Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

[David27]

In the past month I had more time to meet my goals. I've continued working through writing out Assimil's Chinese with Ease (currently on lesson 84), and started Goldlist style vocabulary lists for Mandarin which is helping my writing and character recognition. I also listen to some popupChinese. For Japanese I'm using the Genki textbook now and also practicing writing things out, mostly copying sentences using hiragana and katakana, but since I'm learning Mandarin picking up some Kanji isn't too difficult even though I'm not focusing too heavily on Kanji yet.

For Russian I am reading another book by Борис Акунин. I'm not a huge fan, but I bought several of them when I was in Russia in 2011 and I feel obliged to read them. They're not terrible, I just have never loved the mystery/crime genre.

For Spanish it's still listening to music in the car and speaking at work. I'm thinking about picking up another book in Spanish during my vacation (more on that below).

French and German I'm resisting doing too much but have a couple of shows on netflix (Marseille and Babylon Berlin), and occasionally reading news articles in German.

Portuguese and Italian I have to force myself to use to not get too rusty, they just aren't coming up in my day to day life right now.

I have been getting distracted and did do a bit of Polish/Dutch/Arabic just in the past week. I argue that it's healthy for me and not subtracting from my other languages because it's better to do that than to watch TV or play video games... so it's not completely lost time.

Next month I have a 9 day vacation (yippee!) and my wife's family organized a family guided tour to Ireland. I've never been on a guided tour but I think I will like it a lot as having a guide will teach me a lot about Irish history along the way without me having to do a bunch of outside research (which I don't have the time for right now). I'm also thinking of picking up Vargas Llosas El sueño del Celta while there. I would try to learn some Irish but I feel a little too spread thin as is. During that week outside of just enjoying time with family and learning about Ireland in English, I'll continue with audio lessons of Japanese and Chinese and bring my Assimil Chinese book.

March hours:
Japanese: 11 hours, 10 minutes
Mandarin: 10 hours, 10 minutes
Russian: 4 hours, 45 minutes
Spanish: 3 hours, 0 minutes
German: 2 hours, 40 minutes
French: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Italian: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Arabic: 20 minutes
Dutch: 5 minutes
Polish: 5 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 33 hours, 25 minutes
Mandarin: 26 hours, 25 minutes
Russian: 22 hours, 45 minutes
Spanish: 10 hours, 10 minutes
French: 6 hours, 55 minutes
German: 6 hour, 25 minutes
Portuguese: 3 hours, 25 minutes
Italian: 3 hours, 0 minutes
Other: 2 hours, 20 minutes

[David27]

It's that dreaded time of the year. I knew from previewing my schedule at the beginning of the year that this time would come: when my major goals for Mandarin and Japanese would slump and stagnate (or fall off) for several months. For April-June I'm working a 28 hour shift every 4th day and sometimes I'm unable to catch a nap at work to recharge. I'm finishing residency, planning a move back to Manhattan and going to start Fellowship in July, and take internal medicine medicine boards in August. With all that going on in my life, I put Mandarin and Japanese on pause (or at least reduced, I'll probably still put some time into them for fun when I have the time/energy and miss them), and mainly work on language maintenance in my other languages in the meantime (less effort, and enjoyable/relaxing... watching an occasional movie or tv show, or reading, listening to music, etc). 

Main things I picked up were a detective novel in Russian (another Boris Akunin book that I bought years ago but never read) and because I went to Ireland I started reading El sueño del Celta by Mario Vargas Llosa (whose writing I love). I'm out of downloaded japanesepod lessons that I downloaded from my last subscription, so I'll have to get another subscription if I want to download more lessons, but just haven't had the time or energy to do it yet (I plan to at some point). I'm watching more Babylon Berlin in German this month and while the show is a bit... risqué, overall I'm enjoying the plot/storylines and think I'll stick with it for the long haul. I'm already 6 episodes in, and if I can get that far, then usually that means I'm all in.

