Postby Denzagathist » Fri Jan 11, 2019 4:02 pm
This is late, but I was traveling during New Year’s and then sick. Time to write my post and finally close this tab on my Internet browser!
I don’t quite remember what my specific resolutions were for 2018, but I think they basically amounted to the following:
- improve your Japanese (because you live in Japan)
- improve your German (because you might be moving to Germany)
With such horribly vague goals, it’s easy to claim success. I did improve my Japanese a great deal in the first half of the year, but then I left Japan and stopped using Japanese altogether, so I may have lost most or all of that progress. German, on the other hand, has come a long way. I don’t think I was even conscious of the extent to which my German had become rusty after several years of neglect, but I’ve certainly revived it now to the level it once was at, and improved it further. I’ve been living in Germany for about 4 months now with almost no (language-related) difficulty. In the spring I added the goal of drastically improving my vocabulary in Greek, because it was kind of embarrassing how limited it was. That’s not a task that can ever truly be completed, but I can say with certainty that my Greek vocabulary is far better than it was a year ago.
I wrote more detailed goals for 2019 in my personal notes already, but I’ll share the gist of them here:
- Maintain/strengthen/solidify/reactivate: Croatian, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish (all approximately C1, some rusty)
- Greek: Continue plugging away at Greek to reach stronger B2 or approach C1. I expect to spend at least a couple weeks in Greece this summer.
- Italian: I’m already easily B2 in passive skills, but I’d like to be solidly B2 in active production as well. Motivation: possibly visiting Italy during the summer.
- Turkish: My Turkish has atrophied a lot since I studied in Istanbul a few years back, and it’s embarrassing. I’d like to get it back up to a solid B2.
- Japanese: I’ve put so much effort into Japanese and it’s a shame to just lose it. I’d like to bring it back to the level I was at before I left Japan (high B1 ~ low B2). Beyond that I don’t really care.
- Mandarin: Mandarin is on hold for now. My goal is not to forget everything and maybe maintain my A2~B1 level.
- Persian: I’ve been saying for years that this will be be the year that I really devote myself to Persian and finally reach B2. This year probably won’t be any different, but the goal remains high B1 or B2.
- Arabic: I started studying Arabic a couple weeks ago, inspired by an upcoming trip to Morocco this spring. I don’t know how much time I can realistically dedicate to Arabic, but something like A2 in MSA by the end of 2019 would be great. I doubt I’ll have the brain/willpower to start looking the dialects in any real capacity, but if I do then all the better.
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