daveprine's language commitments for 2018/2019

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
daveprine
Yellow Belt
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon May 30, 2016 7:47 pm
Languages: English (native speaker); working to maintain German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Indonesian; slowly revisiting other languages studied but poorly maintained in hopes of maintaining them for the long haul.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8921
x 262

Re: daveprine's language commitments for 2018/2019

Postby daveprine » Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:02 am

Caromarlyse wrote:There definitely needs to be a proverb along the lines of "A lent book is never returned" because it is a universal truth.


Can't help you. I loaned my book of proverbs to Rick Dearman He never gave it back.

:lol:
2 x
Main: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Indonesian
To a lesser degree: Hungarian, Dutch, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese, Albanian, Plains Cree
And then: Manx, Japanese, Tunica, Chinuk Wawa
And then I'll cure world hunger and build a hotel on the moon.

User avatar
daveprine
Yellow Belt
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon May 30, 2016 7:47 pm
Languages: English (native speaker); working to maintain German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Indonesian; slowly revisiting other languages studied but poorly maintained in hopes of maintaining them for the long haul.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8921
x 262

Re: daveprine's language commitments for 2018/2019

Postby daveprine » Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:06 am

OK, first, progress update:


Language 1 (4 weeks): Hungarian—I met my goal for the second week. In fact, I’m almost at my 4-week goal. I’ll wrap up the Pimsleur 16-lesson course this week and move on to other resources. Once I get to 100 words, I’ll maintain them and slowly add some vocab.

Language 2 (2 weeks): Dutch—I made the 2-week goal and then some, quite easily. I’m having fun with it, so I’m going to stick with it for another 2 weeks.

Language 3 (1 week): Ukrainian—I made my goal of 50 words—barely. I only just started the Pimsleur course, and it’s not as easy as I had expected. But I’m rolling with it and getting a little momentum. Duolingo is becoming a bit tedious and repetitive. But I’ll stick with Ukrainian for at least another week.


The day after my last post, sure enough, I met a woman at the gym who spoke Ukrainian. I floundered and had varying pronunciation (some was good). OK, so this is often the inspiration for me speaking a language—to know I’ll be talking to someone. More often than not, it’s someone who speaks a language I haven’t studied in a while. It could have been Lithuanian or Greek, in which case I’d be tempted to switch. But fortunately, it was a language I’m actually trying to learn, so I can stay on track while having added motivation. Although I haven’t seen her since. So we’ll see if I get to use my floundering Ukrainian. (“Where is the cat?” “The honey is where the milk is.” “Mom and dad are here, but auntie is there!”)

So I want to briefly mention that the other languages I’ve been maintaining (German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Indonesian, a.k.a. “the Big 5”) are being maintained, although not at the level I would hope. Mostly reviewing flashcards, skimming a few other resources. Why? Looking for work, spending significant time at the gym, getting a house and yard fixed up to sell soon, handling normal day-to-day tasks, getting back into playing guitar (and, soon, jazz piano), and most of my language time has been spent studying these new languages.

Which leads me to the Underwear Gnomes. There was a South Park episode where these little gnomes go around stealing the boys’ underwear as part of Phase 1 (“Collect Underpants”) of their master plan. Phase 3 is “Profit." But they don’t have a Phase 2 clearly defined. Then Kenny dies.

Anyway, except for the dying part, I’m feeling a bit like that. I study languages, but then I expect myself to maintain them. The more I learn, the harder it will be. I didn’t clearly have a Plan 2 for this whole thing. Granted, with Hungarian and Dutch, I’m reaching my 4-week goals (100 words) ahead of schedule, so I’ll have more time in the next few weeks to maintain them and return to the Big 5 to give them more love. Maybe.

I look forward to a post in the near future where I provide some highly positive and successful progress reports.


Also, no books were completed this week. Much sadness.
6 x
Main: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Indonesian
To a lesser degree: Hungarian, Dutch, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese, Albanian, Plains Cree
And then: Manx, Japanese, Tunica, Chinuk Wawa
And then I'll cure world hunger and build a hotel on the moon.