April Hours:
Spanish: 7 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 6 hours, 5 minutes
Russian: 5 hours, 40 minutes
Japanese: 3 hours, 5 minutes
German: 1 hour, 30 minutes
French: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Polish: 55 minutes
Dutch: 35 minutes
Italian: 30 minutes
Portuguese: 15 minutes
Irish: 10 minutes
Arabic: 5 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 36 hours, 30 minutes
Mandarin: 32 hours, 30 minutes
Russian: 28 hours, 25 minutes
Spanish: 17 hours, 10 minutes
French: 8 hours, 0 minutes
German: 7 hours, 55 minutes
Portuguese: 3 hours, 40 minutes
Italian: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Arabic: 2 hours, 0 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Dutch: 35 minutes
Esperanto: 15 minutes
Irish: 10 minutes

[David27]

First off I'm selling my Colloquial Japanese, assimil l'allemand sans peine and assimil perfectionnement allemand, as well as my Assimil ecriture chinoise on Amazon for pretty cheap if anyone is interested (trying to get rid of some stuff before I move). If I don't sell books I'm going to drop them off at a used book store. I do like hoarding books but I just have to cut off old ones that I've finished and won't/don't need to go through again.

As predicted, May was hectic, and I had my lowest language learning productivity in the past few years unfortunately. It consisted of a few episodes of Babylon Berlin, I watched 2 episodes of Marseille in French, a decent bit of Spanish (reading el sueño del celta and a lot of radio and using it at work), and then the odd youtube video and a tiny bit of duolingo.

May hours:
Spanish: 5 hours, 50 minutes
German: 3 hours, 0 minutes
Russian: 2 hours, 10 minutes
French: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Portuguese: 30 minutes
Dutch: 10 minutes
Polish: 5 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 36 hours, 30 minutes
Mandarin: 32 hours, 30 minutes
Russian: 30 hours, 35 minutes
Spanish: 23 hours, 0 minutes
German: 10 hours, 55 minutes
French: 9 hours, 20 minutes
Portuguese: 4 hours, 10 minutes
Italian: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Arabic: 2 hours, 0 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Dutch: 45 minutes
Esperanto: 15 minutes
Irish: 10 minutes

[David27]

A little over a week ago now I moved back to New York City to start my endocrinology fellowship. Of course that means less time for language learning as I’m focusing on really learning my subspecialty and work, but I do spend a lot of time walking in the city, and always am listening to something foreign language related. I also do some podcast listening while exercising (but over half the time I prefer music or just to focus on exercise). A problem I have now in NYC is it’s hard to focus on one language. I meet someone everyday who speaks a different language, which always peaks my interest and makes me want to learn a bit of that language… making it harder to focus on Mandarin and Japanese. A big one for me here in NYC is Russian, I have a number of good friends here who are Russian speaking, and I tend to run into a lot of Russian speakers (I had a great dinner with a group of friends celebrating a birthday where about 75% of the conversations around were in Russian. I also met a French speaker from Mali who told me about the best West African restaurants in Harlem that I have to go check out. One surprising thing is that Spanish is spoken all over, but I’ve only used it once this past week. It’s definitely more pervasive in Dallas, and I’ll miss just having Spanish all around me. But I’m sure I’ll still get plenty of opportunities to use it here.

I also went on an Arabic tangent during the first half of last month… I have the Pimsleur Arabic 1-3 so I listened to a bunch of lessons.

That being said, over the past month I have done a decent bit of listening to japanesepod101, lingq reading/listening, and popupchinese. I haven’t really done any book learnin’ though.

June hours:
Japanese: 6 hours, 30 minutes
Mandarin: 6 hours, 20 minutes
Russian: 4 hours, 40 minutes
Spanish: 4 hours, 35 minutes
Arabic: 4 hours, 20 minutes
French: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 45 minutes
German: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Dutch: 20 minutes
Polish: 15 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 43 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 38 hours, 50 minutes
Russian: 34 hours, 15 minutes
Spanish: 27 hours, 35 minutes
German: 12 hours, 5 minutes
French: 12 hours, 5 minutes
Portuguese: 5 hours, 55 minutes
Arabic: 6 hours, 20 minutes
Italian: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Esperanto: 15 minutes
Irish: 10 minutes

[David27]

