Michelle's 2022-24 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

[brokenrecord]

September 17-23

Italian:
-Duolingo: finished unit 49
-PMP Italian Verbs: exercises 12.24-12.25
-PMP Complete Italian Grammar: exercise 12.01
-Nuova grammatica pratica della lingua italiana: started unit 13
-Easy Italian: 7 videos
-Learn Italian with Lucrezia: 2 videos
-Luna Park: episodes 1.03-1.04
-Il bar sotto il mare: prologue, chapters 4-10
-Storia del nuovo cognome: chapters 1-21

So I finished the first season of L'amica geniale this week, and I'm really glad I decided to watch it before moving on with the book series, since I ended up getting much more invested in the story/characters. I had been planning on going straight into season 2 and then starting Storia del suo cognome, but after I finished the season, I was really eager to find out what happened next in the story, and I realized that motivation would serve me better when starting the second book vs. the tv show (which I'm watching with English subtitles, so it's not really doing much for language purposes), so I ended up starting the second book this week. I figured out how many pages of Il bar sotto il mare I would need to read each day to finish by the time I go on vacation, so every day I've been focusing on reaching that goal first, and then using any spare time I have to read Storia del suo cognome. Unfortunately near the end of the week I started getting a bit mentally exhausted from work, so I fell off that pace a little, but it won't be the end of the world if I don't meet that goal. Even with reading less at the end of the week, I still got like 20% through Storia del suo cognome which is pretty good pace for me.

As a side note, for all I went on about my confusion with the families/characters in L'amica geniale, I completely forgot that there is actually a list of families/characters at the beginning of the book that I could have referenced to help me keep everyone straight. I feel a little silly for forgetting about that, but in my defense, a lot of my confusion was coming near the end, after taking roughly a month off from reading the book, so I had forgotten about the character list at the beginning. And when I started the show, I had already returned the book to the library, so I no longer had it to refer to. When I started the second book, though, I saw the character list there, and realized there had been one in the first book as well that I could've used rather than making my own family trees. That being said, the one in the first book is still missing info about connections between families and events that occur throughout the book, so it wouldn't have been a perfect solution. The second book does provide more info in the character summary as to different relationships and events that occurred in the first book, which is helpful.

Anyways, as I mentioned, this past week was somewhat inconsistent for me (a couple days doing a lot of Italian, and a couple doing very little), so hopefully I can get back to normal this week.

[brokenrecord]

I'm back from my trip to Italy! I had a really wonderful time, and I'd definitely love to return, particularly to see the northern part of the country, as I only visited Rome, the Amalfi Coast, and Palermo. I'm glad I spent the time I did prior to my trip trying to boost my Italian. Pretty much everyone I interacted with spoke English, but some were a little shakier than others, and it was helpful to have some understanding of Italian. There were also a few museums/sites I went to that either only had signs/descriptions of things in Italian, or they'd have English as well, but there would be like 5 signs with Italian descriptions for every 1 in English, so the English descriptions were obviously simplified/summarized. In those situations, I was really glad to be able to read the Italian to get additional info.

I didn't have any extensive conversations with anyone in Italian, but I did end up having a conversation with an Italian woman in French. She had been saying a few things to me in Italian which I made indications I understood, even though I wasn't speaking Italian back to her, but then I heard her say she spoke French (along with a couple other languages that I didn't speak), so I told her "Je parle un peu français," and then she continued on the conversation in French with me. I'm not a very extroverted person, but she was very chatty, so it ended up being a mostly one-sided conversation with her going on about all sorts of things and me interjecting every once in awhile with a short sentence. It suited me fine, though, as it was fun to practice my understanding. And it helped that she wasn't a native speaker herself and was making gestures, so she was very easy to follow. I probably should've mentioned at one point to her that I did speak some (albeit much less) Italian as well, but oh well. It was a nice experience, regardless!

Apart from all the amazing sites I saw and food I ate, one of my favorite things during my trip was simply channel surfing on the hotel TVs in the evening. I realize that I have access to content in basically any language I can think of on my laptop at any time, but there's something I find so fun about turning on TVs in European hotels and getting to jump between programs in Italian, Spanish, French, and German. I think in part because it requires less effort on my part than having to seek out a specific language or type of content, and there are a limited number of options, which helps with choosing what to watch.

Anyways, while watching TV in the evenings, I caught parts of episodes of some Italian shows which I subsequently got sucked into. The first is Anima gemella, which just started airing. When I caught it on TV, it was in the middle of the second episode, so there were definitely some plot points I was unclear on, but since it was only the second episode, it wasn't too difficult to figure out what was going on. Afterwards, I ended up going back and watching the first episode on Mediaset (which has the episodes available for free if you're in Italy, but is geoblocked in the U.S.), and then went back and rewatched the second episode from the beginning. Mediaset doesn't have any subtitles, even in Italian, so I was really forced to focus on my listening comprehension.

I also caught part of an episode of Cuori on RAI, which is in its second season. I didn't get as sucked into the episode I was watching (in part because I was totally lost on the backstory), but I was in the mood for more Italian TV after Anima gemella, so I started watching the first season from the beginning on RAI Play (again, free for those in Italy, geoblocked in the U.S.), and now I'm even more hooked on it than Anima gemella, to the extent that I ended up purchasing a VPN so I could finish getting caught up and watch the rest of the second season upon my return to the U.S., which I've now done (thankfully there are still 2 episodes tonight and 2 next week for me to enjoy). I also watched the third episode of Anima gemella after returning to the U.S., although I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first couple of episodes and found myself getting a little frustrated about some of the plot turns, but I'll probably stick with it for another episode at least.

