Japanese is still getting tackled. Thinking about ditching Duolingo entirely for Lingonaut but also not sure when it’ll have Spanish done, so have to wait on that. Irish is seeing a bit more hope these days as the app Sionnach which I was referred, it had a schism where one of the owners apparently went mad and ejected a lot of the workers on it, so now they’ve diverted and are making a newer, ground up Irish learning app. Called Madra Teanga, and are also open sourcing it, as well as going to get proper native speech, such as Munster, and Connacht and Ulster dialects. Basically in the pre-planning stage at the moment, but oddly enough more optimistic than anything I’ve seen so far.

Anyway, yeah, that’s me.

I’m at a point where I need to hear it more. I can express myself pretty well and read it very well. But the rhythms and the slang throw my ear when listening and I get caught up on little details instead of just trying to hear the whole sentence. Need to find a good show to watch.

Ça va très bien! J’ai pu traduire un vieux document écrit complètement en français pour ma blonde, et je crois que j’ai enfin arrivé a l’étage de l’apprentissage qui est plus intéressant

Decided to retake my French course’s assessment on a whim (allowed to reassess every month), and it turns out I have reached overall A1… which sounds bad, but compared to me starting at A1- there definitely has been an improvement

Keeping up with the self-study resources can be a bit difficult now that vacation is over… and since I have started quite a few more Anki decks (vocab fr->en and en->fr, sentence translation, some grammar…) I do feel a bit stressed at times, but I’m doing my best

Fun story but I returned an Amazon package completely in French today (including the guy telling me to turn my phone to bright mode). It’s not a lot but it is honest work I guess

Edit: oh and I just started using the desktop Anki (like you’re supposed to)! It’s available on AUR. The desktop version has been much nicer than the mobile app I’m using or AnkiWeb

I’ve done my first two classes last week, and I think my speaking has grossly improved. My German teacher immediately pointed out my weaknesses in ie, ei, r, Z, ö. I knew “r” was hard, but I “didn’t even know” I was messing up ei, ie, or Z. (ö is one I “felt” like I was doing wrong, but wasn’t as hard as r sounds). So that’s nice, there’s nothing like a proper teacher who can help you with this pronunciation. However, there’s a curse for Anki: now I’m much slower in Anki as I’m trying to “re-practice” all the words but now with correct pronunciation (I’m marking many words as “wrong” when I notice I mispronounce them, meaning Anki reviews are taking up way more time this past week).

That’s the nature of it however: learning that your practice was wrong leads to new practice to “rewire” and fix your old habits. Its like any other skill, the more you learn the more you have to repractice.

I’ve grossly expanded my collection of Spotify songs. I’m listening to German Rap, meme-songs, more children songs and translated anime-songs (into German). Its probably too soon for me to write up a new topic, but maybe I’ll share with everyone the songs I’m listening to every couple of weeks.

Hmmm, one video to share for sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYkBf0dbs5I

A German tongue-twister + rap about Barbara’s Rhubarb Bar and the Barbarians and their Barber visiting. Its a whole bunch of nonsense, but its all “simple German words + cognates”, so I’d expect beginners (A1 and A2) to be able to follow it. After all, Barbara, Rhabarb, Barbar (Barbarian), Bert (Beard), Bar all have “obvious” German cognates and that’s most of the joke right there. The hard part is the speed (the performer is very well practiced with these tongue-twisters). But you can .75x speed it and slow it down on Youtube, or even 0.5x speed if you need it even slower.

A lot of the rhyming words are A1 or A2 level: aber (but), fern (far), fahren (to drive), gar (at all). SAGen (said), paar (pair), Jahr (year)… so yeah, don’t aim for complete understanding but you’ll can get substantial understanding if you can keep up with the speed.

I went to a physical bookstore today (quaint, I know), and flipped through the German books they had. They had a “beginner short story book” that I picked up, flipped through and realized I had 80%+ of the words understood. This is sufficient for learning, albeit with a lot of effort from a dictionary (Wikitionary) to help me through. Lo-and-behold, I’m reading through its forward now and it claims to be an A2-B1 level book (!!!).

I wouldn’t say I’m “officially” A1+ yet, as I don’t plan on taking any test. But this is a good sign that my effort is paying off. If A2-B1 material is useful to me, then yeah… I’m definitely in a much stronger place than I was even just a few weeks ago. My reading skills are clearly approaching A2-ish material.

EDIT: This short-story book says that you should NOT expect to be able to understand all the words. Instead, keep a notebook with a list of the words not-understood, and look them up after reading the story once. Then, look up the definitions, then reread the story with improved understanding. I’ve never tried this before, but I’ll aim for it. Hopefully the list of “not known words” is small enough to be workable, lol… its about 3 pages per story here.

While I was flipping through German books, I found a German Phrasebook. I was reading through it mostly amusingly (look at what “tourists” have to do to keep up with my power!!!). But… in all honesty, its kind of useful for learning. Instead of having a strict vocabulary, this is translating phrases in English into phrases in German. No, its NOT perfectly accurate (!!!), but that’s… fine?

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/272707/the-penguin-german-phrasebook-by-jill-norman-ute-hitchin-renata-henkes/

At $10 and maybe 300+ pages of dense phrases, I can highly recommend for learners. In all honesty, it feels like it reaches into B1-level vocabulary. All the phrases are extremely simple (and not even necessarily complete sentences), but… that’s fine for learning? We learners have to memorize all kinds of stuff, and it feels like memorizing all of the “common phrases a tourist might need” is still learning.

Achukma hoke kiyo. Anumpa anumpoli kiyo. Not great. Didn’t study at all and not much speaking.

Out of the country using some Spanish this week. I’m not great at it, but I can speak it. Gratifying when the learning pays off!

Listened to a couple episodes of tv over the weekend. I’m getting better at understanding I think, and can catch what’s being said separate to the subtitles (they’re often inaccurate or just summary) sometimes. Also read a chapter of a lovely book called The Brothers Lionheart.

まあまあです。Been letting distractions get in the way this week. I talk in Japanese on Discord a bit, which is good! But then I also end up down rabbit holes from there in the same app, which is bad.

On the plus side, now that I’ve settled into a new routine–mixed things up halfway through–I’m proceeding at a faster-than-expected pace in my textbook. I should be finished with it a few weeks, maybe even a month ahead of schedule. Feeling good about having enough runway for dedicated study after that with my December deadline, but don’t know if it’ll be enough in the end until I get there. Fingers crossed!