#general:reflections

Aquest any, 2025, assoleixo una fita molt gran - porto 10 anys aprenent el català!

Tot i que no és la llengua que més temps he estudiat, és la llengua que més m'ha canviat la vida. No podria imaginar que una curiositat pel país darrere un equip de futbol (sí, va ser pel Barça que vaig començar a aprendre el català 🫣) em portaria a tantes amistats, tanta comunitat increïble, tanta cultura (ja que sigui llibres, sèries, pel·lícules, i sobretot música), i fins i tot un doctorat. No puc imaginar qui seria sense aquests 10 anys - no seria la mateixa persona, ni de bon tros.

Estic obligadíssim a agrair tots els catalans que he conegut al llarg d'aquests anys, ja fossin professoris, amiguis a la vida real o a Tumblr, gent que feien intercanvis lingüístics, etc - tothom m'ha acollit i m'ha fet sentir com a casa de seguida, i crec que la força del català rau en la quantitat de gent tan bonica que el parla. Gràcies per la paciència, per la disposició a parlar amb mi i contestar les meves preguntes, i per ser tan amable i tan acollidora <3

Per celebrar, com que la majoria de la música que escolto (i que he escoltat, realment, des que vaig començar a aprendre el català) és en català, he fet una playlist de totes les cançons que m'han acompanyat al llarg d'aquest viatge. Algunes són més conegudes que altres, algunes m'han sigut més importants i algunes més, i la barreja acaba semblant una mica random, però també volia celebrar amb la banda sonora d'aquest temps, perquè és el que més destaca per a mi. Spotify no em diu quant dura, només que són més de 24 hores de música, així que en teniu de sobres si voleu més música en català!

Gràcies a tothom que ha estat aquí des del principi, i a tothom que s'hi ha unit després! Espero que us apunteu a la festa, i per molts anys més :D

Heus aquí la llista:

Sí, he fet el càlcul i tinc la setmana correcte...benvinguts i benvingudes a la vuitena setmana del repte! La cosa va bastant bé, heus aquí els números:

basc* (1129/1903 mots = 59%)

gal·lès* (477/1632 mots = 29%)

romani (355/715 mots = 50%)

amhàric* (687/1646 mots = 42%)

Tot i el progrés que he fet, no crec que arribi al final dels cursos abans que acabi el repte. Dit això, mai he passat la fita de mil paraules en un curs de Memrise, així que ja ha valgut la pena. I penso seguir, si puc, durant l’any. Però primer, cal enfocar-me en les quatre setmanes que em queda, perquè amb això ja hi puc fer bastantes coses.

També estava pensant, i crec que estic en el moment ideal per fer un “level up” amb el gal·lès i el basc. És a dir que gairebé els sé parlar – no dominar, però simplement que em comencen a sortir frases i paraules sense haver-les planejat abans. Per això, vull tenir més hores d’estudi amb aquests dos, perquè si començo a entendre sèries/cançons/converses/et cètera, ja tindré més hores de pràctica i que no em faci mandra. Perquè amb el català ja tinc més de 100 hores aquest any (i amb la resta dels idiomes, menys de 20), només perquè miro sèries i vaig a hores de conversa i tal. Per tant, aquest és el meu repte per finals d’any.

Crec que havíem passat el punt del mig alguna setmana per aquí, no n’estic segur perquè fa tant de temps que no faig un post sobre el repte que ni sé en quina setmana estem (crec que la sisena però no us ho sabria dir segur). Però vaig estudiar molt durant el viatge, probablement perquè no tenia Tumblr per ocupar-me, i vaig avançar bastant. Aquí els percentatges i els números:

basc* (982/1903 mots = 52%)

gal·lès* (327/1632 mots = 20%)

romani (239/715 mots = 33%)

amhàric* (578/1646 mots = 35%)

rus* (455/4995 mots = 9%)

He deixat de banda el rus perquè el curs té àudio, cosa que m’és molt útil, com que no llegeixo bé el ciríl·lic, però que em fa molta mandra :P La resta em van bé, he après gairebé (o potser més de) 200 paraules cadascuna. I no hi ha cap curs amb un percentatge de menys de dues xifres! Així que estic bastant content amb el progrés que faig.

He canviat una mica alguns objectius per a finals d’any però ja us ho explicaré més endavant.

English below cut :)

Well, that’s another month over! I set really ambitious language goals at the beginning of the month, and...did not achieve them at all. I did do some interesting things this month that I hadn’t done before though, and I’d kind of like to reflect on them a bit.

