The stats:
I have studied Yiddish for 299 days
I have studied Yiddish flashcards for a total of 180 hours
I have reviewed 3,612 individual flashcards
I promise this will be my last post about moving back to Minneapolis, but I just need to say: Moving is hard, yo.
We're in our new apartment at last, as of Saturday. But that means we are in an apartment crowded with unpacked boxes and one nervous dog -- although to Burt's credit, he seems to be adapting to his new home with alacrity. I haven't completely recovered from my cold, and the move Saturday was a whole day affair, so there was a day or two when I didn't have a chance to study Yiddish, god damn it.
But this should be winding down, and I should be back to something resembling a proper schedule soon enough. I have now been in Minneapolis, and at my new job, for almost five weeks, and am starting to get the hang of the latter.
As far as my studies go, I always feel like I just don't know any words at all, and it always turns out that I actually perfectly know somewhere between 68 and 80 percent of the older words, the ones I learned first and so rarely show up in the rotation of flashcards. So a happy percent of what I have been learning manages to stick, but it feels like it doesn't, because there are so many recent words that I have not yet really learned, and they come up all the time.
In fact, an overwhelming number of my cards are "mature" -- about 2100, as compared to about 1400 "young and learning cards." So, at my worst, I have a vocabulary of about 1700 words that I can reliably access, which seems like it isn't that many words, but, then, there are an awful lot of words that I sort of know -- it only takes a quick review to refresh my memory.
I suspect there will get to be a point where I am less concerned about how many words I have learned and how well I have learned them, but it's really all you have to go on when you're studying alone as a hobby.
