2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sun Nov 08, 2020 12:27 pm

Nov 6WC: Week One

It’s been a good week! Between juggling trying to get some time in for this and NaNoWriMo, it’s been a busy one, but I don’t mind that all that much.

So far, I’ve spent 255 mins (4h15m) on Scottish Gaelic, during which I’ve:

  • Finished Teach Yourself Complete Gaelic Aonad 4 (‘S toil leam biadh Innseanach)
  • Revised two of the beginner’s lessons on LearnGaelic
  • Set up my ‘ultimate’ Scottish Gaelic deck (mostly involved making up the card templates and the spreadsheet, as well as copying over all the words I’ve supposedly learnt via Duolingo)

I’ve not done a great job of keeping up with Scottish Gaelic this year. I started learning it back in January and I had a pretty good overall learning month in February, but it fell off the radar a lot after that, although I did brush up on Duolingo now and again.

I have found, though, that I don’t think I’ve forgotten all that much. I definitely need to work on my pronunciation (like, I need to go and look at specific sounds because I’m still having trouble just reading) and there’s some vocabulary I’m having trouble with, but I don’t see the point of going back to the beginning of the book every time I pick the language up again. I keep doing that with so many languages and it’s just getting a bit frustrating repeating the same stuff over and over.

So, I’m going to soldier on! I’ve started Aonad 5 and am hoping to finish that this week, as well as starting (and maintaining) a streak on Anki. I had a three-day streak but although I’m used to my Duolingo/Memrise habit, I’m not quite there with that yet – even though I can access the cards on my phone via the browser, too!

Also, since I’ve managed four hours this week, I’d like to maintain that – so I’m setting myself an overall target of 25 hours spent on Scottish Gaelic during the 6WC. This weekend is trickier; I’m aiming for a 50k weekend for NaNoWriMo (so far I’m kind of on track; I just really like the challenge!) so I know I’m not going to have all that much time for language learning. But I’m not too worried about that as everything will be back to normal on Tuesday, so more than enough time to keep this momentum going.

I’d also like to get to about Aonad 8 of Teach Yourself, as well as making sure that the end of every study session involves me adding more new cards to Anki. I’m still working my way through the Duolingo list (the Scottish Gaelic words are all in a list, but not their English translations, so I’m having to look up the ones I can’t remember!), but I’ll prioritise the Teach Yourself vocabulary, since the book obviously builds on what it’s already taught you.

So, my goals for the rest of this 6WC:

  • Study Scottish Gaelic for 25 hours (which would about double my time on the language for the first ten months of the year, lol).
  • Start Aonad 8 of Teach Yourself Complete Gaelic.
  • Revise/learn up to Beginners’ Lesson 10 on the LearnGaelic website.

That should about do it!

Goal Progress as of 08/11/2020

: 4 / 25 Hours studied
: 4 / 8 Units complete (TY)
: 2 / 10 LearnGaelic lessons revised or learnt
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pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:36 pm

Nov 6WC: Week Two

Oh, oops, should have posted this yesterday! Anyway... Last weekend went well - I did my first 50k weekend and about 11k of that was on translation so although I'm still behind, it's less so than I was before. It did leave me a teeny tiny bit burnt out at the beginning of the week, though (plus I do still have a lot of the translation editing to do), so I didn't get as much Scottish Gaelic learnt this week.

I'm up to 394 mins (6h34m) total - definitely have to remember to keep logging with the bot.

I've not managed to get through another unit of the Teach Yourself book, but I'm well into unit five now. I've gone through lesson two on LearnGaelic again and put those words into Anki - my little Anki deck is coming along nicely, now.

One thing I do want to spend some time on this week is my pronunciation: I'm having trouble just remembering the sounds certain letter combinations make off the top of my head, so gonna get to work on that!

: 6 / 25 Hours studied
: 4 / 8 Units complete (TY)
: 2 / 10 LearnGaelic lessons revised or learnt

Not looking a lot better than last week up there, but I'll get there!
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pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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LunaMoonsilver
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Thu Dec 31, 2020 11:02 pm

End of 2020

Well, it's like 22:30 here, so I figure I've done all the language learning I'm going to do for this year; time to write a little round-up post, reflect, and prep for my new log/goals/everything in the morning.

