quo vadis, domine?

… I wish rain and pleasant cooling soon. But nothing so much as being near you again soon. (Goethe to Schiller, July 6, 1799)

… I am close to you with everything that lives and thinks within me. (Schiller to Goethe, October 8, 1794)

Just a small sign of life. I can’t get used to not saying anything to you and not hearing from you for 8 days. (Schiller to Goethe, September 13, 1795)

Soon I will have the pleasure of hugging you again and asking your thoughts about a hundred things. (Goethe to Schiller, November 10, 1797)

It is a real comfort to me to have you near me again; Never has a separation seemed as long to me as the current one… (Schiller to Goethe, November 13, 1796)

I’m not coming today, my dear, but I hope soon. (Goethe to Schiller, October 25, 1795)

A follower of mine asked me what are some realistic goals when you’re learning languages but before giving you 100 examples, i want to mention that you can have daily, weekly, monthly or/and yearly goals. If you get easily distracted and need motivation, set goals for each category; however, if you can focus and be motivated for a longer period of time, you might not need daily or/and weekly goals.

Also, the numbers/minutes/hours are an example, you can change them according to your time, resources, motivation etc.

Daily goals

Read 1 article in your target language.

Learn 10 words.

Learn 1 poem in your target language.

Learn a song  in your target language.

Watch a movie.

Read 1 page from a book in your target language.

Sing 1 song in your target language.

Talk with a native for 10 minutes.

Learn 2 idioms.

Translate 1 song.

Translate 1 poem.

Write 1 short text about anything.

Watch 1 episode from your favourite show dubbed/subbed.

Get 50points on duolingo.

Make a vocab list.

Learn 1 new grammatical concept.

Think in your target language for 10 minutes

Read to a podcast for 15 minutes.

Learn 1 tongue twister.

Spend 15 minutes on WordBrewery.

Play on Babadum for 15 minutes.

Use Clozemaster for 15 minutes.

Listen to an audio book for 10 minutes.

Revise your notes for 20 minutes.

Learn 1 vocab list.

Weekly

Read 10 articles in your target language.

Read 2 books for children.

Learn 5 poems.

Learn 3 songs.

Watch 3 movies.

Learn 10 grammatical concepts.

Talk for 2 hours in your target language.

Learn 5 vocab lists.

Learn 100 new words.

Finish 8 lessons on duolingo. (i mean the entire bullet/dot/set of mini-lessons)

Watch 10 episodes from your favourite show  in your target language subbed/dubbed.

Learn 30 idioms.

Write 3 A4 pages about anything.

Translate 5 songs.

Learn 3 vocab lists.

Revise with the help of some tests online for 2 hours.

Change your phone settings to be in your target language.

Make a summary for the books you’ve read.

Read 10 pages from a complex book in your target language. 

Make 5 vocab lists.

Write a motivation text of 10 lines for your in your target language about why you enjoy learning languages.

Think for 2 hours in your target language.

Translate 3 pages from a book in your native language.

Translate 3 pages from a book in your target language.

Discover 10 new songs in your target language.

Monthly

Learn 350 new words.

Read 1 advanced book in your target language.

Finish a grammar book.

Finish 10 stories for kids.

Learn 80 idioms.

Learn 20 vocab lists.

Finish 35 lessons on duolingo. (the bullets/dots/set of mini lessons)

Make 20 vocab lists.

Watch 10 movies in your target language subbed/dubbed.

Translate 10 songs.

Learn 10 poems.

Learn 5 songs.

Talk to natives for 10 hours. 

Write summaries for every chapter/article you’ve read.

Watch 15 youtube videos in your target language .

Make a story of 5 minutes while looking at a random picture on google.

Understand a song (that you don’t know) without checking the lyrics too often.

Read 20 articles.

Make a dish while reading the recipe in your target language

Revise for 20 hours.

Keep a journal with your daily progress and at the end of the month, read how many things you achieved.

Read to a podcast for 24 hours.

Think in your target language for 24 hours.

Play babadum/wordbrewery/clozemaster for 10 hours.