User avatar
daveprine
Yellow Belt
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon May 30, 2016 7:47 pm
Languages: English (native speaker); working to maintain German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Indonesian; slowly revisiting other languages studied but poorly maintained in hopes of maintaining them for the long haul.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8921
x 262

Re: daveprine's language commitments for 2018/2019

Postby daveprine » Sun Jan 29, 2023 1:28 am

Hi, Gang!

OK, so I’m almost through Week 4 of my attempt at language building/reinforcing/learning. I was writing a post for Week 3’s progress and then wrote a few half-drafts but never posted. But the long and short of it is that I accomplished Week 4’s goals of 100 words in each language before Week 3 ended, so I’ve been using this last week to really solidify what I picked up and continued learning what I could make time for. So, as far as I’m concerned, this first 4-week session was a success.

A long time ago, I made a point to learn 1000 Navajo words in a year, which I did. But the follow-up question was “So what?” I didn’t do anything with any of it. So I ask myself the same question. Why am I doing this?

Actually, I have 2 answers. The first is “I don’t know.” Will I continue to learn more of these languages to use them practically? Or will I just have this smattering of vocabulary and sentence patterns to spit out at the next opportunity?”

The other answer is: “I now have a smattering of vocabulary and sentence patterns to spit out at the next opportunity—as long as I continue to maintain it on a regular basis.”

I go back and forth between the two. We’ll see how this goes.

So now I’m going to start the next round of languages. Somehow I’ll magically do that and continue with the first three. I already have a plan for finishing Hungarian, Dutch, and Ukrainian in Duolingo by the end of the year. Again, I’m an Underpants Gnome on this.


My Hungarian was mostly stuff I had already learned years ago. Most is familiar and it’s all coming back quite well. Again, the trick is not to ever lose it, so let’s see how successful I’ll be at making it stick. I paused with Duolingo because the last lesson used a lot of professions, which I didn’t find useful. I’ll come back to it eventually. I finished the Pimsleur course I have.

I knew very little in Dutch, so most of my accomplishment consisted of new material. Sentences are easy to put together, vocabulary is easy to memorize, and the vocab and grammar are easy to pick up due to being similar to German. Duolingo is actually proving to be useful with providing vocab and sentence patterns is a way that’s becoming less annoying and redundant. Coupled with the Pimsleur course I have, it’s flowing nicely. I hope to finish that this weekend.

Ukrainian is starting to sink in. I’m only up to lesson 8 for the Pimsleur course I have. It’s starting to go a little fast and the two Native speakers have different pronunciation, so that’s a pain. Duolingo doesn’t give grammar explanations anymore and their vocabulary is still bland and random (“My business is honey and milk.” Ugh). But knowing Russian has helped me absorb the material. I’ve got a Teach Yourself Ukrainian I need to look at to get to the next stage.

And then start a whole new set of languages. Still deciding, but I think I’ll shoot for Brazilian Portuguese (hating the idea of another Romance language, but part of why I’m doing this is to reinforce what I used to know), Albanian (why not?), and Plains Cree.


Plains Cree is a language I knew a little bit of (I contributed very basic children’s stories to be translated into Cree a long time ago as part of an attempt to get involved with languages of Canada. These stories were translated into various languages, including Cree, although I don’t think the Cree versions are available anymore.*) Plus, now that I’m keeping an eye out for jobs in Canada, knowing some looks good on a resume.

So here’s what my first 4 weeks looked like:


Screen Shot 2023-01-28 at 5.17.55 PM.png


And here is what the next 4 weeks will start to look like:

Screen Shot 2023-01-28 at 5.23.38 PM.png


You made it this far? You must like ramblings. I just got an email from Lindsay Does Languages. She has a podcast and one episode focuses on learning multiple languages simultaneously. I skimmed it, will return to it later:

https://www.lindsaydoeslanguages.com/ho ... languages/





*I just found out while writing this that my stories have been translated into Ukrainian (as well as Mandarin and Cantonese and a native language in Mexico)! Go figure!

https://indigenousstorybooks.ca/stories/uk/0021/
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
6 x
Main: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Indonesian
To a lesser degree: Hungarian, Dutch, Ukrainian, Brazilian Portuguese, Albanian, Plains Cree
And then: Manx, Japanese, Tunica, Chinuk Wawa
And then I'll cure world hunger and build a hotel on the moon.


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests