Armenian Wikipedia, Rosetta, Mormon language learning, Gaza tunnel diggers

I haven't been writing here much recently, simply because I've been so occupied with reading. Maybe two months ago I came across this study showing the effects of massive amounts of reading (1+ million words) and how it compared to time spent abroad, and apparently the general rule is 1 million words equalled about the same improvement as a year overseas. This one here is interesting too, especially the chart a few pages down. That chart shows that the volume of text needed to be exposed to 10,000 words at least once is 600,000+ words. To see them three times each: 3+ million.

So I thought I would read The Wheel of Time (4+ million words) in two languages and see what a difference it makes. And also to truly get a feel for what a million words is like. A million is a lot of words. I'm currently halfway through book 5. I read up to book 8 in English before back in the 1990s, and decided that I would stop reading until the series was completed, which it was two years ago.

I don't like to treat Page F30 as a polyglot blog, given the limitations it places on what one can write about, but this spreadsheet might be interesting to readers.

Words means the number of words I've deleted that day (I use Readlang.com for this), words learning is the number of words registered there, and it goes up as new words are added and others I don't need to review anymore are deleted. Total is the total number of new words I assume have been put in my head since starting this, 1400 is just a number to make the graph look nice, pages is the number of pages read that day, words read is pages multiplied by 350. Then divide that by new words, which gives words per new word. That last column has turned out to be less meaningful than I thought because it depends on my mood whether I click on a word or not. Sometimes I feel like adding a word I kind of know but want to see a few more times anyway, and other times I don't.

On days off I can read 20,000+ words, on work days I can get 10,000 words in, sometimes fewer.

Date	Words	Running total	Words learning	Total		Pages	Words read	New words	Words per new word
July 7	22	201	720	921	1400	61	21350	45	474,44
July 8	25	226	751	977	1400	56	19600	56	350,00
July 9	25	251	792	1043	1400	68	23800	66	360,61
July 10	45	296	772	1068	1400	56	19600	25	784,00
July 11	137	433	652	1085	1400	30	10500	17	617,65
July 12	33	466	664	1130	1400	63	22050	45	490,00
July 13	16	482	670	1152	1400	31	10850	22	493,18
July 14	8	490	693	1183	1400	45	15750	31	508,06
July 15	2	492	715	1207	1400	39, on page 685	13650	24	568,75
July 16	13	505	734	1239	1400	102, on page 39	35700	32	1 115,63
July 17	2	507	737	1244	1400	29, on page 68	10150	5	2 030,00
July 18	110	617	637	1254	1400	21, on page 89	7350	10	735,00
July 19	120	737	535	1272	1400	64, on page 153	22400	18	1 244,44
July 20	55	792	490	1282	1400	41, on page 194	14350	10	1 435,00
July 21	41	833	456	1289	1400	19, on page 213	5795	7	827,86
July 22	39	872	431	1303	1400	17, on page 230	5950	14	425,00
July 23	18	890	418	1308	1400	13, on page 243	4550	5	910,00
July 24	36	926	423	1349	1400	34, on page 277	11900	41	290,24
July 25	35	961	415	1376	1400	29, on page 306	10150	27	375,93
July 26	18	979	450	1429	1400	54, on page 360	18900	53	356,60
July 27	24	1003	449	1452	1400	40, on page 400	14000	23	608,70
July 28	24	1027	448	1475	1400	40, on page 440	14000	23	608,70
July 29	8	1035	449	1484	1400	25, on page 465	8750	9	972,22
July 30	36	1071	453	1524	1400	47, on page 512	16450	40	411,25
July 31	52	1123	453	1576	1400	82, on page 594	28700	52	551,92

So let's let to the other items in the title.

Armenian Wikipedia: I remember being disappointed at its tiny size a year or two ago, and apparently it has exploded since then due to a national campaign to have everyone write one article each. Here's one video encouraging Armenians to contribute:





Rosetta: the mission, not the language learning software. I an extremely pleased with them releasing daily images of the comet as Rosetta approaches. Dawn had better do something similar when it approaches Ceres in the next few months, as the lack of images during the Vesta approach was simply unacceptable.

• CometWatch 30 July
• CometWatch 29 July
• CometWatch 28 July
• CometWatch 25-27 July
• CometWatch - 24 July

Mormons: NPR has an article on the techniques they use to learn languages. I've always been impressed by the way they learn languages, since the first time I ever spoke with a non-Japanese person only in Japanese with a Mormon from Brazil in Nagoya.

Gaza tunnel diggers: This documentary with French subtitles is one of the more interesting documentaries I've seen in a while. It is a few years old, and is just 50 minutes of following a few of these tunnel diggers around as they do their thing. It has music but no extra commentary, which is great. A documentary without the typical dozens and dozens of quips from specialists speaking on the matter in their office is a rare treat.