I haven't updated in a while so here's a big one!
עבכיתThings are still going well with the Hebrew class. It's pretty slow, so there's not much pressure. I've been doing my homework but I fell behind with my Anki reviews. I've really gotten sucked into studying chess openings which has taken up most of my free time. More on that later.
I've passed the half-way mark in the third and final unit of Pimsleur Hebrew. I should look into starting FSI Hebrew soon if I can fit it into my schedule. However, I also want to start working on Spanish again. I haven't made any progress on Assimil l'hébreu. Not sure if I'll keep going with that.
I've had a couple of people tell me that I speak Hebrew with a French accent. I'm trying to make my accent a bit more Israeli sounding, but French accented Hebrew is not that bad, the accents have a lot in common.
EspañolMy daughter is going into the public schools and there are a lot of Spanish speaking students and families, so I want to improve my Spanish soon. Working in Boston I get to eavesdrop on Spanish speakers every day and there are lots of chances for interaction. I also want to be able to talk with parents of my daughter's classmates who might speak limited English, and also try to start teaching my daughter some Spanish so she can start speaking it with her classmates. I'm still sticking with European Spanish which might come off as a bit strange since most Spanish speakers in our community are Dominican or Central American. I'm a bit nervous about other kids making fun of my daughter if she picks up my European accent, but I'm sure she'll pick up her peers' accent if she starts to use significant Spanish with them.
I started the first lesson of Assimil Spanish last night. Ideally I should be working on Hebrew but I haven't been able to pick up steam with it and I have more motivation to do the Spanish course. I will also plan on restarting Pimsleur Castilian Spanish as soon as I finish the Hebrew course. I'll start by reviewing Unit 2 which I have already completed, and then I'll go on to Units 3-5 which are new.
I've been studying some Chessable courses in Spanish as well. Most of the instructors are from Spain but I do have one course by a Cuban,
El alfil kamikaze, about bishop sacrifices. I also want to work on my comprehension of Dominican Spanish so I should try to watch some news from the DR.
I'm also thinking of starting some iTalki lessons with a teacher from Spain. Not sure whether I would want to start that soon or wait until I've done more Assimil and Pimsleur.
FrançaisMy family will be visiting Montréal in about a month. I've always struggled to understand Québécois French but I found some great Québécois resources on CaroleR's log
Le français québécois: Lâche pas la patate! In particular, I've been listening to Radio Canada's news in French every morning that I commute into Boston on their French app RC OHdio and I think my comprehension of Québécois French is improving a lot. I have also watched a couple of videos of the great YouTube Channel « Ma prof de français ». I had initially planned to watch a video a day but unfortunately I haven't gotten around to that yet.
I also bought an ebook of Assimil
Québécois. It's pretty dense so I haven't gone through it thoroughly, but I've skimmed through it and the section on pronunciation was particularly helpful.
Other LanguagesAfter Spanish and Hebrew, I think my next highest priority language will be Portuguese because there are a lot of Portuguese speakers in my community. I would also love to study Mandarin because there are so many speakers in Boston but I think that's a bit further off.
ChessI've switched from studying hypermodern openings to mainlines, 1.e4 with Ruy López and the Rossolimo and Open Sicilian and mainline French as white, 1...e5 with the Berlin and Giuoco Piano and Nimzo-Indian and Ragozin Queen's Gambit Declined as Black. I decided that if I learn hypermodern openings, maybe I will just beat people because they don't know the theory but then when I switch to mainline openings I'll get squashed, so I think it's better for my chess to learn mainline openings first even though there's more theory. But as a result, I'm still several months of hard work away from being able to use my new openings. There are a lot of lines to learn! Fortunately, a lot of the theory was already familiar to me because this repertoire involves some of the the first courses I started studying on Chessable. The lines that I already know are coming back to me quickly.