#1yearoflangschallenge

[amillionlanguages]

This past year I completed the #1YearOfLangs challenge where I studied a new language every month in 2019! Here’s the original post I made in December 2018 where I explained the rules I followed this year.

I think it would be good to have some updated guidelines since people have said they’d like a bit more flexibility in the challenge, or ways to do the challenge with fewer languages since 12 is a lot!

The main focus is still to work on several languages over the course of an extended period of time, but these variations on the challenge can make it way easier to fit your life! So, here are the variations I came up with:

The Original – 12 languages in a year, spending 1 month on each

Use the tag #OriginalYearOfLangs if you follow this version!

The Extended – 6 languages in a year, spending 2 months on each

Use the tag #ExtendedYearOfLangs if you follow this version!

The Triad – 3 languages in 3 months, spending 1 month on each

Use the tag #TriadMonthsOfLangs if you follow this version!

The Twins – 2 languages in 12 months, spending 6 months on each

Use the tag #TwinsYearOfLangs if you follow this version!

The Soloist – spending the whole year focusing on learning 1 language

Use the tag #SoloistYearOfLangs if you follow this version!

Or any other combination of months and number of languages! These ideas are just to get you started!

I’m also going to be putting out a post for a #1MonthOfLangs challenge that’s a month long challenge for language learners since a whole year is pretty intimidating for a lot of people! Look out for that post soon!

Some other guidelines I’d like to mention are:

Try to post whenever you can but the main goal should be to do at least a little practice every day and to get in the habit of doing so

Tag any posts with #1yearoflangs #1yearoflangschallenge and any of the previously mentioned tags if they’re applicable to the version of the challenge you’re doing

Feel free to message me or send me an ask if you have any questions or comments about the challenge, my experience with it, or anything else you can think of!

Comment if you’re interested in doing the #1YearOfLangs challenge in 2020! I’m so excited to hear about all of your language plans!!

[amillionlanguages]

Hey everyone! Working on my Duolingo practice for the day and just wanted to check in and share my progress this month!

Here’s where I’m at so far in the course, I’ve been doing around one lesson set a day:

So I’ve been doing practice on Duolingo every day and I’ve been making a lot of progress! This month I’ve been working on Danish and I’m really enjoying it! I feel like I’m going through it much quicker than most of the languages that I’ve been trying to learn this year. Definitely having a lot of fun with this one, I love the way it sounds and it’s similar enough to some of the other languages that it doesn’t feel too unfamiliar to the point where it’s intimidating and discouraging. I think that’s one of my favorite parts of the #1yearoflangs challenge, new languages feel a lot less scary after the first few since you start to see the connections and similarities.

Anyway, I hope you all are doing wonderfully! I’ve been super busy with school so I haven’t had the chance to post as much as I would have liked, thank you all for being so patient with me <3

I think it would be super cool if some of y’all tried to do this challenge in 2020, maybe we can start a groupchat for people who are interested? If so, message me and I’ll set one up! 

[amillionlanguages]

Recent thoughts...

Hey y’all, it’s been a hot second since I last checked in on here. Thank you so much for being patient with me, I’ve been really busy first with school and finals, and now I’m doing an internship on a farm in Hawaii so I’ve had somewhat limited wifi. I just wanted to add a little update to my #1yearoflangs challenge, talk about where I’m at, how I’m changing things moving forward, etc. Also I just wanted to say that I’ve seen all of your kind messages and questions and I’ll get to them soon! A lot of people have been asking for resources and I’ll try to answer as many of the questions as I can in the next couple of days and respond to any messages as well! I appreciate all the support and for all of you reaching out, I just haven’t had a chance to get back to ya’ll yet.

So, am I still doing the challenge? Yes! I intend to do so, at least. I’ve kind of fallen out of the habit since I haven’t been very interested in the previous couple of languages that I had chosen to focus on, so that has caused me to lose interest in it and lose motivation. However, I decided that in order to keep going with this challenge, I’d need to rethink it and choose languages that I actually want to learn, not just ones I feel like I should learn. So, moving forward, the plan for the next few months is:

• July (this month): Portuguese (loving it so far!)

• August: Romanian

• September: Indonesian

• October: Norwegian

• November: Danish

• December: Esperanto

I have a much better feeling about these languages since I have a genuine interest in all of them, however I’m still leaving a bit more flexibility so if I don’t feel like doing one of them, I can totally switch them around or find new languages that I’d be interested to try. I tried to find languages that have Duolingo courses for them, so hopefully the ease of access also helps. 

I’ve done the first few days of Portuguese and I’m really liking it since it’s fairly similar to Spanish and French, which I’ve learned a bit of in the past. However, it’s different enough from them that it’s still interesting and engaging to me. 

I don’t know how much I’ll be posting moving forward, but I’ll try my best to keep creating some content for y’all. It’s almost exactly halfway through the challenge and to be honest I’ve already done more than I actually expected to. Just the fact that I’m still trying to bring my attention back to the challenge after 6 months is impressive to me since I don’t know if I’ve ever really tried to do something like this for such a sustained period of time.

I’ve really enjoyed making content for y’all on here, and I’d be curious to know what kinds of things you like to see! Do you find vocab sheets useful, or talking about grammar and conjugations, or just talking about a certain language in general, or something else? I’d really like if you’d send me a message or comment with what your favorite types of content from me you’d like to see, since it helps me to know what would be the best to post about!

If anyone wants to be friends on Duolingo so we can see each other’s progress (and a bit of healthy competition!), add me! My username is drewdost

Thank you all so much for your patience, and I’m excited to see where the next 6 months can take us!