Now that I've finally started using a VPN to watch stuff on RAI Play and Mediaset, I don't know why I didn't start sooner, as it's incredibly simple and so far has worked perfectly. I'm very excited to have a greater number of options of things to watch, not just for Italian but my other languages as well (well, less so Korean, only since there are so many kdramas on Netflix and Viki as it is that I don't typically struggle to find something appealing to watch).

RAI Play does have Italian subtitles for Cuori, but watching Anima gemella without them reminded me of how I improved my listening in Spanish, which was simply watching hundreds of hours of Spanish TV without subtitles, so I tried to stick to that with Cuori as well. The storytelling is predictable enough that it's not too hard to follow even if I don't catch every word. Occasionally there would be a scene that seemed very important that I just didn't feel like I understood very well, so I'd go back and rewatch with Italian subtitles, but I tried to limit that. Overall, I really feel like my listening comprehension has improved quite a bit between watching the two shows extensively over the past couple weeks. My comprehension definitely varied from scene to scene, but there were scenes where I understood ~90-95% of the dialogue. On average it's probably closer to 60-70%, though. I've kind of been doing nothing but watching Italian shows in my spare time since returning (honestly haven't had much mental energy for anything else, and I'm still recovering from jet lag a bit), so I've managed to get in 26.5 hours between the two shows. After getting caught up with both shows, I started Imma Tataranni - Sostituto procuratore yesterday, which is another show I caught a small part of on vacation. I'm struggling a lot more with my comprehension of it, though, and I'm not super invested in it yet (which is probably connected to my poor comprehension!), so I'll give it a few more episodes, but I might not finish it.

The last thing I'll mention that I'm really enjoying about watching these shows is just how much longer they are than the shows on Netflix. I enjoyed Lidia Poët and have been enjoying Luna Park (which I still need to finish) quite a bit as well, but they're just so short — only 6 episodes, each episode under an hour. It's just harder to get as invested in them when they're over so quickly, and I get tired of having to constantly find something new to watch. When I started learning Spanish, getting invested in Gran hotel (which had 39 episodes all 70+ minutes) really helped me boost my listening comprehension, but it's been hard to find those kinds of shows with other languages (at least on Netflix, although of course there are exceptions). The first season of Anima gemella is supposed to have 8 episodes total, but each episode is ~100 min, so it's more like 16 episodes of a 50-min show, and Cuori has 16 episodes in its first season and will have 12 in its second, so 28 total 50-60 min episodes. Neither is quite as long as Gran hotel, but it's still a vast improvement on the Italian Netflix shows I've watched.

Anyways, now that my Italian trip is over, I don't feel the need to focus only on Italian any more; that being said, the trip just made me even more motivated to improve my Italian (especially as I can really feel the improvement I've already made and want to keep that going), and I don't really have any other plans for my language learning currently. At the moment I want continue to focus on the Italian TV shows I've been watching and Storia del nuovo cognome. Otherwise, I'm not sure! I've been feeling like I've really been neglecting my Spanish for awhile now, and I may be taking a trip to Spain next year, so it would make sense to start brushing up on it. I also don't want to lose the progress I've made in Korean this year. And I still want to progress in French and German, of course! But I'm not sure how to fit them all in, and I don't feel like trying to come up with schedules to rotate between languages and sticking to them has been suiting me recently. So I don't know, I may just kind of jump from thing to thing as I feel like it and see where that leads me.

As a final note, I never posted the break down of the hours I spent on languages in September, but it was 100% Italian: 5.5 hours of extensive listening, 4.8 of intensive listening, 9 of reading, 2.3 of grammar, and 2.7 of Duolingo, for a total of 24.3 hours. I'll wait until October is over to post those hours, but it's going to end up being like 99% extensive listening in Italian, and somehow more hours total than I spent in September.

[brokenrecord]

October 30-November 4

Spanish:
-Duolingo: worked on unit 105
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: exercises 12.01-12.04

French:
-PMP Intermediate French Grammar: exercises 2.04-2.05

German:
-A-Grammatik: lesson 5.02

Korean:
-Yumi's Cells: chapters 171-174

Italian:
-Duolingo: worked on unit 37
-Nuova grammatica pratica della lingua italiana: finished unit 13
-Storia del nuovo cognome: chapters 25-33
-Imma Tataranni - Sostituto procuratore: episodes 1.02-1.06, 2.01-2.08, 3.01-3.04
-Cuori: episodes 2.09-2.10
-Anima gemella: episode 1.04
-Blanca: episode 1.01

Well, another week of massive quantities of Italian TV watching, but I managed to get in at least a little work on my other languages as well. My focus at the moment remains Italian, so my time isn't going to be perfectly balanced between all five languages, but it's good to spend at least a little time on everything.