Yearly

Be mistaken for a native.

Know 50 poems.

Be able to sing most Disney songs in your target language.

Watch movies without subs.

Learn 10.000 words.

Read 10 advanced books.

Finish duolingo/whatever course you use.

Be able to think in your target language effortlessly.

Master irregular verbs.

Have at least 5 native friends that talk to you in your target language.

Be proud you didn’t give up.

Study a bit daily.

Finish 3 grammar books/workbooks/books for advanced learners.

Have a decent accent.

Be able to read without translating anything.

Watch more movies in your target language than your native one/English.

Have favourite youtubers that are native of your target language.

Keep a diary and read how your year has been.

Be able to talk about advanced stuff.

Have very detailed descriptions.

Know the most popular songs in your target language.

Read mostly in your target language.

Know several new recipes that cooked only in the country where your target language is spoken.

Being able to say that you’re bilingual/multilingual/a polyglot.

“In 1948, the Government of Pakistan declared Urdu to be the sole national language of Pakistan, even though Bengali or Bangla was spoken by the majority of people combining East Pakistan and West Pakistan. The East Pakistan people protested, since the majority of the population was from East Pakistan and their mother language was Bangla. They demanded Bangla to be at least one of the national languages, in addition to Urdu.

Seterra quizzes - lots of 'click where on the map [place] is' games

Worldle - guess a country by the shape of its outline, with the distance/direction if you get it wrong. You can also guess capital, neighbours, population, flag, currencies, major cities, and size

Globle - enter the name of a country and get a warmer-cooler colour for how close the target country is

Globle capitals - similar, but with capital cities

Flaggle - a flag divided into sixths, and each guess reveals another portion along with distance/direction as a hint

Wheretaken - guess which country a photo comes from, then guess the capital, capital's location, a landmark, the landmark's name, and which city another photo comes from (this one can be tricky: pictures come from wikimedia commons so sometimes it's like... a gutter)

Geoguessr - drops you somewhere in the world on google street view and you can navigate around trying to to guess what street in the world your drop point was

I started playing these daily a couple of years ago, and now I can point to almost any country on a map (South Pacific is still a little tricky). Along with trivia like flags and capitals, I've picked up a lot about different places' architecture, languages, and foliage. Often when you play these you'll become curious: why does a Spanish-speaking country have a French-sounding capital? Why is there a really long edge on that border? What does the bird on that flag represent? Where is that beautiful temple in the picture?

fun fact: for decades children were beaten for speaking welsh in school, even in areas where english was barely spoken, because the government decided in 1847 that the language made people lazy and immoral

fun fact: welsh orthography is actually easy to read if you take your head out of your arse for one minute and learn our alphabet - just like french, or spanish, or korean, because surprise! languages use different spelling systems that are not based on english. novel, i know - and in the 18th century, travelling schools were able to teach people to read and write welsh in a matter of months, so that wales enjoyed a literate majority, a rare thing in europe at the time

Some of these might be a bit hard for total beginners, but they are easily accessible (Netflix or literally any 🏴‍☠️ streaming platform), and if you want the full immersion experience even though you can't understand half the things they are saying (what I did the first time I watched these shows, basically), I believe these are cool options.

Tv series:

Dark — time travel stuff, it gets really confusing at a certain point but I fell in love with it and I found it really cool

How to sell drugs online (fast) — a bit silly but it was a fun watch and the episodes are pretty short

Totenfrau — short, interesting crime series

Criminal — three standalone episodes set in an interview room, sort of a psychological thriller

Biohacker — I personally haven't watched this yet, but I think it's a sci-fi kind of thing

I second Dark!!! One of my favorite series of all time...

There's also Druck, the German remake of Norway's Skam. It centers on high school students in Berlin, so there's a lot of youth slang, but the episodes are short and the conversations are mostly about everyday topics. Can be watched in the ZDFmediathek or here.

If you're into documentaries, check out ARTE.

For reality series, there's a season of Queer Eye Germany (based on the US series) that has some heartwarming episodes.