MandarinI have spoken to a couple of Chinese people in English for a couple of hours. I'm not really learning the language, I've basically parked it. I suppose I shouldn't really call these language exchanges, since I'm not actually using any Mandarin. We'll see how it goes next week. The nice Taiwanese grandmother I speak to is interesting, and I don't mind helping her out, but I really need to at least try if I'm going to burn up an hour.
KoreanAgain, most of my time is spent here. I downloaded another anki deck for Korean, since the one I made for myself didn't seem to be sinking in. This deck,
Korean Vocabulary by Evita, was suggested in someone's log, (I can't find the link to the log, but you know who you are!
). It is very useful, and I'm working through it as well. Although having used it for a few days I can see that my other anki deck was working, since most of the beginner words at the start of the Evita deck I knew and are buried deep in my other deck. Which goes to prove that with SRS systems you're not falling behind or stupid, the algorithm just isn't showing you all the stuff you know, because, well, you know it!
I continue to do a class per week, and it is useful, but I just don't know how to cram all this stuff into my tired old brain cells. I'm getting more vocabulary each week than I can remember, and so the pressure mounts. I'm seriously considering parking the lessons for a couple of months to cram the vocabulary, but I do know that I'm lazy and probably wouldn't, so it is better to do the lessons just to keep me motivated to attempt to remember words.
Reading is a long, hard slog, and I have not even managed to complete one full page.
One thing which has improved noticeably is my ability to type in Korean. It is becoming more and more rare for me to need to reference my Korean keyboard image when typing. For the most part, I can type without looking at the keys. Still some hesitation around the keys ( ㅖㅒ ㅔㅐ ), but otherwise I can mostly just type without looking.
[Inappropriate joke redacted by Administrator]ItalianI've done a couple of Italian language exchanges now, with a lady who is studying for an English certification. She is very strict about doing Italian, and diligent in her corrections of me. But generally it is a fairly smooth conversation. She tries to get me out of the comfort zone by thinking up various scenarios and forcing me to play act out the scenario in Italian. I spoke with another partner for a couple of hours about the state of the Italian political scene in both English and Italian. These conversations are fairly effortless, although I do run into times when I've forgotten a word, or don't know it. I'm doing a trip to Milan soon, and I don't anticipate any problems.
I'm reading an Italian book, but I've honestly not been very diligent in my studies, and I'm only averaging a couple of pages per day. I'm not going to complete my little Italian book reading challenge at this rate. I've just got a little burned out on everything lately and not interested in putting in the effort.
FrenchNice long conversation with my French friend. Her daughter signed up on a couple of sites to try and find a language exchange partner, but it was getting too creepy, so she is looking for women only. I couldn't actually help. I had a couple of other French people lined up, but they cancelled on me.
I have glanced at my 3-5 French grammar books, and I've been considering putting them on the "to read" list that I'm currently burning my way through, but I will probably leave that for a little while since I have 60+ books on the list already.
General StuffI'm trying to polish off as many books as I can in both Italian and English. English obviously being easier to do. I have managed to clear a small corner of one bookshelf, so progress is being made here.
I've set myself some tasks related to memorisation which I've logged on the memory forum, but some of those are mentally taxing, which might be why I've not got a lot of mental energy to spread around. I was trying to find a Korean poem to memorise, but most of the suggestions I had or things I found weren't really all that great.
On top of all this, I should have started another season of my podcast, but I need to either expand the range of topics on the podcast, or just pack it in. Don't know which. My YT channel hasn't had an update in ages. All of which just points to my general laziness, and I feel lethargic with a sort of "brain fog". It is a little strange because I'm not normally like this. I have been hearing about "brain fog" after people get Covid-19. It is more likely that I'm just getting old.
My wife says that I have a habit of taking on more than I can chew, this might have something to do with it. But I don't think that is the case.
Right, I'm off to listen to a Korean podcast while mentally memorising the 20-times multiplication table and building a wind turbine charge controller. (Surely there is something I could do with my feet at the same time?)