It's a good thing I gave Imma Tataranni more than one episode, because I ended up getting completely sucked into it. I definitely struggled more with comprehension than the other shows I had been watching. The show started off more procedural/episodic, with a new murder to investigate with each episode, which meant new characters in every episode (with new voices/accents to get used to) who would answer various questions in the course of the investigation (occasionally there would be some flashbacks which would give some visual context, but often not) and then would never show up again, which made it more challenging to follow the plot. It didn't help that the episodes are all almost 2 hours long, and I'd often watch them in pieces throughout the day, so by the evening I would forget some of the details that had been revealed when I was watching earlier in the day.

However, there are some storylines that do carry over, and I had a much easier time following the storylines about the characters' personal lives, which ended up sucking me in, to the extent that I finished the whole series in one week, which is not an easy feat, considering there are 18 episodes ~110-120 minutes long. There's no good explanation for how I managed that, other than it was literally all I was doing with my spare time this week. I did a bit more rewatching of scenes with Italian subtitles for each episode than I did with Cuori, and I also read Wikipedia summaries of each episode after I finished them to get an idea of what I missed in terms of the plot. By the last few episodes, I was able to follow the murder investigation portions of the show much better. There would still be details I'd miss, but I didn't feel so completely lost like I did at the start. I think it'll be a good show for me to rewatch sometime in the future as a test of how much my Italian listening comprehension has improved. I was definitely disappointed to run out of episodes, especially since the third season just ended, which means probably at least a year wait for the fourth season (although I'm mostly just glad that a fourth season appears to be confirmed). It's definitely not a perfect show, and I had my frustrations with various storylines, but overall I had a lot of fun watching it, and I really feel like my listening comprehension has made a leap just in this past week. It's not only that I'm missing less of the dialogue, but also that it requires less effort and concentration for me to follow it. Before, I might understand all the words, but it would take my brain a little extra time to catch up, so then I'd miss the next sentence and quickly get lost.

In general, it's just been a lot of fun to be so into Italian. There was point roughly a year ago where my time with Italian was mostly spent on Duolingo and little bits of reading and working with grammar workbooks, and I was wondering if I really had the motivation/desire to improve my Italian level, since I had started studying it in 2020, but really hadn't made a concerted effort to get it beyond a beginner level at any point (especially considering how much further I got with Spanish in 3 years of study vs. Italian. Of course I wasn't trying to learn 4 other languages when I was initially learning Spanish, but still). It's a delight to feel like I can enjoy native Italian content like I'm able to with Spanish/French/German. And considering I hadn't done any work on listening comprehension in Italian at all before this year (apart from occasionally hearing sentences pronounced on Duolingo, although I often have the sound muted), to be able to watch TV shows and follow the plot decently enough feels somewhat miraculous. I do think my listening comprehension level in Spanish has helped a fair amount — obviously they are distinct languages and have differences in pronunciation, but I do feel like there's enough of a similarity in the sound/rhythm/speed to me that getting to a decent level of comprehension in Spanish has helped me with Italian.

Obviously most of my week was spent on Imma Tataranni, but I did end up watching this week's episode of Anima gemella as well, although I was a bit on the fence about watching it, since the third episode had made me feel somewhat annoyed with some of the characters/storylines. But I ended up watching it, and then discovered that I was wrong about the first season having 8 two-hour long episodes — Wikipedia actually has it listed as 8 50-min episodes, even though when the episodes aired, they were in 2-hour blocks (and packaged as one full episode on the Mediaset website, not two back-to-back episodes, which is how Cuori has been airing). Near the end of the episode, I started having doubts about there being 8 episodes, since it seemed like the main mystery of the season was already wrapping up, which felt very sudden to me, and so I double checked and discovered I had been mistaken. The season ended on a cliffhanger, but that seems like more of a tease for a potential second season. If the episode had ended a couple minutes sooner, it would have felt like a decent conclusion. Part of my frustration with the show before I finished the fourth episode was that I felt like a lot of the storylines were moving way too fast, but it makes more sense to me now knowing that the season ended up being half the length of what I had expected. Anyways, there were things I did like about the show, but my frustrations outweighed the things I liked, and I felt like the way the main mystery wrapped up was incredibly predictable and boring, so I don't plan on continuing with the show, even if there ends up being another season. On the plus side, after finishing Imma Tataranni, Anima gemella felt very easy to understand. It's also a little funny that it was the show I got most sucked into when I was on vacation, but it's the one I've ended up enjoying the least after getting caught up on the others. Right now, my Italian TV show ranking would be: Cuori > Imma Tataranni (the two are close, but while I think my favorite moments on Imma Tataranni beat out my favorite moments of Cuori, there were more things that frustrated me about Imma Tataranni) > Lidia Poët > Luna park (although I still have 2 episodes left) >>>>> Anima gemella. I'd recommend pretty much all of them except Anima gemella, with the caveat that all of them had moments that frustrated me and got soap opera-ish at times, and my tolerance for mediocrity in TV is higher in non-English language stuff than English-language things. In any case, I've had a lot of fun with these shows, especially Cuori and Imma Tataranni.

