This is essentially a continuation of my previous log, so I won't be saying much in way of introduction, but I thought I'd make a new thread since my focuses and goals have changed considerably. Given how fickle my interests tend to be, this could become a yearly occurrence so I'm titling this thread 2023.
I'm an experienced language learner, but my interest in the Middle East is relatively recent, so none of the languages are where I want them to be. I have a lot of work to do. So I plan on spending this year improving all of them, but I won't completely ignore my other languages and I'll probably touch them on occasion to keep them fresh.
I'm using the term Islamicate as coined by Marshall Hodgson
There has been, however, a culture, centered on a lettered tradition, which has been historically distinctive of Islamdom the society, and which has been naturally shared in by both Muslims and non-Muslims who participate at all fully in the society of Islamdom. For this, I have used the adjective 'Islamicate'. I thus restrict the term 'Islam' to the religion of the Muslims, not using that term for the far more general phenomena, the society of Islamdom and its Islamicate cultural traditions.…
I'm not a Muslim, and my interest extends beyond theology, so I feel this is an apposite term to describe my current interest in the region. In terms of the relevant languages, I would rank them in the following order in terms of overall importance, culturally and historically. There's other languages too, of course, but these are the big 5
Arabic > Persian >> Turkish >> Urdu > Indonesian/Malay
Arabic is a no-brainer. Persian also exerted a ton of influence from as west as the Ottoman Empire and as east as India. Arabic and Persian are the big two, and my focus for the present year.
Turkish is important for Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and current geopolitical importance of Turkey. I would say it's slightly less important than Persian but still not one I'm willing to ignore.
Urdu is of a more peripheral importance, but I've already studied Hindi quite a bit and I'm interested in India. Given how close it is to Hindi and how much influence Persian has had on it, not to mention hundreds of millions of speakers, Hindustani is a no-brainer as well. Urdu is my strongest of the above languages, solely because I've studied Hindi for years. But my vocabulary is severely lacking and I'm not reading Urdu as fast as Devanagari.
Indonesian is even more secondary in importance than Urdu, and I have no plans to study it this year, but maybe someday. It's not that I have no interest in it, but there's just no time. Unlike Arabic, I don't think it's a enormous task and I pick it up later if I so desire.
The languages in the title will be the ones I'm mainly studying via beginner textbooks. I will continue to improve my French, German, and Spanish via reading and Clozemaster. As for Japanese, I'll work on it slightly but my main goal is to just maintain. Chinese maintains itself daily. As for my weaker languages, like Russian and Latin, I will do just enough to keep them from disappearing in my brain (at least 5 minutes a day, more from time to time)
Thank you for reading my log and good luck with all of your language goals!
Here is my first progress update, which is usually at the beginning of the log but this introduction is an exception.
I finished Le Persan Sans Peine L53 and Le Japonais Sans Peine L93
Clozemaster: 794 day streak, 16,805 mastered sentences, Italiano from Español to level 47, Español from Français to level 56, Español from Deutsch to level 85, 中文 (Traditional) from English to level 53, Français from 中文 to level 68, Latina from English to level 31, 日本語 from English to level 72