Last week I had the worst week of study since I started my new structured study plan in June. The good news is the cause is not burnout. The bad news is it’s related to bigger mental health stuff that’s going to take me a while to work through. I’m not great at relaxation/recharging. I can do individual days well, but like, I try to vacation for a week and I’m a disaster by the end of it. Ugh.

On the positive side, I finished a page of listening notes in my notebook and it felt really good to see:

Here I’m jotting down timestamps for stuff I’m struggling with and then go back over it with the transcript after I finish the podcast episode. The tactile notebook and pen gives my brain something to fidget with while I’m listening, and that might have been the magic key for me. I feel pretty good about it now, and if I were testing for N4 in December I’d be in great shape, but alas, I’m aiming higher. There are another 100+ episodes in this series and I might do them all. The great thing is, once I go a step higher than this podcast, there will be tons of content available to flip through and the conversation will be more interesting.

I feasted, nay, engorged myself in Japanese, to the detriment of my Spanish and Irish. I’m still doing my Spanish, but it’s a drop in the ocean of what I used to do. Realized today I’m probably hella depressed, but I guess it is coming to be in waves? I guess despite my constant efforts, I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere in my languages, so that doesn’t help. Feel sort of like, what’s the point? You know. Like I like learning the languages, and I want to be good at them someday, but my motivation is in the swanny.

Like I mentioned last week, I was traveling. Some fun (language) moments from that were things like this:

• Had several points where my group (who otherwise mostly didn’t speak Spanish) asked me to tell a native-speaker something
• And vice-versa a time or two, where a native speaker was like ‘You speak Spanish? I’ll explain this to you, then you can tell your group’.
• Went into a restaurant and ordered take-out for the group without a translator tagging along
• Had someone struggling to come up with the English to tell me something - stopped him and said Spanish was fine, to his relief

There were also some low-lights tho. A couple times I forgot a key word that kept me from fully understanding a message, or I’d hear something wrong (like 80 instead of 8). But generally I was pretty happy with where I got.

I finished the book I was reading this week (Prince of Fog), and started another (The Little Prince). Now that I’m done with this trip, I’ll probably wrap up reading that last book and drop Spanish pretty hard to get back to Japanese. I always feel a little bad about that, I think I could get pretty good with Spanish if I stuck with it. But there’s only so much time in the day, Japanese is the one I most want to learn, and I’ve had it in maintenance mode for a month or so.

A few weeks of in person tutoring has shown me exactly what my weaknesses are and what I really have to work on. Alas, it feels like a step back rather than a step forward, but I know this is mostly a psychological issue.

Learning about weaknesses is more important. I’m probably making more real progress than my psychology believes.

I’ve explicitly enrolled for classes because I knew my speaking skills sucked. They still suck but now I know the problem. More importantly, I’ve learned the importance of trying to form sentences of my own accord.

To correct this issue, I’ve been advised to start talking to myself (!!!) in German… and start trying to think in complete sentences, etc. etc. You cannot learn sentence construction and conjugation with paper work or exercises, you have to just make sentences over and over again.

A few weeks ago, this would have been impossible. I didn’t know enough vocabulary to talk to myself. But now… I can. With help from Wiktionary and other English-German dictionaries.

I shared some of the children songs with Learning German discord, and some B1-ish people were talking about how some of those songs felt challenging. So indeed, children songs can vary from A1 through B1, don’t be discouraged by the kid nature, some truly are more advanced than they look.

I did accomplish a new feat this past week. Upon listening to 99 Luftballoons, I suddenly realized how none of the lyrics-rhymes work in English. Then I realized that I knew this because I’m actually beginning to learn the German lyrics (to the point where I can sing some of the simpler lyrics: like the 1st verse while it’s still slow).

In particular was my sudden realization that it’s neun-und-neun…zig Luftballoons. (She has a bit of a pause in German before saying -zig). Plus all the nearby words that rhyme with zig/sich/Ich/mich/dich/veillicht . This absolutely cannot and never will work in English, it’s something that can only be appreciated in German.

So I did accomplish a new listening feat. It may have been an entire lifetime of listening to 99 Luftballoons, but now suddenly I’m truly beginning to understand it.

I’ll probably spend the next month working on vocabulary so that I can truly learn 99 Luftballoons. (I finished the vocab practice with Lagtrain German cover by Jinja, but it’s grammar is too difficult for me to comprehend even if I know the individual words).

I’m getting back into learning Mandarin after a two year hiatus. I’m still very much a beginner and while I don’t find tones themselves too difficult it is definitely hard to time tones and pronunciation all at once.

While studying basic vocabulary I’ve been learning phrases that I typically say to my dogs (“work from home” life) for fun.

I had just started looking for songs in Finnish to study the lyrics and then this thread pops up just in time, so I’ll probably focus on that for a while. It includes recommendations in many languages, so leaving it here in case you haven’t seen it. https://sopuli.xyz/post/39721924

I’ve been busy, traveling, or sick or a combination of all 3 for a long time. I’m recovering now and wanna get back to it