Since I've finished Imma Tataranni and Anima gemella, and Cuori only has two episodes left in its season (airing tonight), I started Blanca, which is the final show that I caught part of an episode of when I was on vacation and made note of to check out further when I returned. I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit, so I plan on continuing with that this week, although I'll probably have to scale back the time I spend watching it a bit vs. how much time I was spending this week. It was fun to get totally sucked into Imma Tataranni, but I can't spend every week doing nothing but watching Italian TV shows. At some point I also need to finish Luna park, which I was enjoying, and I only have two episodes left (which would take me less time to watch than one episode of Imma Tataranni! Plus, the actor who plays Calogiuri in Imma Tataranni is also in Luna park, so seeing him there kept reminding me to watch Luna park). But since I had been working through the show intensively with Language Reactor, I feel obligated to do the same thing with the final two episodes, and I have been more in the mood for extensive listening recently, so that's what I've been doing. I think it'll be interesting to return to it and see how much of a difference there is in terms of how frequently I'll need to rewind lines to listen to them again with Italian subs in comparison to how often I had to do that when I was watching the show in September.

Anyways, that's my Italian TV wrap-up for the week. I've been fitting in some Storia del nuovo cognome as well, and as I mentioned before, got a little time with my other languages through grammar work and reading Yumi's Cells. I also have been spending some extra time on Spanish with Duolingo to start brushing that up a bit and refresh my productive skills a little. That being said, the fact that the heart system has now been brought to the Duolingo website may end up driving me away from Duolingo entirely. It feels like I'm being punished for making errors, when I thought that was supposed to be how you learn. It also doesn't seem like you can use the practice feature at all unless you pay for a Super account. The worst thing is that the hearts carry over between languages, so I don't feel like I can spend time using it to maintain all my languages and instead I have to choose what to prioritize. I do have like 100k gems, so I can purchase more lives as needed, plus occasionally it'll give me a free trial of a Super account and I get unlimited lives for a few days, so I'm still using it for the time being, but I'm pretty annoyed about it. Right now I'm focusing on finishing the Italian tree (which I had done previously, but they updated it recently — right now I'm on unit 37 of 43, so I'm still pretty close to the end) and, as I said, brushing up on Spanish. If I can find some other website/app that will allow me to do small amounts of practice each day with all my languages that is less frustrating than Duolingo has become (but is still free, which I realize is often the deal-breaker), then I will gladly drop it.

Finally, my hours for October ended up being, as I predicted, 100% Italian: 44.7 hours of extensive listening, 0.7 of reading, and 0.4 of Duolingo, for a total of 45.8 hours.

[brokenrecord]

November 5 - November 11

Spanish:
-Duolingo: finished unit 105
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: exercises 12.05-12.06, 13.01
-Alan por el mundo: 1 video (1)
-Un mundo inmenso: 2 videos (1, 2)

French:
-PMP Intermediate French Grammar: exercises 3.01-3.03
-Easy French: 2 videos (1, 2)
-Echappées belles: started "La Haute-Savoie, de village en village"

German:
-A-Grammatik: started lesson 5.03
-ARD Reisen: 2 videos (1, 2)

Korean:
-Yumi's Cells: chapters 175-182
-KGIU Intermediate: lesson 4.05

Italian:
-Duolingo: finished unit 37
-Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses: lessons 12.26-12.27
-Storia del nuovo cognome: chapters 34-61
-Cuori: episodes 2.11-2.12
-Blanca: episodes 1.02-1.06, 2.01-2.06
-Viola come il mare: episodes 1.01-1.06
-Luna park: intensive work with episodes 1.05-1.06

I clearly failed at scaling back the amount of Italian TV watching I did this week. I mean, technically I did spent less time on Italian TV this week, but only by a couple hours, which wasn't what I was envisaging when I said I would scale back.

First, I watched the final two episodes of Cuori. I found the end of the season pretty satisfying. There were definitely a number of storylines that weren't wrapped up and could be continued in a third season, and I'd gladly watch it, but I'd also be satisfied if it ended there (although I'd be disappointed not to have more good Italian content!).

Next, I finished Blanca. Overall, I did like the show, but I started getting a little frustrated/bored with the main romance, which to be fair isn't the sole focus of the show, so it didn't completely ruin my enjoyment of it (and there were even moments I did like between them, though mostly in the first season). In general, I like romantic subplots, but the flip side is that when they don't work for me, I can get incredibly frustrated. Also (vague spoilers ahead), I found myself unexpectedly very attached to a character on the show who ended up getting killed off during the second to last episode of the season, so that soured me a bit, and I almost didn't want to finish the season. I actually did really like most of the characters and many of the relationships, particularly the familial stuff, and the main character's relationship with Lucia (a teenage girl she basically ends up adopting). And of course her guide dog, Linneo, was a highlight. So if there is a season 3 (which I think has been confirmed, but I don't always know if the Italian websites that say something has been renewed are legit or not), I will probably check it out.

My comprehension of Blanca was pretty good overall. I did much less rewatching of scenes with subtitles than I did with Imma Tataranni. Even though Blanca is also a detective/cop show, I found the murder mysteries easier to follow. There tended to be more action/visual cues, plus I feel like most episodes gave away who was responsible fairly early on; there weren't as many red herrings. And the episodes were a tad shorter (more like 100 minutes instead of 110-120).

