A little tricky to read this. With the ground constantly changing underneath your feet, there's a feeling that rules and words get introduced then redefined willy nilly. The whole thing has a sense of "Numberwang" about it, which I think is part of why it comes across as satire. Another big part is no doubt how ridiculously the bootstrapping stage was written, but that seems intentional.
There's clearly something deep going on, but I will have to come back to this after an even deeper cup of coffee.
There's a lot to explain, and it has occurred to me that I have explained it in a suboptimal manner. Writer of this post, by the way. The problem is that there is just so much to communicate (the design for this language with Matthew took 3 weeks of back and forth communication over several hours a day). A lot to fill in for people that don't know me in real life.
I’m a non programmer, and while I can often just barely grasp what might possibly be going on in a “normal” language, I can’t even begin to pretend to make sense of what you’ve made. I’m glad some are able to appreciate what you’ve done.
I suspect the reception of it being suspected to be a joke, is the mention of lisp and brainfuck priming them for a joke, combined with examples and concepts that seem to require a much stronger than normal technical background. So for the average Joe it ends up in the “turbo encabulator” zone where it’s not quite clear if what’s going on is real or in jest. The prerequisites for understanding just aren’t there.
I also suspect a non-zero percentage of the readers have involuntarily audio flashbacks of Soulja Boy when they see that many “cranks” on a page.
I thought it was cool if a little impenetrable without extra effort! Reminded me a bit of Urbit’s old theorycraft, which I think is still an open question as to whether it’s an elaborate ruse, so the idea did cross my mind that I’m getting my leg pulled, but it seems to be in earnest. I have some similar thoughts in a related but different domain but user-extensible syntax is certainly a nice and uncommon language feature.
oh yeah, Urbit; I'm quite aware of the project and can recognize that to some I might just be explaining it in an intentionally confusing manner, perhaps. I do think the original intent of Urbit was to naturally select nerds, basically (I mean Curtis Yarvin talking about the old UseNet made it really seem like it), and no, that was not the intent here. It literally is just hard to figure out how to communicate the core concepts of Cognition and why we wanted it to be that way.
I was left with more hope than you, upon completing the article. Smaller cars, less cars in general, more bikes, public transportation, urbanization, smaller living spaces. All these things are quite in vogue these days.
At their list towards the end, I felt like I had heard of online communities in favor of all of them, for more reasons than just the climate impact that they have.
> The hardest part about learning a language is knowing what to learn.
I disagree with this. The hardest part about learning a language is finding content and resources in the target language that are both engaging and comprehensible at your current level. It's hard to find books, shows, or conversation partners, all the way through that critical awkward stage from beginner to vaguely proficient.
The parts of the language you need to learn will reveal themselves to you through your interaction with it. And then, either your brain will figure it out intuitively, or you'll be able to look things up if they remain a mystery.
Perhaps being equipped with a base set of phrases will increase your range in the very beginning, but that does involve offloading a lot of comprehension work to your brain's CPU, rather than letting it be handled by your brain's in-built language processor GPU. I'm suspicious about any such strategy for language learning.
Context clues that accompany the language input are a much more powerful way to make language comprehensible, compared to memorizing phrases and adding strain to your already busy brain.
The idea here is to load your RAM with enough information so you can go and interact with the language, and you have enough critical 'hooks' to start to boot up your GPU. Then once you've done that, you should have some good memories that you can start to commit to long term storage, should you choose
(did I go too far with the computer analogies? I feel like it broke down).
Either way, I think we say in several places, no app is going to replace the learning that happens from interacting with the content. _That's_ where you actually learn. Our sole purpose is to get you to be able to interact with it as fast as possible, with as little gymnastics as possible.
No, I think you're doing good with that analogy still. My own spitball was half baked anyway. To some extent, conscious consideration of phrases and meanings of things can and do happen, but learning on it as the primary source for comprehension is so painful. And it's what we do in most grammar-heavy courses, and strategies based on memorizing phrases.
