Crazy Challenge anyone?

[rdearman]

Anyone doing any crazy challenges? Listen to Michel Thomas non-stop for 72 hours without sleep? Doing a LR Challenge for a year? Dancing naked in the moonlight while shadowing Irish folk music?

Got a thought for a madcap exciting challenge? Let's hear em!

[Querneus]

Dancing naked in the moonlight while shadowing Irish folk music?

Well, that'd be one way to gain the favour of the tuatha dé Danann so that they help you in your learning process, I would think.

Wanna hear a crazy idea? I have sometimes thought of attacking the whole of Ryan Baumann's Loebulus, a collection of public-domain Latin-English and Greek-English parallel texts from the Loeb Classical Library, scanned by Google. I don't even want to think of how long it'd take, but anyone would surely come out of that with good Latin and Ancient Greek. Each of those books has between 380 and 550 pages, this is very likely stepping into unreasonable territory...

[Cavesa]

Trying to finish my damn degree, that is crazy enough. One last week of this hell. I'd rather learn Klingon and Cantonese at the same time instead (and I'd be better at that, without any doubt).

Sleeping every other day is unfortunately too normal for me. 3 days? No, not that crazy. Just a side note: the world record of going without sleep till dying is like 10 days. And brains like sleep, I don't recommend this kind of a challenge. Any naked challenges have to wait, till I get better curtains.

Preparing the challenge to read a pile of books of as tall as me during the summer. I miss reading fiction! All languages combined. I am not too tall though (It would be a harder challenge for Tarvos! But she's better than me and has more languages, she'd probably make it). I hope to be reading mostly outside, need some fresh air and a different face colour than pale green.

And if my other plans fail, I'll need to get my German from weak A2 to solid B2 in two or thee months

[Mista]

Wanna hear a crazy idea? I have sometimes thought of attacking the whole of Ryan Baumann's Loebulus, a collection of public-domain Latin-English and Greek-English parallel texts from the Loeb Classical Library, scanned by Google. I don't even want to think of how long it'd take, but anyone would surely come out of that with good Latin and Ancient Greek. Each of those books has between 380 and 550 pages, this is very likely stepping into unreasonable territory...

I'm in. Not committing to a deadline.

[jeff_lindqvist]

A lazy challenge:

From Saysomethingin:

• January 1st ­ an intensive day ­ up to Session 10.
• January 8th ­ revisit Sessions 9 and 10.
• February 1st ­ intensive ­ up to Session 20.
• February 8th ­ revisit Sessions 19 and 20.
• March 1st ­ semi­intensive ­ finish Level 1 (up to Session 25).
• March 8th ­ revisit Sessions 24 and 25.
• June 8th ­ revisit Sessions 24 and 25 again, and make a note to come back to them in a
  year.

( https://www.saysomethingin.com/PractiseLess.pdf )

It looks like a wild combination of intensive study and spaced repetition.

[IronMike]

I'm doing what I call the Polyglot Fitness Challenge. (And @Ani has joined me!) I have two fitness challenges and two language challenges:

Fitness goals:
a) I've done a swim in Chattanooga a couple times, called Swim the Suck. It's a 10-ish mile swim in the Tennessee river. Last year I did it in 5:15. I'm doing it again this year. I'd like to do it in under 5:00. Fitness goal #1.
b) I've been lifting for a little over a year. I started primarily because my lower back would start to affect my swimming at the 4-hour mark. So I thought lifting would strengthen my back and sure enough it has. Along with that I've become stronger and I've liked lifting heavy. I lift three days a week except between about mid-May to end of August when I lift just twice a week (spend more time swimming). The wife and I did a power-lifting competition last year at our Y; she of course destroyed it getting 2nd and 3rd in squat and bench. I only did deadlift and hit a PR for myself (325lbs). That was September. Next one is...wait for it...in September. Not sure if this goal is too much of a stretch but I'd love to deadlift 370lbs. Fitness goal #2.

Language goals:
a) Been doing the Italian class since end of January. It's a slow class, so I've supplemented with my own studying. I've scheduled myself for an Italian DLPT on 22 May. The Italian DLPT is a IV, which I love: 65 questions in the listening test and 65 in the reading. Just under 4 hours for each section. I'm not aiming for anything crazy here, but I think I can realistically study for and possibly earn a 1/1 on the DLPT. Language goal #1. [Update since I started this challenge back on 3 May: I got a 1 in listening and a 2 in reading!]
b) Russian is my strongest language and I haven't taken a DLPT in a while. And my history of DLPT prep has proven to me that I can only study hard for about a month before I get burned out. So maybe in November or so I'll cram and take the Russian DLPT and OPI. I think I can realistically get a 2+/2+ on the DLPT and a 2 on the OPI. Language goal #2.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Wanna hear a crazy idea? I have sometimes thought of attacking the whole of Ryan Baumann's Loebulus, a collection of public-domain Latin-English and Greek-English parallel texts from the Loeb Classical Library, scanned by Google. I don't even want to think of how long it'd take, but anyone would surely come out of that with good Latin and Ancient Greek. Each of those books has between 380 and 550 pages, this is very likely stepping into unreasonable territory...

Not crazy. Once in my wild early days I gave thought to getting a Ph.D. in classics, and I asked a prof of classics whom I knew which of the Ancient Greek texts I should read for a start. He replied, "All of them." Because there are not that many. So why not give it a shot?

[galaxyrocker]

Dancing naked in the moonlight while shadowing Irish folk music?

Unfortunately, this one doesn't work. Tried it twice; once on a beach, the other time in a bog. All I got was weird looks and told to stop drinking as much.

Well, that'd be one way to gain the favour of the tuatha dé Danann so that they help you in your learning process, I would think.

Dunno how much I'd want their help. Usually doesn't end well when you mess with the Good People.

[Axon]

I fantasize a lot about different challenges I could do and even occasionally make plans to do them, but I always get tripped up by various other commitments or health problems (I'm a teacher with an irregular schedule and I lose my voice a lot).

I believe that an experienced language learner can become conversationally fluent in a European language simply by completing Duolingo and carefully working with the videos from Easy Languages (assuming that they can use Duolingo in their native language and they have a good knowledge of English). I'd like to test this out with French one day.

I think someone with a background in any modern Chinese variety could get a solid knowledge of Classical Chinese (aka Literary Sinitic) just from the breakdowns on the East Asia Student blog.

I'd really like to replicate some of Glossika's experiments about reading an entire book aloud to learn a related language or learning several related languages in parallel with texts and mined sentences.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Some interesting ideas were presenteted in HTLAL vs LLORG in January 2018.

As for reading books aloud, I've done that in Irish (and a couple of other languages).