Blanca was the last of the shows I had watched part of on vacation, but I've been researching other options available on RAI Play and Mediaset, and I decided to check out Viola come il mare next, which is on Mediaset. The main draw for me was that it takes place in Palermo. All the shows I've been watching have taken places in cities I haven't been to and made me want to visit (such as Turin), so I thought for a change it would be fun to watch a show that was set somewhere I had actually visited. I ended up having a lot of fun watching Viola come il mare. It's a bit silly and cheesy at times, and it's certainly not a very realistic show (not that I'd say a lot of what I've watching has been particularly realistic), but I did have a lot of fun spotting places I had been to, and I ended up liking the main characters quite a bit. The second season has already been filmed and should be out sometime next year, and I definitely plan on continuing with it. Since the show is on Mediaset, I didn't have the option to rewatch scenes with subtitles, but I rarely felt the need to. It's not that I was catching every single word, but my comprehension was high enough (maybe ~75-80% on average?) that I wasn't missing too much. I also think it isn't a bad idea to switch between watching some shows without any subtitles, some where I just rewatch certain scenes with subtitles, and some where I work through entire episodes intensively with Language Reactor.

Speaking of which, after finishing Viola come il mare, I wasn't really sure what to watch next, so I decided it was time to finally finish Luna park, and I went through the last two episodes with Language Reactor. I could tell just from those two episodes how much my comprehension has improved since I watched the first four in September. Before, I was going back to listen to at least half the scenes (if not more) a second time with Italian subs, but the last two episodes, I rarely felt the need, and usually only with certain actors (although I feel like I would've had a tougher time with the actor who plays Simone if I hadn't watched 3 seasons of him on Imma Taranni. He can be a bit mumbly!).

Despite how long it took me to make it through the show, I really liked it a lot. I feel a little bad now putting it second to last in my ranking of Italian TV in my last post, although I'd probably still put it around there (maybe above Lidia Poët), but it's mostly just that it's so short that I never felt quite as invested in it as I got in some of the other shows I watched. It certainly has its flaws, but I really liked the characters and relationships quite a bit. Also, after watching so many crime-focused dramas, it was nice to watch an Italian show where murder was only a minor subplot rather than the focus (and none of the characters were detectives/cops/lawyers!). I mean, I've really enjoyed the shows I've been watching for the most part, but it's nice to have a little variety! It's a bummer that the season ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger, especially since the show debuted in 2021, and there's been no confirmation of a season 2 that I could find, so it seems unlikely to me that there will be one at this point. But who knows! I'd certainly be interested in watching more of the show.

I also managed to add back in some extensive listening via Youtube of Spanish, French, and German this week (I didn't bother with Italian since I've obviously been getting enough listening practice as it is!). And I've been making good progress with Storia del nuovo cognome. I'm more than halfway through the book at this point. My goal is to finish it by the end of the year, which should be doable, but the end of the year always gets so busy. Next weekend I'm heading out of town to visit family for a week for Thanksgiving. Theoretically, I should have more time to spend on languages, since there will be a ton of downtime, and I'll have access to all my language learning materials except for grammar books, but I suspect that my recent language learning motivation will dissipate. I often have an easier time fitting in language learning when I only have certain windows of time when I can get stuff done; when I have a full day of no responsibilities, I always tell myself, oh I'll get to that later, and then the day ends and I realize I never did. By next weekend, I'll also be closing in on roughly 4 weeks of doing nothing but watching Italian TV in my spare time, and that's usually around the point where I start getting burnt out on whatever I've been hyperfocusing on and my brain finds something else of interest. Plus, in general I struggle with at keeping up with language learning at the end of the year. Late November through the end of December is just tough – too much going on, too much disruption to my normal routine. I don't want to drop everything entirely, and right now it's hard to imagine I'm going to want to stop doing all this Italian work because I've been enjoying it a lot, but honestly, I have very little control over what my brain decides it wants to focus on on any given day, so if you don't see me again until 2024, you'll know the reason!

[MorkTheFiddle]

Nice to read a post in which language learning is succeeding and a pleasure.

[brokenrecord]

I can't believe it's been over 4 months since my last post! I knew there was a chance that the holidays and travel at the end of 2023 would mess up my routine and cause me to take a break, but usually I'm able to get back into the swing of things in mid-to-late January, or at worst, February. But work was unusually busy and stressful the first few months this year, and my brain just felt perpetually fried. I also find that the longer my breaks from language learning become, the harder it is to get back into things. I sometimes feel a little embarrassed that I can't be more regular with my language learning, which I know is irrational (I'm hardly alone in that), but that also makes it harder to come back after lengthy breaks (although I guess I'd feel worse about just never returning ever again). It would be nice to be more consistent, but forcing myself to do things when I'm not in the mood has never worked well for me, so I mostly try to accept that this is just how my brain works.

Anyways, I felt like it had truly been too long since I'd even thought about doing anything with languages, and work has eased up a little (although I feel like I'm jinxing myself by saying that), so it seemed like a good time to pick things up again. I also mentioned in a previous post I might be traveling to Spain in 2024, but it's actually now looking like that'll be northern France instead, and I decided it'd be good to start refreshing my French, which is certainly rusty at the moment. I've also been wanting to get back to Italian and Korean so as to not lose the progress I made in those languages in 2023.

In terms of what I've done since my last post, it's been very little. I did manage to finish Storia del nuovo cognome before the end of the year. I also started and read a few chapters of a Korean webtoon, My Roommate is a Gumiho (간 떨어지는 동거).