After moving to New York at the end of June, I’ve been very busy starting my endocrinology fellowship, learning and reading articles, seeing patients, and settling into the city. The biggest patient demographic difference between Dallas and NYC in my practice is the diversity. In Dallas my patients were mostly hispanic or American. In New York I have a huge range of patients, with a large number of Chinese patients (Mandarin and Cantonese speaking), Hispanic, Polish, Vietnamese, etc. It presents it’s own challenges (and extra time working with interpreters) but I enjoy the diverse group, hearing their stories and their languages. Out in the city I hear all different languages, and get more regular practice using the languages I speak, and inspiration to want to explore other languages. While this has been good for my curiosity and for practicing languages I’ve learned (played soccer with French players, my barbers are from the former Soviet Union, I helped German tourists who were lost one day, A group of Italians are taking an anatomy course at NYU and watched and talked for a few minutes about the world cup...), it hasn’t been great for my goal of improving my Japanese and Mandarin, as the language wanderlust has divided the limited time I have to focus on languages. I’m still mostly listening to podcasts: but have found a few good shows as well. Chumel is a Mexican John Oliver style show that is free and available on youtube that I have been watching occasional episodes (~20 minutes each), Babylon Berlin I have been watching and am well into season 2 (I'll make a separate post when I finish to talk about the show), and I still watch an occasional episode of Marseille, even though I don’t love it. I also have been listening to a lot of podcasts. Besides Japanese pod 101, I’ve found a Russian podcast (Arzamas) that I like, I have been listening to Cafe Brasil, and Grand bien vous fasse while walking the dog. I haven’t put any time into books study, except occasional 5 minutes before bed of Polish or Dutch to satisfy the desire to study a new language. I also haven't been doing any free reading, which I miss but with me taking the internal medicine boards in August and with fellowship ongoing, I just have limited time so all language activity is limited to "relaxing/lower brain activity" time, listening to podcasts or watching a show for relaxation. Since I already speak Russian, German, and English (native), an occasional Polish or Dutch lesson (5 minutes before falling asleep) doesn't take as much focus as east asian languages and book study is not too tiring at the end of a long day.

With the move to NYC I've also had increased thoughts of linguistic wanderlust. There is an Armenian cathedral in my neighborhood with a bookstore inside that I'm deliberately avoiding, but always tempted to go in and see what materials and resources they have for the language. I also have been tempted to refresh my Greek as their is a large Greek speaking contingency out in Queens and some spillover coming into Manhattan. And then once I get interested in Arabic with Arabic speakers around (I don't feel as bad because I know I'm going to try to learn Arabic to fluency some day so I don't feel like this is wasted time), but then I go down my wish list rabbit thinking about other middle eastern/south Asian languages (Farsi, Kurdish, Pashto, Hindi/Urdu, Turkish...). I even had a moment where I was trying to decide which African language family would be interesting to look at. But thankfully these moments are brief and I've thus far been able to pull myself back into reality pretty quickly.

With all that talk about languages you would think I spent tons of time on it this past month, but the numbers don't lie, in reality it was a mediocre-weaker month.

Without further ado:

Japanese 7 hours, 25 minutes
Russian: 6 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 3 hours, 50 minutes
Spanish: 3 hours, 20 minutes
German: 3 hours, 10 minutes
French: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Portuguese: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Arabic: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Polish: 50 minutes
Dutch: 25 minutes
Italian: 20 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 50 hours, 25 minutes
Mandarin: 42 hours, 40 minutes
Russian: 40 hours, 15 minutes
Spanish: 30 hours, 55 minutes
German: 15 hours, 15 minutes
French: 14 hours, 35 minutes
Arabic: 8 hours, 10 minutes
Portuguese: 8 hours, 5 minutes
Italian: 3 hours, 50 minutes
Polish: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Esperanto: 15 minutes
Irish: 10 minutes

[David27]

August is up. In the past month I dropped Arabic since I took my internal medicine boards, I spent almost all my focused studying on board studying! But I do a lot of walking in NYC, and since I've gotten into the habit of listening to japanesepod101, I did keep that up. I watched some of au service de la France to relax. I also listened to podcasts while walking to/from work/grocery store/wherever. Arzamas is a good Russian podcast series with a lot of published articles on different cultural and historical topics (about 10-15 minutes/episode). I also listened to some cafe brasil. After I finished my boards I started doing more LingQ. I finished the "who is she" series in Mandarin, and found a good series about Napoleon in Italian that I've been enjoying. I'm thinking about keeping Arabic on hold, and hoping to rev up Mandarin again (the 2 hours are all post boards in August, so I've already started increasing my time using Mandarin). 