[amillionlanguages]

Recap: a month of Romanian

Hey!! So sorry I kept forgetting to update y’all during this past month, but I promise to do better with updates going forward! I’m going to try and update wayyyyyy more regularly with Indonesian this month (September) :P

Anyway! So how did this past month go, you may be wondering? Or not, I don’t know what you think

It went really well! I absolutely loved the language and had a really fun time with it! It actually reminded me a lot of Italian which was kind of surprising. It came pretty naturally to me since Romanian is actually a romance language, which I didn’t know before starting! It was really fun to learn since it was different enough from other languages that I’ve learned so I was still engaged in the learning, but not so different that it was super difficult to pick it up.

I mainly used Duolingo for learning this past month since I really didn’t have much time to devote to this challenge so it was nice to just stick with one resource and just work on that every day.

To be honest, I didn’t get as far along in the Duolingo course as I had wanted or anticipated, but that’s ok since I know there was a lot going on in my life that I hadn’t really planned for. 

Going forward, I hope to update y’all way more often since I do genuinely enjoy sharing my progress on here! I love getting comments and questions, so definitely keep it coming! It helps a lot with motivation to keep going with this challenge haha

I’m honestly kind of surprised that I’m still doing this challenge 9 months later, and I truly believe that it’s because of the support that I’ve received on here. I know I probably would have dropped it months ago if not for all of you, so thank you for encouraging and supporting me! 

[amillionlanguages]

hii thanks for posting about indonesian languageee

Of course! I’m having a fun time with it so far so it’s my pleasure :) Hopefully it’s helping some people!

[cnvntnl-wpns]

My Spanish Resources (1YearOfLangs Day 9)

As well as language-learning resources I’ve used in general for other languages. I might update this post later, or maybe not, but for now these are the top tools I have at my fingertips. :) Oh, and my boyfriend who’s fluent.

Websites/Software:

Duolingo, obviously -- Duolingo is great because it gets you to interact with the language every day in order to keep your streak. Even if you only do a lesson or two a day, every piece of input helps! I need not explain more because I think everyone uses Duolingo at this point lol. I used Duolingo as my primary way of studying Czech over the summer (Ahoj!) and it was a lot of fun. I especially like the new leaderboards, as it got me to practice more in order to move up in rank.

Mango Languages -- I get this program for free through my local library and although I haven’t been using it for long, it’s already become probably my favorite tool. There’s something about the way it presents content that has really helped me understand it, and what’s awesome about it is that it helps develop your listening/comprehension as well as your speaking. I haven’t gotten far enough to see if it provides opportunities for production as well, but even without that it’s still incredibly useful for beginners. Oh, and it has cultural notes tied in as well.

Anki -- I think most of y’all either already use Anki or know about it, but with my German class last semester it was invaluable in helping me do well on vocabulary quizzes. The science that goes into it Actually Works, and there’s a decent forum community dedicated to getting the most out of the software. Physical flash cards get bulky and time-consuming fast, and Anki has worked just as well if not better for me, because I can’t lose my cards!

Books:

Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner -- This is the holy grail of language-learning books. I cannot stress enough how important it is to read; it’s always on top of my stack of language books. He has a website too (https://fluent-forever.com/), and a new app which I am going to start using this week!

Dicho y Hecho -- This is my Spanish textbook for the upcoming two semesters. I haven’t interacted with it much yet, but no doubt we’ll become very familiar over the coming months.

Barron’s 501 Spanish Verbs, 7th Edition -- This is like, the Bible of verbs. I think it’ll come in most handy with composition exercises.

Living Language Spanish Learner’s Dictionary -- Alright, hear me out. As a complete beginner, a full-on Spanish-English dictionary isn’t going to help me out much. It’s too big and confusing, but this one is more targeted and useful for a newbie like me.

McGraw Hill Easy Spanish Step-by-Step -- A grammar workbook! Soon I’ll be portioning out what lessons to do each week, probably whatever matches up with my college course’s lessons.

McGraw Hill Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Vocabulary, 2nd Edition -- Not the most recent edition (I think they’re on the 3rd), but helpful and relevant nonetheless. This is a huge workbook, and again I’ll be portioning it out to more or less line up with my actual course.

I have some other books too, but these are the main ones I’ll be using outside of children’s books, etc.

Podcasts:

I have auditory processing disorder, and podcasts are difficult for me to get anything out of. Regardless, I have a list of podcasts I want to at least TRY, especially during my 30 minute commute to work.

Notes In Spanish Inspired Beginners podcast

Duolingo Spanish podcast

Unlimited Spanish podcast (I can already understand some of the episode titles!)

Learn In Your Car Spanish podcast (on YouTube)

[cnvntnl-wpns]

1YearOfLangs Day 8

Duolingo progress is very small, but I feel confident with what I’ve learned so far. “Mi pasaporte está aquí​.” I do need to learn the keyboard shortcuts for Spanish accents though.

[cnvntnl-wpns]

Lo siento (1YearOfLangs Day 7)

“I’m sorry” seems a fitting title here, as I want to apologize to myself for not being super on top of the challenge. However, I’ve been doing a little bit each day in my own way. I went to a secondhand bookstore and bought a few really useful Spanish books for reference once I start class in 6 days. I also got the first Harry Potter book in Spanish as a goal to work towards! I know I’ll be proud of myself when I can finally read through it hopefully by the end of 2020, and it should be easy because I already know the (English) book well.

So that’s what I’ve been up to! I think Duo is a bit pissed at me for skipping a few days of Duolingo, but he doesn’t work retail so what does he know about fatigue.