When I last posted I was in the throes of my Italian TV obsession, and before Thanksgiving, I started Non uccidere and got halfway through the second season, but it was more due to inertia than really enjoying the show. It's another mystery/detective show, but I found it less interesting than the other shows I was watching in the fall and more difficult to follow. It was very humorless (not that I was looking for constant wisecracking, but I like when dramatic shows have a balance of comedy and drama and aren't just dour the entire time) and I felt like even after a season and a half, none of the characters had any distinct personalities — they were all just very devoted to their jobs. But it was a lot easier to just continue watching it than do anything else, so I stuck with it until my schedule got interrupted with the holidays. I probably won't finish the show, although I'm slightly tempted just because I'm a completist, and it's not like the show made me angry, it was just boring. And I only have 10 episodes (~50-60 min each) left! But probably it would be better to find shows I actively enjoy to spend my time on. I think the second season of Viola come il mare is supposed to start at the end of March, so I've been considering rewatching season 1 in prep for that (probably not actually necessary to follow the plot, but extra practice can't hurt).

To wrap up 2023, some graphs of the total hours I spent per month by language and per activity for each language:

2023 languages by month.png

2023 activities by language.png

Considering how much time I was spending on Italian TV the last few months of the year, I thought for sure the total time I spent on Italian was going to surpass Korean, but I fell just short. I didn't feel like I spent that much time on Korean last year, but I guess that's a combination of recency bias and not realizing how much time I spent on reading Korean webtoons in the first half of 2023.

I ended up spending 533 hours total on language learning last year, which is much better than the previous two years (353 hours in 2021 and 264 in 2022), so even though I feel like my language learning is still inconsistent, it's at least an improvement over recent years. I even technically did something with languages every month of the year (although only barely in January — just a little Duolingo), although obviously I haven't kept that streak up for 2024.

I've been doing some language work this week, but I'll save the summary of that for a separate post!

[brokenrecord]

March 10-16

Spanish:
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: exercise 13.03
-Alan por el mundo: 1 video

French:
-PMP Intermediate French Grammar: exercises 3.06-3.08
-Echappées belles: 1 video
-Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie: episodes 3.01-3.03
-Trois: chapters 1-28

German:
-A-Grammatik: worked on lesson 5.03
-ARD Reisen: 1 video

Korean:
-Yumi's Cells: chapters 195-204
-My Roommate Is a Gumiho: chapters 6-9

Italian:
-Learn Italian with Lucrezia: 4 videos
-Clozemaster: 6 days

As I mentioned in my last post, my focus at the moment is brushing up on my French, so that's what I've spent the most time on this week. I started Trois by Valérie Perrin. I've read a couple other books by her in the past, both of which I liked but didn't love. However, I do generally like her writing style — it feels very easy for me to dip in and out of her books. So far I'm find the story pretty gripping, and I've been making good progress, although the book is on the longer side (671 pages), so I'm only 20% through it. I also started season 3 of Les Pettis Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. I haven't seen the first two seasons, but the casts/settings of each season are completely different, so it's not a problem plot-wise to just dive in with the third season, and it's the only season available on youtube (I believe earlier seasons are available on MHz Choice, but I have enough streaming subscriptions at the moment. My library does appear to have the earlier seasons on DVD, though, so I can always go that route if I want to check them out). My comprehension has been pretty spotty. There are scenes where I feel like I am catching most of the dialogue and scenes where I feel like I barely understand anything. I haven't found it too difficult to follow the plots of the episodes overall, though. The third season is mostly only inspired by Agatha Christie stories rather than actually directly adapting any of them, unlike the first two seasons, and I realized I've never actually read any Agatha Christie before, so I'm slightly tempted to read some translations of her works in one of my languages (although I do generally prefer to read native content rather than translated works).

I've been taking a break from Duolingo. I was finding it incredibly frustrating in the fall, and I just haven't wanted to deal with it. That being said, it is a nice way to get a little practice in with all my languages, so I'm not ruling out using it ever again. I've been using Clozemaster instead for Italian as a little bonus vocab practice, going through the Fluency Fast Track with the 30 free sentences you get per day. I should probably add Drops back in for Korean at some point.

For everything except for French and Korean, I've been focusing on extensive listening with Youtube videos and grammar lessons. I'd like to up the amount of Italian I'm doing — pick up a show again, finish Il bar sotto il mare, and then return to the Neopolitan Quartet. I'm trying not to overload myself right now, though, so I'm not sure the best way to do that. I might alternate between French and Italian books and TV shows. For Korean, I've just been reading webcomics (plus I plan on doing some grammar work as well, I just haven't gotten to it in my rotation of grammar workbooks). At some point, I'd like to work intensively through a kdrama again, and perhaps even try to do some work on listening comprehension (my intensive kdrama work is really just using subtitles as a source of vocab/grammar practice. Hearing the dialogue along with each subtitle is a bonus, but I'm not actually using it to work on my listening).