I'm also wanting to spend more time reading.... I'll let you know if I make progress on the books I'm reading.

Japanese: 10 hours, 5 minutes
Russian: 6 hours, 20 minutes
Spanish: 4 hours, 25 minutes
French: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Italian: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Mandarin: 2 hours, 0 minutes
Portuguese: 2 hours, 0 minutes
Polish: 1 hours, 0 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 0 minutes
German: 45 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 60 hours, 30 minutes
Russian: 46 hours, 35 minutes
Mandarin: 44 hours, 40 minutes
Spanish: 35 hours, 20 minutes
French: 18 hours, 20 minutes
German: 16 hours, 0 minutes
Portuguese: 10 hours, 5 minutes
Arabic: 8 hours, 10 minutes
Italian: 6 hours, 0 minutes
Polish: 3 hours, 10 minutes
Dutch: 2 hours, 25 minutes
Esperanto: 15 minutes
Irish: 10 minutes

[David27]

I hardly ever write in any foreign languages anymore, so I'm going to be using this log as an opportunity to practice writing from time to time.

Encore un mois s'est déjà écoulé ! Avant je disais que je voulais passer plus du temps avec le japonais et le mandarin, mais je me laissais distraire par des bonnes lectures en espagnol et russe, et j'ai terminé de regarder la série "Babylon Berlin" en allemand (je vous le conseille si vous apprenez l'allemand et vous avez un niveau intermédiaire ou mieux). Je recommande aussi "Au Service de la France", qui me fait penser aux films OSS117 avec Jean Dujardin (en fait, je trouve ces films encore mieux que Au Service de la France).

Ich finde das meine Vorkenntnisse mit Deutsch/Englisch hilft mir mehr mit Niederländisch als mein Russisch mit Polnisch. Ich studiere diese spräche nur wenn ich bin müde und ich möchte nicht etwas strengend machen (und habe nicht so viel zeit... 10 Minuten vor ich schlaffe gehen zum Beispiel). Ich finde es viel einfacher Niederländisch zu verstehen und lernen als Polnisch. Übrigens... ich habe meinen ersten Meilenstein auf Niederländisch erreicht. Ich habe einen Artikel auf Niederländisch durchgelesen. Jetzt lese ich ein Kinderbuch auf Niederländisch in LingQ.

Wanderlust alert: I have a good number of Bengali speaking patients, which really makes me want to learn the language... thank goodness for not having any good resources available for it.

For resources, a lot of LingQ for all languages, japanesepod101, less textbook work (I want to get back at the books, I just have been lazy/bad about my time management in the evenings after work). I've downloaded a handful of popupchinese lessons to listen to those, I've just exhausted my downloaded japanesepod materials, and will have to pay for another subscription to get more... which I'll probably do this weekend.

September hours
Japanese: 9 hours, 10 minutes
Spanish: 7 hours, 30 minutes
Russian: 6 hours, 40 minutes
Mandarin: 6 hours, 30 minutes
German: 2 hours, 45 minutes
French: 2 hours, 0 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Italian: 1 hour: 15 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Polish: 45 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 69 hours, 40 minutes
Russian: 53 hours, 15 minutes
Mandarin: 51 hours, 10 minutes
Spanish: 43 hours, 50 minutes
French: 20 hours, 20 minutes
German: 18 hours, 45 minutes
Portuguese: 11 hours, 10 minutes
Arabic: 8 hours, 10 minutes
Italian: 7 hours, 15 minutes
Polish: 3 hours, 55 minutes
Dutch: 3 hours, 50 minutes

[David27]

Этот месяц я опоздал с записью. Вообще я мало делал на последное время по иностранно-язычному плану. Мои наушники сломали, и обычно большинство моих учеб - слушание пока я гуляю с собокой или по пути на работу (и обратно) здесь в Нью-Йорке. Без этого я продолжаю с учебниками или на интернете с учебами на lingQ или youtube, но это только 10-20 минут в день к сожалению. Очень мало!

Я тоже немного терял мотивацию заниматься языками. Это не значит что языки мне больше не интересно, только что я в последнее время очень занят с работой и кодга прихожу домой это уже поздно, и у меня еще остается домашные работы... и наконец когда у меня есть немного свободное время или свободный день, я не в настроеннии и у меня нет сил чтобы изучать языки. 

