barryekeith

February 2025 Summary of Language Study
105hrs 38min
35% (37 hrs) Chinese
29% (31 hrs) French
14% (14 hrs) Italian
8% (8 hrs) Japanese
5% (5.5 hrs) Korean
4% (4 hrs) Spanish
4% (4 hrs) German

Awesome find. This is amazing. Japanese have done a similar thing. For example 峠（とうげ）is a 'mountain pass' and is unique to Japan.

#langsky Chuffed to get my tickets to Korea to attend KOTESOL conference in May. Boosts my motivation to keep studying Korean.

I guide a French table at my university, Even though I'm an English teacher and learning French myself, my French is way beyond our students' level.

December Summary #langsky
Chinese 1st, French 2nd, Italian 3rd, and Korean 4th

Putain qu’ils utilisent beaucoup d’argot de merde!

Soupire! La route est longue et dure pour apprendre une langue étrangère.

On a parlé en espagnol pour au moins une heure, mais je me suis rendu compte que parfois j’avais mal entendu ce qu’il demandait (j’ai répondu à une autre question). Je reconnais qu’il faut encore étudier la grammaire, le vocabulaire et pratiquer plus pour élever ma fluidité en espagnol.

Hier soir j’ai assisté au party de la fin d’année et les profs d’espagnol ont nous présenté leur ami d’Espagne qui fait des recherches chez nous sur la cuisine d’Okinawa et sa relation avec le tourisme.

Hey Santpolyglot, I have a question for you. I’m reading Katò Lomb, the Hungarian polyglot’s Harmony of Babel, and she writes that a certain polyglot is a native speaker of “Slavic”. Is that a language? I thought Slavic referred to family of langs, like Russian, Serbian, Polish, etc. I’m confused.

I am. Christmas is not a public holiday in Japan.

I’ve heard about LR in polyglot community. I’m a Mac user so I don’t use Chrome but maybe I’ll give it a try.

Gràcies, SantPolyglot
Yes, I looked at Rakuten Viki, but I wanted European languages too, so I got a monthly subscription to Netflix. There are plenty of series there, but I just haven't found the right one for me yet.

Français

1. Institut Français d'Okinawa f2f leçons
2. DELF B1-B2 Cahier d'Exercices de Grammaire
3. Maprofdefrancais vids on YT(Québecois), Radio Canada
4. Lecture facile en français
5. Table Française à l'université

Italian

1. Weekly online with Italo-Giapponese Asociazione
2. TeacherStefano B1-B2 online course
3. ELI Grammatica Italiana
4. Easy Readers (extensive reading)
5. Vaporetto, Italiano con Valeria, Stefano, Italian in 7 min - all YT vids

Chinese HSK4 -> HSK5

1. Pleco dictionary with E-Reader for extensive reading
2. ChatGPT to correct journal entries
3. 實用視聽華語4 textbook w/online class 中山大學
4. Comprehensible Mandarin on YT
5. NetFlix, but haven't found HR series yet

And it gives me a point by point breakdown with explanation for each correction. That is often more helpful than the final version.

I've noticed that this has automatized certain structures in my writing, which is much more fluent. Still full of mistakes, but legible.

ChatGPT revised text

### 修改後的日記
今天上午，我去看了一部法國電影《Neneh Superstar》。Neneh 是一位十二歲的非洲裔女孩。她想在巴黎歌劇院學習芭蕾舞，但必須比其他女孩更加努力，因為校長不喜歡她。她跳舞跳得非常好，也非常可愛。下午，我回家學習了中文和韓語，並繼續練習課本上的語法和聽寫。

Original text

2024.12.22 原文
今天上午我去看了一部法國電影《Neneh Superstar》。Neneh是個十二歲非洲性的小姐。他想在巴黎歌劇場學芭蕾舞，但比另外的小姐需要更努力，因為校長不喜歡他。他跳舞的很厲害，很可愛。下午我回家了，學習了中文和韓語，並繼續課本的語法和聽寫的練習。

Yes, I use it to check my daily entry in my diary. I write what I want to say out in the TL, then I ask ChatGPT to check it for vocabulary, grammar and fluency:

早安！請幫我修改我寫的中文日記（詞彙，語法，流暢性）好嗎？

Then I handwrite the final version in my journal.

Okay, I’ll start. Here are my analog resources for Italian. I especially recommend the grammar, colloquial expressions book, and the graded readers by Easy Reader.

Tuesday night I was invited to a Stammtisch, a conversation table in German. Got all that I bargained for with 4 profs, a native from Düsseldorf and students going on Austausch programmes. Good times! Rekindled my love for German.

TY! Gotta dream big. Just bought my RT ticket to Montréal today. Game on now!

Could understand about 95%. My German and very rudimentary Dutch helped a lot, plus I could tap in to my background knowledge of your previous posts.

#langsky

2025 goals

Focus Langs:
FRE: DELF B2, 1-mo. intensive course in Québec
CHI: HSK5, continue
KOR: trip to Korea, continue 30 min/day
ITA: continue online courses

Maintain Langs
DEU & ESP: maintain
JPN: read extensively, get teacher certification?

New?
Okinawan, Dutch, Portuguese?

Foreign language learning statistics description

Foreign language learning statistics

Nearly half of all pupils in upper secondary education in the EU were learning 2 or more foreign languages in 2022.

#LangSky

Thx for the info. Nederlands is on my bucket list.

#langsky
Every Sat. I take an online course with 中山大學（高雄）My classmates are either living in China, Taiwan or have lived there, so I'm the lowest in spoken proficiency. My teacher suggested dictation practice with the text. Hard but useful practice. I heard 口音, not English Call In (last line, pic 2)

謝謝您的分享。我現在用Pleco的eBook，但沒有綠音。

Yes, this is a free app in the Apple app store called Toggl Track. It allows you set up "projects" and then track your activity in accomplishing them. So, I set up projects for each TL, and because they are tagged, the tracker keeps records on time spent. It takes time to get used to, but is good.