Cebuano and the quest for B2

I've discovered that, depending on the speaker, a "t" can sound like a "ch".
Also, in a transcription exercise yesterday, several times I thought I heard a "b" when it was in fact a "d".

I went back and read a Cebuano play that I read in the past, and in which I looked up allot of words. They are still underlined. Most of the time I didn't need to look them up again. The Play in general was easier to read and understand, even though I could read it all last time. As such it was much easier to understand words by context. I did have to look up some stuff though. Because of that I feel that my reading has taken a step back. This is coupled with a feeling that my general listening is getting better. If this is the case I'll rejoice.

For kicks I tried reading the facing Tagalog translation, and found that I could do it, but I kept falling asleep after a few pages.

Time to resume following this log...

important note to self:
nakalibang in Tagalog means "had fun", but in Cebuano means "was able to poop".

Wow, lots of nakalibang for your buck.

Yesterday I had some amazing news comprehension, able to figure out fuzzy words by context, and able to throw out what wasn't important so I could keep the flow. Last night I was able to converse at length one-to-one about whatever. I guess you could say I "peaked".

But this keeps happening, whenever I do something like that my listening comprehension drops the next day, and I have to build it back up. It happened again today.

On a side note, I have some depression issues (it runs in the family and appeared in me mid 2013), and recently it occurs to me that it could be affecting my learning abilites. I discovered a few days ago that cacao really helps. I eat some of that and it's just gone.

Wow it took a much shorter time to get my ablities back. It usually takes a day or so, but this time I just dipped in the morning, was ok in the afternoon, and was conversing a bit at the end of the day. And I was quite tired at the time.

This strange phenomenon continues. I used to be I would have cycles over several day of good and bad Cebuano usage. Now it seem to happen all inside of one day. Not sure what that means.

I've broadened my Filipino language horizons. I read through the first few chapters of John in Tagalog, referring to an English translation from time to time. When I listen to it, I certainly get more than I used to. I feel like when watching TV I hear the words, but don't know what they all mean yet.

I found a peace corp pdf on Ilokano. I kind of freaked out about it in the past after reading the Wikipedia grammar article, but it seems quite close to Cebuano, aside from some of the most common words.

Bob, since you use Goldlist, are you able to use those lists and estimate your current vocabulary size? Or could you take a reasonably-sized dictionary and use Iversen's method of estimation, i.e. take 10 pages and see how many known words there are of the total on the page, and then average the results to extrapolate an estimate based on the number of entries in the dictionary?

The reason I ask is that what you describe, is what I remember in German when I was around the 6,500 word mark. Sometimes I would understand almost completely, and then other times almost nothing. But now at over 11K words, I understand almost all the non-fiction type of stuff like news that I read or hear. But still if I delve in depth in various subjects, then again I am confronted with harder to understand texts. My goal is 15-20K words, after which hopefully I will understand virtually all that I hear and read in a variety of contexts.

The level you are at, similar to the one described above for me in German, is both thrilling and discouraging. You get a lot of positive payoffs, but you also realize just how much you still lack. You just have to keep moving forward, or rather uphill, and know that you will eventually reach a much higher plateau.

No it doesn't work like that. I still need a few exposures to make those words usable. I knew at least 3k before I started GL.

Again I can read 97% of any newspaper around here for what it's worth. A play that I read for the first time I knew about 95% of the words. And maybe half of those I ask people about they don't know them either. The soap opera I'm watching is either 97% or higher, my main problem is that I'm still working on parsing out the sounds.

I don't think vocab is the problem because when people slow down or repeat it's near perfect.

For your waxing/waning comprehension of German, do you notice any changing cycles?

Well it varied by source a lot of course, but also within the same source, i.e. like watching episodes of a crime show (Tatort). But if you mean some regular cycle time-wise, then no. While I have bad language days when my comprehension may not seem at the level it should be, or I fail more Anki cards than normal with cards I should know, there is no cycle to them. And a good night's sleep if I can get one is most helpful to have the next day be better. Overall though I just needed more vocabulary, and the more I learned the less frequent bad language days became.

too bad I can't get rid of that double post.

Anyway yesterday I was making a small article and had to interview someone. He was not comfortable answering all that in English, so he did it in cebuano. I just had to ask about the words I missed hearing correctly and it was all good.

But from what happened today your # of words comment has some weight. There were two words that came up tonight that I didn't know. One was a synonym for jump and the other was a word for "start a fire". These are the kind of words I don't need to say, but need to recognize. It's amazing how one fuzzy word can throw off the flow. I think with a news story or narrative you get more volume, and thus more context to help you.

