2021: The Learned and the Loquacious [de, zh, es, ko, gd, ar]

[LunaMoonsilver]

Okay, very boring end of April re: language learning (i.e. I hit my three streaks: posting to r/WriteStreakGerman; Anki; reading for 30m - and nothing else) but I had two decent (I think) reasons for this:

1. I discovered obsidian.md and spent a few evenings in a row sorting out notes I had from different books, organising past writing projects, and generally moving stuff around. Most people recommend it for taking 'evergreen' notes, but I think it's a good system for organising for writing too and I'm finally writing notes on books I'm reading and - in a shocking twist - therefore remembering what I've read and connecting it to other things. Bonus points: it's simple to set up, doesn't distract me with layout customisation the way notion did (that's on me) and I loooooove the slowly growing map of linked notes, it looks so cool.

2. I got a new computer! Basically, I wanted to play Among Us but my laptop's graphic card is so old that Unity-based games can't even open on it any more and, well... it was finally the straw that broke the camel's back, I guess. I've been umming and aahing about buying a desktop PC for months, so I figured it was time. But yeah, it means I've spent the last week playing games in an evening instead of, you know, studying or anything (tho all those games I bought five years ago and couldn't run without my laptop sounding like it was going to take off look so good now )

But, the 6WC starts tomorrow, so I've signed up again with Arabic. I thought I'd switch, before, but I'm still lagging with Arabic and now that I've also spent a while playing around with that study calculator, I know I need to up my game. Five months left to get to A2!

[Elsa Maria]

I'm just beginning to play with obsidian.md, and I am excited about its possibilities. Are you still using it? Have you put any of your language stuff in it?

[LunaMoonsilver]

I'm just beginning to play with obsidian.md, and I am excited about its possibilities. Are you still using it? Have you put any of your language stuff in it?

Hey! So, very late, but I haven't actually used it for language stuff yet. Partly because I bought a new notebook in, like, March and don't want to abandon it but I am thinking of making a new vault just for that. My main concern is actually that I'll think I'm remembering stuff but I won't be (handwriting vs. typing) but then I know how useful it is to learn to type... So I haven't, but idk how it would work - so worth a try! How have you been finding it? I've thrown almost everything else in it lol.

[LunaMoonsilver]

Yeah, so I took like a month off. Not necessarily from all language learning - I'm at almost a 100-day writing streak for German and have hit two weeks straight for Spanish, and I've kept up with my Anki streak and reading - but I did take a break. I seriously considered dropping Korean and Scottish Gaelic for the time being (but ultimately have decided not to). I think I just got a whole lot of lockdown fatigue all at once (still waiting on that sweet sweet vaccination) and went into hibernation: I've been reading a lot in English (I read uh 40 books in May), watching Netflix/YouTube, and trying to convince myself that I'm being productive.

But, I went to the Polyglot Gathering, which was a lot of fun - I watched a whole b u n c h of talks and had fun doing the quiz and stuff - and Eurovision (!!!) was on (!!!) and on an unrelated note I spent three days cramming Italian, no relation to the song context ofc ofc.

So I needed a bit of a reset, I think. It helps I've also got some IRL stuff sorted out: I'm going to be primarily WFH regardless of what happens wrt the pandemic, so I'm looking for a flat not in London, and I'm excited about that, too.

In good language news though, I'm only about 100 pages behind where I should be for the reading part of my German Super Challenge! Just got to catch up with the rest...

[jackb]

Yeah, so I took like a month off. Not necessarily from all language learning - I'm at almost a 100-day writing streak for German and have hit two weeks straight for Spanish, and I've kept up with my Anki streak and reading - but I did take a break.

Wow! Your taking a month off is me hitting the books. Keep killin' it. I love your log

Jack

[LunaMoonsilver]

Well... I made it to June at least?

I moved not long after posting that, which was pretty hectic, not least because I took time off work but it was so short notice I felt I had to kind of ~be available~, so everything dragged on. Then the deadline for the translation I was working on was approaching - I had to push that back in the end, but got it all submitted at the beginning of December, after a lot of work throughout Sep/Oct/Nov. Honestly, it's really difficult to work out what I've done this year because it feels like nothing and yet, at the same time, I feel like I've been busy and tired? Welcome to the 2020s, I guess.

I've had a glance back at the goals I set myself at the beginning of the year - sadly, I reached none of them. I ended up losing my 365-day streak some time around November officially, but I'm not going to go and update those numbers because my heart wasn't in it for a while before that.

However, I did manage to write just under 45,000 words in German (my writing streak is now 306 days!), I almost completed the reading part of the SC, and I translated 200k words this year. I've got a writing streak in Spanish, too (203 days - a few more, but on that subreddit, we don't gain a streak for posting on a day we 'pause').

Total hours for 2021: 604.8

German: 373.57 (61.77%)
Mandarin: 31.38 (5.19%)
Spanish: 123.3 (20.39%)
Scottish Gaelic: 16.47 (2.72%)
Korean: 31.47 (5.2%)
Arabic: 28.62 (4.73%)

I'm going to make a new log for 2020 2022 (oops - thanks lavengro for pointing this out! ) - I'm cutting down the number of languages I'm actively learning and I've got some new goals for them that are, hopefully, a bit more realistic.

Happy New Year!