2022: 2 learned 2 loquacious [de, zh, es]

[rdearman]

Oh, unfortunately this is the one year that I will miss the gathering. I did have tickets but just couldn't find the time to attend. Maybe next year?

[LunaMoonsilver]

Oh, unfortunately this is the one year that I will miss the gathering. I did have tickets but just couldn't find the time to attend. Maybe next year?

Ah, what a shame! Next year for sure

[LunaMoonsilver]

So, I really enjoyed the Polyglot Gathering! I brought back with me a new sense of motivation, new tools to work with, and also some kind of bug that so far isn't testing as covid but feels like it will pretty soon

Two out of three isn't bad?

But no, I had a great time. Poland was lovely and I got to try out some basic Polish, though aside from English, I definitely spent most of my time speaking Spanish. German was hit-or-miss as to who had it in common when we were in groups; it definitely seemed like Spanish was the second-most spoken language among participants, which shouldn't be that surprising. Oh, and I tried like ten whole words in Mandarin, which is nice after, like, an eight-year break.

Luca Lampariello did a good talk on getting over the intermediate hurdle - nothing all that new, but it was one of those talks where it was useful to get it all together and left me with more of an idea of a plan to move forward with. Judith's talk about alphabets was awesome; no one I talked to had ever thought of using the sudoku format to learn various characters but uh it's low-key genius and it's all I'm gonna do from now on. There were a couple of talks about accents/phonetics that I enjoyed. My goal is never to completely lose my accent (as I think sometimes it's too lofty and for some languages, regardless of how much work I put in, I'd never pass as a native speaker!) but I could definitely work on some of them, so there were good tips. Aaaand I really enjoyed a talk on the final day from Nacho Caballero about consistency and habits. I've downloaded Todoist again thanks to him - it's way better than I remembered.

Plus, there were like a dozen other talks and workshops that I enjoyed, but these were the ones I took the most away from, and I think some are available on the PG online platform until the end of the month if you're interested in that.

For now, my goal is to keep plugging away at Polish, albeit at a slightly slower pace, but to really work on my Spanish. I sat and talked to a friend for like an hour in Spanish and I'm still having trouble conjugating verbs, so that's great. We're going to the Polyglot Conference in October, so I'd like to feel a lot more confident in my abilities by then. I've started adding missing audio to my Anki cards, have looked up some Spanish-language meet ups in my city (not that I can go until I'm not sick lol), and am trying to put together a Spanish study/living plan that will give me at least a couple of hours of exposure per day.

But first, I'll be going to Expolingua at the end of June (so hellooooo to anyone hopefully coming to that) and then I'm planning to travel back to Vienna for a week. I miss the city and even if I'm stinging about having to get my passport stamped everywhere, it'll be amazing to go back.

[LunaMoonsilver]

So, I got covid. Still have covid. Overall, it's not been terrible, but today's the first day I've really felt energised to do anything, so hopefully I'll be testing negative and recovered soon.

I have still been working on Spanish all week - I (re)watched the second series of Stranger Things in Spanish at the weekend (watched the first season in German the week before) and I'm going to get to work on the third series tomorrow, as I think I'll still have to be inside. I've got zero plans for Vienna aside from taking a break, so I figure I can watch the new series then, in between hanging out at cafés and whatever else I end up doing.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about the Spanish progress. My current holy grail is a shared Anki deck I found: Ultimate Spanish Conjugation. It teaches you the full conjugation of 72 verbs so you learn the patterns. I've been having a lot of trouble learning this, and so far, this method seems to be working well. I did a Kwizik test and it placed me at B2 because of some of the forms I knew - I know that this level isn't comprehensive, but if using this deck solves this problem for me, then it's well worth it.

(Also, the author of that deck has a similar one for Italian verb conjugation, if anyone is interested in that.)

Otherwise, I've been writing (Spanish feels easier when I'm using it every day), working through my coursebook, and reading. Need to dedicate some more time to reading - in German as well as Spanish. I'm still pushing on with Polish, just at a much slower pace (and I need to go back over some stuff now, I think), and I'm working out what exactly I want to do with Mandarin. I mean, I want to learn it, I'm just not sure where to pick up at this point.

Oh, just for fun, here's my post-Gathering Ohrwurm:

[rdearman]

hummm.... that video is a little twisted.

[Le Baron]

Thanks for the Italian deck. Weird video.

[zenmonkey]

hummm.... that video is a little twisted.

Makes me think of the kebab we had in Bratislava!

[rdearman]

hummm.... that video is a little twisted.

Makes me think of the kebab we had in Bratislava!

OMG! Yeah that kebab was totally worth it! Humm... Might be worth a weekend flight just to have that. I was speaking to LunaMoonsilver about having a European Forum meetup.