduce the sentence lengths significantly. If I put it at <10, sometimes I get nonsense results. So I don't like that.

[] within <s> []{5,15} </s>

1. při

Hmm, seems like a word with not a lot of collocates in SkELL. I guess it makes sense for prepositions to not have collocates.

Look. When I searched OPUS2, the collocates were there. See?

při práci

při pohledu na

při příležitosti

při výběru

při použití

při cestě

při výrobě

při teplotě

při přípravě

při řešení 

při jednání

při návštěvě

při jízdě

při hledání

při tvorbě

pomoc při

postup při

je při

může při

pomáhá při

používá při

roli při

pomocí při

spolupráci při

2. tým : executive decision, this word is not worth studying. It is a cognate.

3. vývoj

vývoj směřuje 

vývoj jde

vývoj probíhá

výzkuma a vývoje

pro výzkum, výávoj a inovace

vývoj zvrátit

se bude bývoj ubírat

vývoj otočit

vyčkat dalšího vývoje

sledovat vývoj

otočili vývoj

mapuje vývoj

odhadnout vývoj

se zabývá vývojem

věnují vývoji

budoucí vývoj

demografický vývoj

historického vývoje

vývoj aplikací

vývoj událostí

ohledně vývoje

během vývoje

kvůli vývoji

vývoj kolem

vývoj uvnitř

vývoj v

vývoj je pomalý

vývoj je pozitivní

vývoj je rychlý

vývoj je patrný

vývoj bude podobný

4. poté

nejprve slovně a poté i fyzicky

předtím a poté, co

zdarma a poté

doma a poté

dolů a poté

krátce poté

a teprvé poté

brzý poté

ihned poté, co

nedlouho poté 

hned poté, co

a poté opět

a poté znovu

poté již

a poté postupně

poté společně s

poté už

poté krátce

a poté zpět do

A4.6.12 meta: o konverzacích

Tak, právě jsem se doopravdy vrátila do svých českých studií, aspoň držím pálce.

A tak tahle diskuze bude hrozně stručná; ty poslední tři měsíce jsem mluvila jenom hrozně trochu češtiny. Kousíček češtiny.

Ještě jsem četla, ale není to stejné...

A4.7.9 meta: o pokroku

Here's how things are going with my Czech learning currently:

I have been having a lot of false restarts, and it's really difficult to find the kind of time this project deserves/needs/sucks up because of the fact that I am home with 5 children, and it's summer.

I haven't skyped with any of my learning partners since the end of April, and I feel kind of terrible about it.

I had been waffling over how to approach my approach. Haha. Throw it out, adjust it, just go with it - I couldn't commit. I also have been dealing with a substantial amount of postpartum anxiety in my personal life. Fortunately, that problem seems to have been solved, or at least resolved: I weaned my 10 month old baby, and have started to feel normal again.

"Feeling normal" means I want to work on Czech. It's something I crave when I feel normal, actually. When I feel a massive amount of anxiety, the whole thing seems to daunting and I am paralyzed, not knowing what to do or where to start.

But I have a really clear roadmap, and I'm going to follow it through. I decided to work through 17 weeks of A4 until I redesign the whole thing (to be called A5, which is, well, stupid, but...I'd rather call it that) - already I am thinking of ways I can do that successfully. But for now, I will just plow forward.

I decided that I'm personally just completely fine with skipping around from "unit" to unit. I also realized that I have to reduce the target words from 10 to 3 in order to get this done in anything that even vaguely resembles a reasonable time frame.

So. Yeah. Tally-ho. Onward. I spent some time updating the conditional formatting in the google sheets spreadsheet where I track this stuff. It will be glorious to see the whole thing "golden". My goal is to have that done by the time the kids go back to school. I think I can manage.

I must be feeling a lot better, to feel that confident!

A4.7.4 definice

I used this wonderful tool called Sketch Engine to find word frequencies, collocates, and get these beautiful visualizations. You should check it out! It is awesome.

1. rada

rada město

člen rady, členové rady

dozorčí rady 

za radu

2. řízení

výběrový řízení : seems to have a separate meaning, a compound word of sorts

účastník řízení 

při, před řízení

3. vlastně

This word does not seem to really have collocates.

A4.9.3, A4.10.3, A4.11.3 nová slova

A4.9.3

1. již
2. v rámci
3. výjimka

A4.10.3

1. stav
2. uživatel
3. naprosto

Logika je to naprosto normální a běžná.

A4.11.3

1. považovat

Tento fakt považuji za milou ironii osudu.

2. náklad

Náklady ale uplatní paušálem ve výši 50%.

3. veřejnost

Veřejnosti bude expozice přístupná do poloviny září.

A4.6.23 řeč do textu

NOTE TO SELF: řeč do textu is an excellent, excellent way to practice numbers. As you can see, those are really hard to say quickly and naturally.

***

1 Kde je za druhou polovinu roku 2 40 a dál existují

jedno údaje za druhou polovinu roku 2040 a dál v neexistují

jeden údaje za druhou polovinu roku 2014 a dál neexistují

1 údaje za druhou polovinu roku 2014 a dál existují

1 údaje za druhou polovinu roku 2014 a dále existují

1 údaje za druhou polovinu roku 2014 a dál neexistují

2 školní rok Tedy trvá Od poloviny září do konce května

2 školní rok tady trvá Od poloviny září do konce května

tři oproti tomu Dolní polovina těla je většinou štíhlá

3 oproti tomu Dolní polovina těla je většinou štíhlá

4 někdy se ale může hodit i běžné místní účet

4mm někdy se ale může hodit i běžný místních účet

4 někdy se ale může hodit i běžné místní účet

4 někdy se ale může hodit i běžný místní účet

táta běžný uživatel tak vydrží Klidně i dva a půl dne

5 běžný uživatel tak vydrží Klidně i dva a půl dne

6 ve světě je to celkem běžná praxe

7 sám ministr na dotaz ohledně vloupání neodpověděl

8 žádná otázka ohledně viny a trestu není nechutná

9 děti odpovídaly na otázky ohledně stravovacích zvyklostí svých rodin

10 město i spory si kladou otázky ohledně budoucnosti