A recent example that comes to mind is I wanted to refresh my Italian by watching my favorite TV show in an Italian dub. Even though I can converse in Italian, and quite the show by heart, I couldn’t really follow the program.
Loading it up into Phrasing tells me that the most important words to the episode were: conservitorship, inheritance, deep submerge vehicle, treason, philanthropies, ransom, nerve gas, and anaphylactic shock.
If I’m going to spend any time on flashcards or SRS, these are the cards I want to learn. Once I know these words, not only could I follow half the episode even if I didn’t speak Italian, but the other 99% of the language in the episode has something to “latch onto” while I’m passively watching it.
I fully expect 95% of my progress in Italian to come from watching the tv show. But I expect to be able to significantly improve the speed of that progress with Phrasing.
Nicely said. It seems like you're familiar with Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis? My daughter speaks German and Swedish very proficiently just from watching hours and hours over a few years of ZDF/ARD/usw (German tv networks) and Barnakalan (Swedish kids network) on the iPad. I can't say it was a wise to let her be on the iPad for that many hours a day, but it did work, she did acquire the languages.
Yes! I'm a big fan, and have even tested the theory out on myself to great effect. I learned French using the series "French in Action", along with certain other sources of input. I was watching and rewatching each episode, and listening on repeat to its audio which I downloaded. Less than a year in I was listening to the radio, and now, two years in, I can listen and read to almost anything online. I'm behind on more casual speech and slang, but am planning to move to France so that I may finally get it.
Meanwhile, I have hardly ever had the chance to speak or write it. I seriously doubt that I've "output" more than a hundred sentences. Perhaps I've spoken some gibberish sentences now and then on my my way to work, but never for any practical purpose. Yet my comprehension is doing okay!
To answer your question: I don't know, but probably at least 4 hours of listening a day in the beginning, gradually decreasing.
The first few months were intense, I remember. My prioritizing was detrimental to a couple of other aspects of life. Every day I wanted to get in some "active study", i.e. watching the current few episodes of FIA over again, trying to understand more this time of the latest one I was working on. And any free moment I had, walking somewhere or going shopping, I'd pop my earbuds in and listen in a more laid back way.
In the very beginning I also figured that my ear and brain needed practice at simply differentiating all these weird new vowels and sounds, so I played French noises almost constantly, including at night and when working. In hindsight, I think only the night time sounds were a smart decision.
Yet despite my dedication being a lot and the project affecting my life, I was always somehow ashamed of my lack of conviction and effort, when hearing about other learners doing "AJAT" or equivalents (All Japanese, All the Time). There are crazier stories our there!
The sad thing also is that I don't think it would be necessary to go so hard at ot to accomplish what I have. An hour or two a day of more optimal input (what I claim is so hard to find), might get you a really long way in the same amount of time. I do not know. My experiment, however, was testing whether I could acquire a language without speaking it, which it did confirm at least to me.
Children are native speakers. This is something that doesn't quite hit you until you seriously undertake language learning.
assuming we are talking about children's content in general (and not content for babies), you will find that it is not much more comprehensible than the adult stuff.
a language learning beginner is nowhere near the command or vocabulary of a child.
Yeah, I've been learning German for about a year and a half now through a combination of traditional classes and duolingo. I'm roughly high A2, low B1. I've tried multiple times to start reading children's books (e.g. Die Kleine Hexe, Emil und die Detektiv, Das doppelte Lottchen, Der Räuber Horzenplotz) which are all, supposedly, for readers under 10. They have a surprisingly large required vocabulary and grasp on the grammar.
I think part of the problem is that adult learners learn things in a sequence. They learn one part of grammar, then the next, then the next, so that there are grammar rules and structures that you are almost completely unaware of until pretty far into your learning. Whereas a native child is exposed to the entire language all at once. They don't fully understand everything, but they are aware of all of the different structures. Children's books know this and are written with it in mind, as opposed to things like readers, which restrict their grammar to a particular level. I have a much easier time reading an A2 reader than any actual childrens book.