I’ve read a lot of things about goal-setting, one of which was that goals need to be specific and achievable, and I think this is one of the hardest things about setting goals for languages. It’s definitely something I’ve struggled with in the past; it’s very easy for me to set daily/weekly goals of tasks I want to achieve, but there’s very little way to measure my progress between that and a general feeling that I’ve improved over the course of time. This month, though, I tried to experiment a bit with that.

Looking at estimations of how much time you need and how many words you should know in order to advance to the next CEFR level, I managed to create a better overarching goal, based in hours of language study. That way, I can feel like I’m working towards something specific even with languages where I’m not going to be able to speak fluently by the end of the year. CEFR levels on their own are not super helpful for me, since for most of the languages I’m learning they either don’t have the test, my goals don’t align with CEFR’s, or both. But looking at the time commitment gave me a good idea of what I needed to invest in all of them, as well as a more long-term vision of how to get there. This was really nice to have, since the idea of “fluency” or “understanding” is just sort of...exhausting?? Like, it doesn’t exist, and so if you set it as your goal you’re never going to get there. I need to learn how to just check off a box and be like I did that, I don’t need to worry about it anymore. Neverending tasks tend to make me want to give up before I’ve even started.

So February is finally at an end, and actually it was a really good month for language study! (Plus this is actually the most posts I’ve made in a month on this blog for the first time in a long while, possibly ever.) I think there are quite a lot of things to reflect on though, so this might be a somewhat rambly post.

I’ve been keeping track of how much time I spend on languages this year because I set goals back in January based on the amount of estimated hours I’d need to move up a CEFR level. That has been really interesting, because I don’t actually have any sense of how much time things take, and tl;dr the time goals are a lot more intense/unachievable than I previously thought. That being said, I think it’s been a really good demonstration to me of how committed and hardworking I really need to be able to make progress. For Romani, I did about 15 hours of work, and for Malayalam about 8. Which was quite a good amount in terms of how I felt about them for having done it, but it really puts the fact that you need several hundred hours to go up a level into perspective.

I did basically finish the challenges, although with Romani I didn’t post them all on here. I think that the Malayalam one was very productive and really got my brain going – my pronunciation improved a bit and also it was just really cool to talk to my dad about it, I could tell that it got his Malayalam brain going again as well. I’m excited to keep working on it, which I feel like is rare for me and Malayalam given my complicated past relationship to learning it. On the other hand, I wasn’t super happy with the Romani challenge. I wasn’t exactly unhappy with it, but I think that the nature of the daily challenges wasn’t enough to make me do the kind of learning I needed. I really liked listening to Radio Romano so I think that’s going to be more of a thing in the future. I also think I’ll try to focus on reading my book, which has a translation to English that on the one hand is helpful but on the other hand is probably sort of keeping me from really pushing my language skills...idk we’ll see. I also feel like I needed to work on rebuilding my vocabulary again, so I’ll work on that more in the future.

De trin shona, sikav Rromani shib tha me sim but vesolo, but siklem. Siklem but vorbi, dashtiv-man te gilabav but gilya, tha akana mangav te dav-duma Rromanes averesa. Sim tsirra trist, ke nashti sas te sikav kako shon, sas bi-lasho shon. Numa mangav te akanash shai sikav Rromani shib palpale, thai shai-vi te dav-duma averesa. Si vi-lashi vi-shukar shib, but kamav la. Kam-sikav la, numa akana nashtiv-man. (Te manges te des-duma Rromanes mansa, phen mange!)

This month was definitely a big improvement over a lot of my language study last year, so I'm really happy with how it went. I did start the month off a bit stronger than I ended it, but I learned some things along the way and I'm generally pretty happy with the work I put in.

The system of making study materials for the week on the weekend was a double-edged sword to some degree, because it was definitely nice during the week, but took so much time over the weekend that I couldn't really make something that was comprehensive in the way it needed to be. I'm trying to think of ways to make it better for next month, but hopefully with time I'll figure out the system a bit better and can then use it for other languages.

With regards to Romani, I'm really in love with the language, and every time I'm like I can't possible like a language this much I get proven wrong, so that's probably a good sign. I really want to get to a B1-ish level, which I think would be enough for me to be willing to start actually talking to people in it, and that's the end goal here. Because of that, next month I'm going to keep studying it (that's a first for me, I think!) and actively try to push myself in expanding my vocabulary and learning to speak and understand the language to the best of my ability.

On a side note, here's a visual of the number of words I studied over the past month (definitely more than 300):