You probably know what Yak shaving is. It is a cycle of recursive work. I got sort-of sucked into it now as I am learning Ladino and I need to find a way out.
Speaking and listeningIn order to make it easier to learn I need feedback. One way to get feedback is to talk to people. See if they understand what I try to say, and try to understand what they say. It is also called conversation. As it turns out there is even a Turkish word for it muabet meaning "a relaxed conversation, a dialogue which may not have a clear goal, but which creates or affirms social ties between those who engage in it." Of course part of the goal of me learning Ladino is to have such conversations, but it is also part of how I learn. Unfortunately there are no Ladino speakers offering such sessions in Italki. Through various platforms and by asking various people I managed to reach a few people and now I have two conversation partners. An 80+ year old lady and a 20 year old woman. It is certainly interesting. I hope with more time I'll be able to get in touch with more people. However, of course, in order to have fluent conversations I need to learn more. Luckily there are plenty of YouTube videos with Ladino speakers that I can listen to.
ApplicationsI found that Utalk has a Ladino course. I love the voices and I love some of the exercises. Unfortunately most of the exercises focus on passive knowledge. There is some active speaking part, but actually that's a bit steep for my knowledge. I miss the textual feedback I got from Duolingo.
Reading and writingThere are a few books and newspapers in Ladino that I can read and there are some dictionaries, but they are much less comfortable than could be. The dictionaries I found are all in pdf form or are missing a lot of words. The old version of Aki-Yerushalayim is in HTML but the new one is in PDF which is going to be harder to use. In order to make it easier to learn reading I'd need a more interactive dictionary. Maybe I could even create a version of the newspapers where all the words are marked with their word-by-word translation. I actually already have part of the system. I have a web page where you can paste in some text and it will show the word-for-word translation. Unfortunately the dictionary behind it is small and probably has quite a few mistakes as it was written by myself.
ProjectsI need to enlarge the dictionary that I created and I need to make it correct. I think some other people are also working on an interactive Ladino dictionary, but I don't seem to be able to get through them. I need to write lots of examples sentences for the LibreLingo course (and the dictionary). I need to practice the words and sentences I added to the course and the dictionary. Without that it is a bit pointless for myself. There are several issues with this.
If I think of it this is not really Yak Shaving. It is more a circular dependency. However I think this could be resolved gradually. I just have to take it slowly. I need to find partners who come along the journey - other people learning Ladino - and I need to find people who will help me. I need to decide which one of the things I do first that can help me make some improvements that can help with the others. Published on 2022-01-15 by Gabor Szabo
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