I am a native speaker in German and I can tell you that while all the books you listed are children’s books, they are all quite old, and the words and phrases they use are weird, to say the least. Maybe grab a Lustiges Taschenbuch? They’re available almost everywhere, fun to read also for adults and since they are comics, the accompanying images provide context.
My experience from learning from childrens books has not been very good. They tend to be quite whimsical, which is hard to follow, use quite old language, which is hard to follow, and use really child-appropriate language, which is hard to follow.
Getting to a middle-school or YA level though, and increasing through reading levels there, is probably the best thing you can do for your language (and phrasing was built specifically to make this level accessible to you before your language level is high enough).
PS: Childrens books work on Phrasing too, so this isn't inherently biased in that respect, just my genuine opinion.
I used to think the same, and I admit that having children yourself is deff a factor, but I have been surprised by how good kids books and shows can be these days.
Nothing to do when I was a kid, so I would not rule it out.
The hardest part is being consistent and acrually using it. I have seen someone less tha. 80 IQ speaking their native language and understand the grammar better than someone with Havard degree both fluency in speaking and expressing their thoughts. The main reason is one have to use it day in day out, the other learn it as "subject" to past exam. Why so many people use babbel and resulted in not able to use the language. Spend 15mins, while native speakers spent 12hrs a day. Polyglots also use this forced immersion. Except they dont want to "brag" they learn that way. Instead just want to show how easy they learn ... naturally.
Yes, consistency is key, but if you're smart about it, it doesn't have to be hard.
The trick is rather to make consistency easy. My own strategy there is aligned with most language enthusiasts: Make your input and conversations engaging! Make them so engaging you partake in those activities independently of the language, or better yet, in spite of the language. Make engagement automatic!
As an example, I've come to adore the French YT channel "ScienceEtonnante", and now watch anything published by it ASAP. I started watching it because I have a masters in physics, and found much of the jargon very easy to pick up as it's often similar to English. That left only the particularities of French itself for my brian to figure out. Now that I can simply lean back and enjoy the show, that is also what I do! It has become my favorite YT channel.
This was a great perspective to add onto my own vague ideas as I enter the new year.
Late last year I quit my job and left my apartment, placed all my junk in storage and for the next few months will be travelling around Europe to dance tango until my budget runs out. The goal is to find out where in the world I want to move and work, to meet new friends, to make art, and to dance as much as I can.
At this stage, in the jargon of the blog post, you might say that I am rather explorative. I made this plan after my old job became unbearable, and at the same time a lot of my friends started to leave town, and also my apartment's contract was coming to an end. Seemed like an opportune moment to do something so crazy.
While packing my stuff I took the time to organize all the old papers I'd shoved away in a closet, including old notebooks and drawings all the way back to kindergarten. In the process, it became clear to me how far I had strayed from the strengths, passions, and hopes of that small boy I used to be.
Tango totally blindsided me a-year-and-a-half ago. I always dreaded dancing, feared it, but decided to join some friends attending a beginners class. The payout on that unlikely arm of the bandit has been absolutely staggaring. So, while quite exploratory, my journey will be exploitative as well.
I still have left room for more kinds of discoveries. I have vague plans of drawing, writing poetry, writing a blog and publishing videos, learning new programming languages, and more. I definitely will be bringing my guitar, but after reading this blog post I am asking myself whether the smart thing to do would be to narrow down my options at some early stage of the journey, and even throughout it, honing in on just a couple of the things I want to do, if not just one.
The idea of limiting myself is both unsettling and yet also relieving. I already feel like I know the order in which I will cut off the arms of the bandit. And if I'm lucky, it won't simply turn into a Hydra!
I agree that code is restricted by harder constraints, in that tests need to pass and typos/grammatical errors are disastrous.
But being able to write code that merely runs is the bare mimimum requirement you could put on a programmer. The thing is, the compiler is not your only audience.
>Readers' brains build an imagined world from the hints given by the author.
This is as true when reading code as when reading anything else.