This sort of thing would happened in the past and I would forget... now I remember It's one of the reasons why I tried the Goldlist thing.

I'm enjoying your log! It's interesting to read about someone learning a less-studied language.

Hi stelle, good to see you A less studied language has its challenges. In Spanish I could just pick up a book on whatever topic was not as well known to me. For Cebuano, for the most part I just have to take it as it comes.

Come to think of it, maybe the reason why I understand sermons so well I because I've read allot of Cebuano Bible.

I must say for Filipino languages, Tagalog seems to be out there on it's own branch (for vocab). That is, if you don't include Chavacano. Now that I know a little of it, I feel a wealth of riches at National Bookstore.

Why not take it from the Cebuano language Wikipedia? Not nearly as many articles as for English, but I doubt you would ever run out of interesting stuff to read. And with a pop-up tool like I use for Firefox that hooks into Google Translate, you can select any passage and get a translation. While GT has a lot of flaws, it still helps. If you start with religious topics you will be building on what you already know best. It's also easy to let GT translate the whole page and then copy and paste that along with the original into a spreadsheet to make your own parallel texts.

language meltdown today

I was talking with someone today and noticed that my confidence is low for longer sentences. Also, strangely enough I'm not used to conversing with you and us in the plural. It's usually singular. Someone had to paraphrase something I wanted to say because there's no 1- to -1 from English. I got so frustrated trying to explain a point of budgeting that I just wanted to stop learning Cebuano right there.

With German, there is the concept of the double infinitive, and with passive constructions for example, one can end up with 4 verbs in a single sentence. Perhaps though what you are having difficulty with are subordinate clauses and both their relationship to the main clause, and the order of those elements. Other languages have grammars explaining this, but perhaps Cebuano does not, at least in English. Which brings up the question, do you own a monolingual Cebuano grammar?

I am assuming the problem is with verbs here, and it is well known that some persons/numbers are used less than others, especially in speech. Perhaps some imaginary dialogues could help train this?

You're being way too hard on yourself here. Using Cebuano for business purposes is at the top of the layers of competencies, as in B2-C1. Perhaps you could write on such topics and get them corrected by a native.

The more you learn the more successful you feel, especially in situations where comprehension is nearly complete. But you also realize just how much you still don't know in other situations. I am sure you already realize from studying Cebuano and other languages that if you keep plugging away you will suddenly find yourself on a higher plateau.

I've already wanted the give up Cebuano many times, but somehow I'm still here.

My speech in general is kind of stop and go, I throw out a few words, pause to grab some more words out of my head, throw out some more. I wouldn't say I'm translating though. When people stop waiting for me to say the next thing I'll call it B2.

Yes the problem with longer sentences is connecting the verbs right. The reword was when I said "you're asking me to...?" and it had to be something more like "you want me to...?" and now that I'm thinking about it I guess for Cebuano it's going to be a choice between using an infinitive and a subordinating word. (an equivent for "that")

I'm used to you/me because it gets used all the time. But the you/me and you/us pairs always feel weird at first in any language for me because both of you are talking about the same thing using different words. Put on top of that that Cebuano has a seperate plural and singular you (not uncommon), and an inclusive and exclusive we.

I certainly know what to review right now.

I "learned" a new word because of a game we were playing. It was this, you ask someone a question, and no matter what the question is have to answer "bagtak sa lamok" (calf of a mosquito). ex. what do you floss your teeth with?

I'm not much for the challenges they do on HTLAL all the time, but perhaps you need your own personal input challenge. Like 200 hours of Cebuano television weighted heavily toward drama with dialogues, and 10 modern novels with a lot of dialogues. And then see if that makes any difference as to both comprehension and speaking.

Well to be honest, I've started listening to that soap opera more systematically just yesterday. I think I need to start logging my time. It's odd because I'll listen to the same thing and get varying levels of understanding. Sometime better sometimes worse. Since the episodes are not that long it feels like I'm working through a language course.

Hmm I've been checking some phrases, and I think the "that" connector is not common, mostly used with the word "said" or "thought", as in "he said that...". I'm also getting the strange idea that there are a limited number of words that can have a subordinate clause stuck on them. Thus the rewording yesterday.

I've never heard the word "subjunctive" used in Cebuano grammar, but there's some prefixes that could just as well be called that... and I hear them used in subordinating clauses.

I do indeed have a bilingual cebuano grammar, but I couldn't figure out how to make it useful to me.