What am I attempting to do?
French: Double challenge (10,000 pages read and 18,000 minutes watched/listened to)
Latin: Full challenge (5,000 pages read and 9,000 minutes watched/listened to)
Russian: Half challenge (2,500 pages read and 4,500 minutes watched/listened to)
Mandarin: Half challenge (2,500 pages read and 4,500 minutes watched/listened to)
I may not succeed at all of these goals, but grand projects motivate and delight me, and I think it's better to aim for something ambitious and work hard to make it 90% or 80% or even 60% of the way there than to set a goal you know you're sure to hit and never push out of your comfort zone.
For those interested in the math, it's a total of 20,000 pages read and 36,000 minutes (or 600 hours) watched or listened to. Over 20 months, that averages to 1,000 pages read and 1,800 minutes (30 hours) watched or listened to per month. That is not beyond the realm of the possible: I would need to read ~34 pages and watch or listen to about an hour of content per day on average. That's perefectly reasonable most days, but I imagine it'll be the pace that gets me, since life is capable of generating many distractions over such a long period of time. We shall see!
I've made a spreadsheet to track everything (I love any pretext for a spreadsheet) and will aim to post frequent updates here with reflections on what I'm reading and watching, any interesting insights or discoveries, periodic data analysis, unnecessary but enjoyable tinkering with technical tools, and thoughts on how the challenge is helping my language skills to progress.
I should probably mention that, due to the time commitment of the challenge, I expect to do only the bare minimum with Spanish over the next 20 months; I'll continue to use it professionally, but I won't be actively working on improving. I'll be all but ignoring Italian and Ancient Greek, which is a bit funny considering I expect to be in Italy in the fall. And then there are the languages so neglected I don't even need to say I'll be neglecting them...but that's a matter for another challenge.
Notes on the four languages (also found in my challenge registration post):
- French: The French language is a fixation of mine, and I already take in a huge amount of French content (books and podcasts, and series to a lesser extent), so this is more about tracking something I'm already doing than changing my habits. I have never tracked pages read or hours viewed before, so I'm keen to see the data.
- Latin: I have a BAH in Latin and Ancient Greek language and literature, and once upon a time I left a PhD program in Latin philology to go to law school. I still read (and translate) Latin works for fun, but I haven't done as much of this in the past few years as I wish I had. I would like to work my way through my to-read list. Not yet sure how I'll tackle the films requirement, but I'll figure that out as I go.
- Russian: A couple of years ago, I moved across the continent, and the resulting decreased exposure to my Russian-speaking in-laws is slowly undermining my previously serviceable Russian. My partner and I speak to each other in English; Russian is a heritage language for him and he only speaks it with his family. My main goal here is to keep in contact with the language and stop the degradation. Bonus points if it inspires my partner to get some exposure to Russian other than calling his mom, as he's worried he's going to lose it.
- Mandarin: Mandarin is a delight, but I am still very much a beginner and have a long way to go. I am keeping it to a half challenge so that it feels less daunting. Even if I don't succeed numerically, any forward progress would be welcome.
And now, I have about a week to finish all the English-language books I'm currently reading!