A lot of games are incredibly involved, requiring a long explanation and rundown of the rules at the start of a session to all those not already familiar with it. It's a common enough issue that Shut Up & Sit Down made a 15 minute video on mastering "the teach" [1]
I don't think I've had a single gaming night lately where there isn't some explanation stage to every game, where it is eventually decided that "it will make sense once we start", yet frequently everyone agrees that it will be a lot better next time.
Then you have games like Root where learning about the insanely intricate rule-set and how the different factions interact is almost half the point and fun of playing it, still a process after multiple sessions. I've never played that one, however. Seems too daunting.
Ah right but that's "you'll get the tactics next game" really. I don't think there are many games where you literally can't know all the rules first time round, or at best after a practice round. I don't think it's reasonable to be able to play well the first time you play any game.
The only one I can recall that really would require multiple plays just to learn the rules is this: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/329716/eleven-football-m... which I tried to play through at Essen but it has a crazy number of disconnected rules. I played 40 games at Essen and that was the only one where the number of rules made it unplayable first time round.
This went from "understanding the rules" to "know all the rules". Having read the rules, so "knowing the rules", doesn't mean you understand them or that you already have the muscle memory required to play. It's also not yet about tactics.
> * The king must always stay between the guards. If a move would end with the king not between the guards it cannot be performed.
Also: the first sentence says the king must always stay between the guards but the second sentence implies that it doesn't apply while the king is moving. This is contradictory.
> I feel like that's almost all games? Which ones are you thinking of that can't be understood on the first play?
Well, I made that distinction because of the implications of that remark: that rules of a game can be understood by reading them. As you mention in another comment that's not always the case and in my experience that's more often not the case that it is. On a side note, regular players can grok rules faster because mechanics are common to games but it's not how it works for casual players but I can see why it gives the illusion to regular players that rules can be understood just by reading them but they ignore that not only they are reading the rules but they are also seeing the underlying mechanics they are already well aware of.
To go further, knowing the rules, understanding how they work and then seeing patterns in a game session and plan accordingly are three separate things.
> > * The king must always stay between the guards. If a move would end with the king not between the guards it cannot be performed.
> How can you "know" that rule but not "understand" it?
I'd have written it like this * The king must always stay between the guards. Moves that end with the king not between the guards can't be performed.* and argue that's two separate rules. Now, I know these rules but I don't understand why they are necessary and I don't understand how they apply to the game.
The thing is I'm not sure that people in general have a lot of issue with client-side fragmentation. It's more the content silos on the server side. But then people didn't like cable bundles either.
I often look back at a comment I've written or email I've sent, and am annoyed at the number of paragraphs that start with "I ...". This one included! I think it looks odd when it's every single paragraph, so in extreme cases I will try to rewrite some of those sentences.
With this metric in mind and considering the topic of the article, I think this comment section makes for an ironic and amusing skim. Although I guess it's totally reasonable to talk from one's own perspective when discussing a piece of life advice.
The flip side of this is that at least you make the "I" explicit instead of overgeneralizing yourself. Counterintuitively, rewriting that into a version with less "I" could actually make it more egocentric (:
Indeed - I see "a lot of people think that <my opinion>" in low quality political interviews. It's always fun when the interviewee just asks, "What people?"
I once spent a week doing this, deliberate boredom. I only permitted myself stimuli in the form of work, and any chores I might get the urge to do (I do not usually have the slightest urge to do chores). Besides that, I sat around waiting for food or sleep.
I remember making the decision, and going through with it, but somewhat unsettlingly I do not remember hardly anything from the week itself. Maybe that is because there are no memorable moments on which to look back on.
What I found with my boring time is that I’d either spend it daydreaming or in a contemplative state. The greatest benefits is that it feels like taking a quick rest. Maybe my brain are not reacting to any stimulus? But yeah, not everything needs to be memorable and fewer things need to be captured.
There's clearly something deep going on, but I will have to come back to this after an even deeper cup of coffee.