[brokenrecord]

March 17-23

Spanish:
-Alan por el mundo: 5 videos

French:
-Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie: episodes 3.04-3.06
-Trois: chapters 29-38

German:
-ARD Reisen: 2 videos

Korean:
-Yumi's Cells: chapters 205-214
-My Roommate Is a Gumiho: chapters 10-14

Italian:
-Learn Italian with Lucrezia: 4 videos
-Clozemaster: 6 days

Not a ton to report this week. Work got busy again for a few days, so I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked, but I managed to do at least a couple activities each day, and I didn't let a couple bad days completely derail me, which I'll take as a small victory. I really slacked on doing any grammar work this week — hopefully I can get back into that this week. I'm still enjoying Trois, although my pace has slowed down a bit. I'm also enjoying Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. I think my comprehension has improved a bit over the last few episodes. At the very least, I'm not finding it difficult to follow the plots of each episode even when I miss parts of the dialogue. There are 8 episodes of season 3 up on Youtube, and I'm halfway through episode 7, so almost done with those. It looks like there are an additional two episodes that aired last year and haven't been put up on Youtube yet, but I appear to be able to access them through france.tv with my VPN, so I plan on watching those as well. I'm not sure if I'll able to finish the remaining 3.5 episodes this week, but once I do, I think I'll switch to Italian for my TV watching.

[brokenrecord]

March 24-30

Spanish:
-Alan por el mundo: 2 videos
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: exercises 13.04-13.06

French:
-Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie: episodes 3.07-3.10 (done!)
-Trois: chapters 39-54
-PMP Intermediate French Grammar: exercises 3.09, 4.01-4.03

German:
-ARD Reisen: 1 video
-A-Grammatik: worked on lesson 5.3

Korean:
-Yumi's Cells: chapters 215-226
-My Roommate Is a Gumiho: chapters 15-21
-Jojo's Comics (season 3): chapters 1-27
-KGIU Intermediate: lesson 4.07
-Hello Jadoo: episodes 1.01, 1.03
-Drops: 3 days

Italian:
-Learn Italian with Lucrezia: 3 videos
-Clozemaster: 7 days
-Il processo: episodes 1.01-1.04
-PMP Italian Verb Tenses: exercises 13.01-13.02

This was a more productive week than last week was, although there were still a couple days where work got really busy and I ended up doing less than I would've liked.

I finished season 3 of Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie! I think my comprehension was pretty decent, and it improved with each episode. I definitely missed lines of dialogue here and there, but overall I didn't find it too difficult to follow the plot. I found the show pretty enjoyable and fun. At some point, I probably will go back and watch the first two seasons. In any case, I realized I've already managed to surpass the total time I spent on all French activities last year (15.5 hours — granted, a low bar) in the past 3 weeks (24.1 hours).

After finishing Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, I decided to watch something in Italian. I had been planning on rewatching Viola come il mare in preparation for season 2, which I had read would be starting March 29th, but it turns out that's not the case. Now it's looking like maybe May instead? I have no idea if the websites saying that are legitimate, though. It's definitely been filmed, so I know it'll come out at some point, but the exact date is somewhat of a mystery. Anyways, I decided since I didn't know when that would be airing that I should pick something else, so I started watching Il processo (The Trial), which is on Netflix. There are only 8 episodes, 50-55 min each, so I'm already halfway through. I've found it very interesting so far, and my comprehension has been very good (maybe better than my French comprehension?). I was a little worried that taking 4 months off after watching so much Italian TV in the fall that my listening comprehension would have atrophied (although I have been watching Youtube videos the past few weeks, so it's not like I went into the show completely cold), but I feel like I picked up right where I left off. Considering how quickly I've gone through the first four episodes, I'll probably finish the show this week. After that, I'll probably return to watching something in French.

I also did a good bit of Korean work this week. I had read all of Jojo's Comics early last year, but a new season began at the end of 2023, and I wanted a little extra reading practice, so I decided to get caught up. The chapters aren't limited in how many you can read per day for free (unlike the other two webcomics I'm reading right now), so I was able to get completely caught up this week. I don't need to look up nearly as much vocab now as when I first started the webcomic last year, so it's a nice way of seeing how much my reading comprehension in Korean has improved over the past year. Only two chapters are released per week, so now that I'm caught up, it won't be adding too much to my plate on top of the other two webcomics I've been reading.

This week I also started working on my Korean listening comprehension, which has been woefully neglected over the past 5 years. Now that my vocab has improved enough to where I'm not having to look up a ton of words while I'm reading, it felt like a good time to shift into working on listening. I started watching Hello Jadoo (안녕자두야), which is a children's show; the episodes so far are only roughly 10 minutes long, and they're on Youtube (although for some reason the season 1 playlist jumps from episode 1 to 3, which is why I skipped past episode 2). My approach so far has been to watch the episode through once without any subtitles or stopping and to try to pick out as much as I can. Then, I go through the episode with Language Reactor and Korean subtitles on (but no English), stopping after each line. I try to read the subtitle as the dialogue is being said. I look up any unknown words. Sometimes I listen to the same line a second or even third time if I feel like I didn't completely follow it while listening to it and reading the subtitle the first time. Finally, I rewatch the whole episode without subtitles to see if my comprehension has improved. After having finished one episode and gotten through most of this process with a second (I worked through it intensively with Language Reactor but still need to watch the whole thing a final time without subtitles), my comprehension is pretty bad. I can pick out isolated words, and every once in a while short sentences, but that's about it. The plots are simple enough that I'm not getting totally lost as to what's going on, but understanding full lines of dialogue is incredibly challenging. On the plus side, I'm not having to look up very much vocab when I work through the episodes intensively, so I think the level is right for me, it's just a matter of continuing to work on improving my listening comprehension. Hopefully that will come as I work through more episodes.