Obviously, 2020 has been what it's been, and I've had a much better year of it than a lot of people but it's still been up and down simply because of all the not knowing what the future will hold and when, which has very much been reflected in what I've managed to get done.

Still, all the being inside did have a positive impact on my 366-day challenge score, if nothing else - the few times I dropped it in 2019 tended to revolve around nights out :lol: of which there have been a big ol' zero in 2020, so my score was a lovely 366. Nice!

I did get through all of the 20 endangered languages I wanted to explore, and it only became a grind really with the last two-three (such a shame, because Manchu was really interesting and I feel like I did not give Breton the energy it deserved), which I'm hoping has cleared up my wanderlust for the time being. I've learnt a lot about what's most effective for me in the beginning stages of learning a language and am optimistic about carrying that through into my goals for 2021.

Highs and lows:
  • I translated a book (German > English, 93k)
  • I had to phone a customer and completely misunderstood her spelling of her email address, which led to me and a support staff member googling until we figured it out :lol: (Also German)
  • I read some children's books in Scottish Gaelic
  • I spent 20% of my time on apps (Mainly Spanish/Scottish Gaelic, want to reduce this)
  • I started learning Arabic (3.5 hours so far!)
  • I don't think I spoke to anyone in my languages all year :(

Turns out I did set some goals last year (found them on a printed out page in my notebook lolll) but I didn't meet any of them, so no point spending time on that. Instead, here's some time data:

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All the languages I studied (I think it just excludes like a 30 minute bout with Italian and Esperanto that happened some time around August :lol:)

Image

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Time by month and a chart showing it - interesting to see the dips across a year; got a jump up when the SC started, lulled in the summer when I was starting to commute back into the office (going down to London and back, ew) and then picked up again when I had my birthday (set myself some goals)/lockdown 2.0 happened/my translation deadline was approaching/end of the year was coming. I'm sure most years look like this tbh, though I would usually expect to see more of a lift in September and, if I wasn't translating, a quieter November (wrote 133k this year for NaNo but 50k ish was the translation/edits so that usually wouldn't be there).

Then, for my main six languages (aka the ones I'll be taking into 2021):

Image

Time data

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Breakdown by activity (am looking to reduce app time and increase active/output skills in 2021)

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Breakdown by language

German is always going to be the language I spend the most time with - the time I counted for the translation was approx. 46 hours (not including editing, just the actual German>English draft), but even without this, it'd be miles ahead. Spanish managed to sneak up there with some heavy TV watching earlier in the year, then judicial app use later on. Mandarin and Scottish Gaelic have a similar number but I've obviously seen much more improvement in my Gaelic - though I doubt I'm at A1 yet.

Poor Korean :(

And Arabic is one I chose to add around my birthday, early October. All I've done so far really is try to learn the alphabet a bit, some playing around on Duolingo at the beginning (to make up my mind) and then I've made a tentative start on the DLI Basic course. But more on that tomorrow!

Anyway, here's to the end of 2020 - and although I've not been a particularly active member of this community this year (am I ever??? :?), I'm always glad to know you're all here whenever I come back. Y'all are great and good luck with 2021!
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pronouns: she/her

: 31 / 365 365-Day Language Challenge; de, zh, es

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Jan 01, 2021 12:15 am

Wow. This is impressive. Thank you for your inspiration.
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Elsa Maria
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby Elsa Maria » Fri Jan 01, 2021 7:41 pm

LunaMoonsilver, you took on a very interesting and impressive project this year. And I love seeing the data. Beautiful! I really need to go back and read through your log.

I have not been very active on the forum, either, but I really agree with you that it is a nice place to hang out.
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Caromarlyse
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Re: 2020: Learn Hard With a Vengeance [DE, ZH, ES, KO, GD]

Postby Caromarlyse » Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:12 pm

You've inspired me to start a spreadsheet for the year, as I want to be able to make pretty graphs and charts too!
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