just a little rant on language - crawling nearly nonsensical notes for myself, to compare over time
had been working on Romanian last year, before I attempted Italian or Spanish - and I am very glad that I did it in that direction (although, honestly, I had Latin, Spanish and Italian books from my father as a child I did not get far, nowhere near as far as I did last year in understanding)...
I do love the language, the structure, the way I 'intuit' so many of the words that I know have relatives alive in English today. I'm hearing and reading and making 'undercurrent' connections that slip away into the stream almost as quickly as they come.. this word is that word, pop-up 'windows' in my brain of oh- that means 'this' in Welsh, Italian, Greek... this is the 'finally given the keys to the car' I was talking about once upon a time, when I finally could use all that space that was previously used for store inventory and ordering stuff - rub the dry erase board eraser all over it and start reorganizing it to do something else...
What put me off continuing to learn Romanian for a bit (I even bought a very good book!).. was all of the harder longer political and nationality words that I couldn't remember the spelling of to save my life... although I've gotten a bit better at that in Welsh this last year (I can rip of cyfrifriadau and gwyddoniaeth pretty easily now) I'm not sure where that skill was picked up and if it is helping with this or just coincidence...
Anyway, here is the progress on DuoLingo I've made in the 20-some languages I've been working on over the past two years (more, for French and Welsh, and one year extra for Romanian)
current crowns /vs. March 2nd, the last entry into my current journal), and current 'level' I write this down again because I feel that it shows how slowly I'm going in most but then I go set the hammer down on a few others here and there, and jump to the nearest one that feels 'related' to me.. like Guarani and Japanese at the moment, while merging to Romanian while ignoring Spanish.... *blinks at self, because the Guarani is being translated FROM Spanish to learn it... and yet, it isn't exactly learning Spanish, just practicing using it as a medium* but in any given week I'll touch at least half of these.
real world : beyond some random books lying about - I actually do immerse myself in languages in novel ways this last year than before -- I have artist 'friends' I follow that post in Spanish, Polish, Portuguese and Latvian, and I switch back and forth on their translations to check my ability. I also follow French and Welsh facebook groups. My feed is so mixed up some days, the 'algorithm' has no idea what language to show things to me, ads show up in multiple languages, and the other day it started showing me chemistry stuff from a group in the Philippines that has a language I have not went looking for exactly yet, but it has piqued my interest. I listen to podcasts in Welsh, French, Portuguese and Spanish, and radio stations and music in French and Welsh, and have several newsfeeds in French that pop up with headlines from France that I have to go 'wait, what did I just half-translate?'... so yes, I do love languages. Much better than when I got my Google stuck in Welsh mode for a month from clicking something odd on S4C 'Chwilio, anyone?', and my phone has been stuck in Japanese but only for a few hours - I fixed that one pretty quick!
French - 455 crowns vs. 432 in March, currently at level 25+
(French is my 'goto' when I'm tired, but the grammar level is really high at this level and long sentences, so sometimes that is the annoying bit to remember and I'll avoid it for something 'easier' (shorter sentences, simpler grammar in another language))
Welsh - 371 vs 367, level 24
Spanish - 285 vs 278, level 22
Czech - 168 vs 166, level 18
Romanian - 144 vs 144, level 16 (currently working on updating)
Portuguese - 111 vs 98, level 16
Greek - 72 vs 69 - level 14
Italian, 89 vs 85 - level 14
Japanese, 72 vs 72, level 14 (been working on this one, too)
German - 79 vs 76, level 13 (always a bit of a lie, since it was my high school minor, I just don't dive into it unless I'm really bored/tired etc.)
Finnish - 62, level 11
Norwegian - 67, level 11
Swedish - 43, level 10
Hungarian - 26 vs 24, level 10
Catalan - 33 vs 25, level 10 (from Spanish)
Irish - 53 vs 52, level 9
Ukranian - 19 vs 13, level 9
Turkish - 39, level 9
Polish - 30, level 9
Dutch and Zulu at level 6, Haitian Creole at level 5
Guarani just started last week, level 5 (from Spanish)
and I still go play around on a Latvian children's game site, work with my flash cards and read their news or children's book synopsis site at their online bookstore when I am feeling 'tetchy' about it not being on DuoLingo and something reminds me of it.
I recently started working on Quazel microphone AI chat site but there is some 'avoidance factor' on the speaking as well - but it's excellent 'production' practice.. I just have to kick myself hard to go do it like making a phone call, it is the same sort of an 'interaction/rejection' get it wrong instinct like talking to a person would be.
