August Polyglot Challenge!
Pull up a new tab, crack open your dictionaries and hold on to your glossaries, kids. ‘Cause it’s time for an August Polyglot Challenge!
If there’s one bane at the core of many a language learner’s existence, it’s vocabulary and how to learn it. Which is why this month we’re going to not just learn a manageable amount of new words, but become mini-experts on them.
To choose 25 words at random from the dictionary in your target language to learn each week. Well, not entirely at random. Do some perusing. These words should stand out to you in some way, whether they be related to your interests, have a wickedly sweet pronunciation or cool letter combination, character or sign, or simply not be directly translateable into your native language. By the end of the month, you will have extensively learned 100 new vocabulary words that appeal to you in your target language.
Choose one language for the challenge to focus on throughout the entire month. If you want to choose your native language, go ahead. If you’re learning more than one language, consider doing the challenge for a different language next month.
At the start of each week, use a dictionary to make your list of 25 words. Include part of speech, meaning, pronunciation notes or even IPA if you’d like. More information will be added to the list throughout the week.
Listen to the pronunciation of your words on an online dictionary or ask a native/proficient speaker to say them if possible. Discover the etymology of the words. Break the words down. Do they contain affixes? Are they obsolete, irregular, a staple of every speaker of that language’s basic vocabulary? Do they have multiple definitions? Find quotes or example sentences using the words. Expand your initial vocab list with the tidbits you learn throughout the week.
Write your own sentences using the vocabulary. If you’re a beginner in that language, you can write a description of the word in your native/proficient languages or write a bilingual sentence where you insert the word where it’s appropriate. Write at least one sentence for each vocabulary word. The more, the better.
At the end of each week, check to see how well you recall the words you’ve learned. You might consider writing out the words with their meanings by memory, playing a matching game with your words and their definitions, blurring out the word in your example sentences and filling in the blanks, quizzing yourself with flashcards or whatever you would usually do to make sure you know all the words you learned that week. Then choose your 25 words for the next week, take a deep breath, and repeat.
Langblrs are encouraged to:
Share the words you’ve learned with the langblr community so everyone can increase their vocabularies together. Share the resources you used, pictures of your notes, your struggles, frustrations and triumphant moments of learning your vocabulary, whatever you’d like. (:
This is an opportunity to learn neat, phenomenally beautiful words in your target language. Don’t settle for memorizing a list of basic vocabulary provided to you by your learning textbooks - YOU NEED TO MAKE UP YOUR OWN VOCABULARY LIST FROM SCRATCH. If you don’t have a print dictionary, use an online dictionary or Wikipedia to start. Cognates are considered cheating for obvious reasons (they’re hardly a challenge to learn) and are forbidden.
Let the August Polyglot Challenge begin!