Наилучший метод для меня найти больше времени чтобы изучать чаще и улучшать мой китайский и японский - загрузить аудиоуроки japanesepod101 и popupchinese) и покупать новые наушники, поэтому сегодня я буду делать именно этом! Желай мне удачи! (I don't think that's a Russian phrase... but I like it lol).

Después del inglés el español es el idioma mas usado en mi vida diaria (cada día al trabajo)... mejor dicho el único otro idioma que uso en mi vida diaria. Me gusta que siempre tengo oportunidades a usarlo al trabajo, pero afuero del trabajo, aunque hay un montón de hablantes aquí en la ciudad, no lo uso. Cuando encuentro alguien que no conozco que habla español y habla inglés, me parece anormal hablarles en español, y un poco ofensivo tal vez (es como si yo estuviera diciendo que su inglés es malo y es más fácil para nosotros hablar en español). Ademas, prefiero usar el inglés cuando hay gente alrededor que no entienden el español. Si quiero practicar o hablar en español (o cualquier otro idioma) es después de conocerlos un poco primero en inglés, y después decirles en el otro idioma que estudio también el español/francés/ruso/lo que sea, y si responden en su idioma nativo... allí nos vamos!

Mi mujer habla un poco de español también, y hoy después del trabajo de pronto me contaba su día al trabajo todo en español y tuvimos una conversation todo en español! Fue una conversación breve, pero me gustó que hacía el esfuerzo y quería charlar un ratito .

A short English recap of the last month is that my headphones broke, I ran out of audio material, and I let my study habits fall apart. Most of my language learning is listening to audio, so that was a big blow, and just now I'm getting new headphones and downloaded a some japanesepod and popupchinese to hopefully get me back on track. I was set to hit my goals until about mid October when that hit, and work really picked up (which is also why this log entry is so late this month). I've had no time to have any issues with wanderlust, and I avoided doing an Arabic, minimized Dutch and Polish to just 5-10 minutes once a week on the weekend (basically nothing), and killed of any desire that I had before to start Bengali. Just to many other things going on with life and work to spread myself thinner.

Looking at my hours this year, it's interesting how there are 3 tiers that are really starting to form: 1. Languages I actively use and study more: Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian. 2 Languages that I use more for pleasure, but am very inconsistant: German, French. And lastly 3. Languages that I do a poor job maintaining/dabble with: Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, and Polish. That doesn't mean it will always be this way, I could easily see next year 2 of these languages going up and French and German being relegated to "dabble" tier... only time will tell! But for 2018 that's just how the breakdown is going.

October hours
Spanish: 8 hours, 20 minutes
Mandarin: 7 hours, 10 minutes
Japanese: 6 hours, 20 minutes
Russian: 4 hours, 0 minutes
French: 3 hours, 5 minutes
German: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Portuguese: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Italian: 35 minutes
Dutch: 30 minutes
Polish: 25 minutes

2018 Total Hours:
Japanese: 76 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 58 hours, 20 minutes
Russian: 57 hours, 15 minutes
Spanish: 52 hours, 10 minutes
French: 23 hours, 25 minutes
German: 21 hours, 5 minutes
Portuguese: 13 hours, 15 minutes
Arabic: 8 hours, 10 minutes
Italian: 7 hours, 50 minutes
Polish: 4 hours, 20 minutes
Dutch: 4 hours, 20 minutes

[MamaPata]

У меня точно такая же проблема. Я провожаю часа два-три на автобусе, чтобы ходить на работу. Когда я вернусь, я уже устала. Я ем, ложу спать и все! Поэтому, я больше всего занимаюсь языками на автобусе, когда я слушаю подкасты. У меня много французских подкастов, и мало русских и испанских. Поэтому, сейчас я занимаюсь французским, а почти никогда не занимаюсь испанским или русским. Что Вы слушаете?

Удачи! Я уверена, что Вы сделаете все, что Вы хотите.

[David27]

У меня нет любимого подкаста на русском, но сейчас я слушаю arzamas. Это подкаст о истории и общей культуре, и у них есть большая библиотека прошлых подкастов, и вы можете выбрать темы, которые вам интересно (я лично попробую все прослушать).