[brokenrecord]

March 31-April 6

Spanish:
-Alan por el mundo: 1 video
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: exercises 13.07, 14.01-14.02

French:
-Échappées Belles: 1 video
-Zone blanche: episodes 1.01-1.04
-Trois: chapters 55-92 (done!)
-PMP Intermediate French Grammar: exercises 4.04-4.06

German:
-ARD Reisen: part of 1 video
-A-Grammatik: worked on section 5.3

Korean:
-Yumi's Cells: chapters 227-240
-My Roommate Is a Gumiho: chapters 22-28
-Jojo's Comics (season 3): chapters 28-29
-KGIU Intermediate: unit 4 review, lesson 5.01
-Hello Jadoo: episodes 1.03-1.04
-Drops: 2 days

Italian:
-Learn Italian with Lucrezia: 2 videos
-Clozemaster: 6 days
-Il processo: episodes 1.05-1.08 (done!)
-PMP Italian Verb Tenses: exercise 13.03
-Storia di chi fugge e chi resta: chapters 1-21

There was one day where I had a lot going on this week and wasn't able to get very much done, but otherwise this was a very productive week!

Italian:
I finished Il processo this week! Not a perfect show, but I enjoyed it overall. My comprehension was pretty good. There were some minor plot points I wasn't totally clear on, but I was still able to follow the story, and I never really felt the need to rewatch any scenes with subtitles.

I also finished the second season of L'amica geniale this week. I had read Storia del nuovo cognome at the end of 2023, and I wanted to watch the second season before proceeding with the third book, just as I had done with the first season/book. I particularly wanted to refresh my memory of what had happened in the second book and to make sure I hadn't missed anything. In general, I think I followed the second book better than the first one. There were a couple minor plot points I didn't recall from the book, but it's likely that's more an issue of remembering what happened in a book I finished 3 months ago and less an issue of reading comprehension. It was helpful to remind myself of all the characters as well — I still get a few of the minor characters mixed up and forget things like who's in a relationship with whom. I'm not counting watching the second season as a language learning activity since I watched it with English subs (a lot of the show is in Neopolitan, so there isn't a ton I'd understand without subtitles anyways). I had planned on starting the third book after finishing Trois so I wouldn't be trying to juggle multiple books in different languages at once, but once I finished the show, I was already 80% of the way through Trois and making quick progress of it, and I was eager to find out what happened in the next book (Storia di chi fugge e chi resta), so I ended up starting it before finishing Trois and alternated between reading both books. It worked out all right since I was enjoying both books and able to read at least a few chapters in each every day, so I didn't struggle with recalling the plot points, which is something I used to have trouble with when trying to alternate between reading books in three of my languages at once.

French:
As I mentioned, I finished Trois this week! I enjoyed it a good amount. I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece or anything, and it's not the kind of thing I would typically read in English, but the plot kept me intrigued throughout, and I liked the characters. Overall I found it pretty easy to read. There was usually at least 1 word per page I'd have to look up, so it's not like the level was too easy for me, but it never felt like a struggle to get through. It was a very pleasant reading experience, which definitely made it easier to get through in a relatively short amount of time, despite its length (~670 pages). I had been planning on focusing solely on Storia di che fugge e chi resta after finishing Trois, but since I was able to juggle reading both this past week, I've been considering picking up another book in French and trying to read both. That might be a foolish plan, though. I was able to do both languages this week because I had the time, but that won't be true every week. I could choose something relatively short, though (not another 600+ page book), and it might work out. I don't know, we'll see if I can find something that seems suitable and that I feel like reading this week.

Since I finished Il processo this week, I jumped back to French TV with Zone blanche (Black Spot is the English title) on Netflix. My comprehension has been pretty poor – I've been missing a ton of dialogue. That being said, I feel like I'm generally following the plot all right, despite missing a lot of the details. I haven't rewatched any of it with subtitles, but it probably wouldn't hurt to do some intensive work with at least a few scenes. We'll see if I can find the time this week.


It has been interesting spending so much time on both French and Italian recently and comparing my ability in the two languages. My listening comprehension in Italian has felt much stronger than in French — I definitely feel like I followed Il processo better than either Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie or (especially) Zone blanche, despite having spent a good amount more time on listening with French over the past 6 years or so (plus whatever time I spent in my high school French classes) vs. what I did in Italian last year. However, my reading comprehension in French is much stronger. Storia di chi fugge e chi resta is definitely taking more effort to get through than Trois did for me, just in terms of how many words I have to look up and how quickly I'm able to read without missing any details. I suppose it's possible the writing is of a higher level in Storia di chi fugge e chi resta, so even if my ability were equal in the two languages, I'd still find it more challenging — hard to say. It's just been interesting to compare since French has been a part of my life for so much longer, despite some long periods without any time spent on it at all, whereas Italian has been much more recent, and I only really started devoting a lot of time to it last year. Although obviously the romance language discount helped me a ton with progressing more quickly with Italian than I would have starting completely from scratch, and I do think my comprehension of Spanish has helped me with listening in Italian, moreso than in French.

Finally, since March ended last week, here's a breakdown of the hours I spent in March:

march2024-langactivity.png

Obviously mostly focused on French, with a good amount of Italian and Korean as well. Only minimal work on German and Spanish — hopefully at some point this year I'll be able to devote some more time to each, but at the moment it's been a lot easier to just focus on the other three languages.