Yes, I did the calculations and I have the right week...welcome to the eighth week of the challenge! Itâs going pretty well, here are the numbers:
Basque* (1129/1903 mots = 59%)
Welsh* (477/1632 mots = 29%)
Romani (355/715 mots = 50%)
Amharic* (687/1646 mots = 42%)
Despite the progress Iâve made, I donât think Iâll make it to the end of the courses before the challenge ends. That being said, Iâve never passed the milestone of a thousand words in the Memrise course before, so itâs already been worth it. And I think Iâm going to continue, if I can, during the year. But first, I need to focus on the four weeks that I have left, because I can still do a lot with that.
I was also thinking, and I think Iâm in the ideal moment to âlevel upâ my Welsh and Basque. What I mean is that I almost know how to speak them â not master them, but just that words and phrases are starting to come to me without having planned them beforehand. Because of that, I want to have more hours of study with these two, because if I start understanding series/songs/conversations/et cetera, Iâll have more hours of practice and that wonât bore me. Because with Catalan, I already have more than 100 hours this year (and with the rest of my languages, less than 20), just because I watch shows and go to conversation hours and stuff. Therefore, this is my challenge for the end of the year.
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I think that weâve passed the middle point some week in here, Iâm not sure because itâs been so long since Iâve made a post about the challenge that I donât even know what week weâre on (I think the sixth but Iâm not 100% sure). But I studied a lot on my trip, probably because I didnât have Tumblr to keep me busy, and I advanced a fair amount. Here are the percentages and the numbers:
Basque* (982/1903 words = 52%)
Welsh* (327/1632 words = 20%)
Romani (239/715 words = 33%)
Amharic* (578/1646 words = 35%)
Russian* (455/4995 words = 9%)
Iâve set aside Russian because the course has audio, which is very useful for me, since I donât read Cyrillic very well, but also annoys me :P The rest are going pretty well, Iâve learned almost (or maybe more that) 200 words for each. And thereâs no course with a percentage under 2 digits! So Iâm pretty happy with my progress.
Iâve changed some of my goals for the end of the year but Iâll explain that to you guys later.
Everything going pretty well, starting to understand stuff, and I wrote the Biography section for Ilargipean today, itâs terrible but at least itâs long and in BasqueâŠ
Also for extra motivation, I told my dad that I would pay him $1 if he could understand Spanish before I could understand Basque and $2 if he could understand Romanian (not planning on paying either of these, since Romanian was an offhand joke and he doesnât spend much time on Spanish anyways, also he has a job that pays him much more than that so he probably could care less about my puny $3).
Anyhow, weâll see if thereâs an improvement by the end of the month, praying for one because Iâve sacrificed too many hours listening to Glaukoma.
Iâve been talking for a while about how with Basque Iâm trying to use a few traditional learning materials as possible, just listening a lot and translating and speaking. I had some doubts early on. My learning wasnât going that fast, I could barely understand anything, and it just seemed to difficult. But Iâve managed to push myself out of that initial rut and suddenly Iâve been racing along at breakneck speed.
What Iâve discovered is how to stop worrying about being a perfectionist, just translate everything and focus on the little things. If I understand one line of an Esne Beltza song, thatâs one more line than I understood before. Iâve been going on word sprees, translating everything in sight, and using a dictionary that requires root forms has been very helpful in learning to take apart the parts of the word. Iâve been speaking without too much worry of whether or not Iâm grammatically correct, just pushing myself to the boundaries and trying to go a bit farther than I could the day before. With that, Iâve seen myself improve a lot. I can pick out words on TV shows. I can understand sentences in Esne Beltza songs. I can talk about something without having to go to the dictionary (too often) to look up words.
This is language learning in its essence. Whether you use Rosetta Stone or learn by talking to the guy next to you on the train, language learning is about pushing yourself to understand just one more sentence, to get that feeling of satisfaction when you do something you couldnât have done yesterday.
