Personal pronouns

 Oh, my, third week and I am STILL interested in languages! 

I was thinking about the cases and prepositions. I often say "We don't have articles and prepositions in Finnish". It's not precisely true, but for all practical purposes, it is. The thing is that cases and prepositions are quite close to each other in function, so you could break down the cases to make them into prepositions, and glue the prepositions together to make them into cases, whichever is closer to your mother tongue functions.

So, let's go through the Turkish week with a couple of others, for comparison

I'm not going to post my studies here, because I find it bothersome to insert tables in Blogger. Sorry about that. But if you are interested, you can easily do what I did and do some googling ;-)

Anyway, there is so much more to such simple thing as personal pronouns :-D You'll see if you look into it.

The languages I used were Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese.

Albanian

So... Albanian was the first language of my 52 in 52 project, and I fell in love with it. The problem with Albanian is that it's a very limited language. So, learning Albanian is a vanity project.

https://www.lingohut.com/en/l111/learn-albanian
https://www.livelingua.com/courses/Albanian
https://www.50languages.com/albanian-for-free
https://www.onalbanian.com/
http://www.edualb.com/
https://www.onalbanian.com/
https://www.mezzoguild.com/how-to-learn-albanian/
https://www.livelingua.com/course/peace_corps/albanian_language_lessons
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/albanian.htm
http://learn101.org/albanian.php
https://app.memrise.com/sv/community/courses/english/?q=Albanian
https://www.youtube.com/@learnalbanianwithviola/videos

Turkish

 I am starting with the basics, again, but it doesn't matter. I have forgotten practically everything.

I'm planning on getting my Turkish to level A2 this year, so next week I'm going to focus on the following:

1) Learn the personal pronouns

2) Turkish has 6 cases

https://www.colanguage.com/turkish-personal-pronouns

3) How to say "yes, no, OK" in Turkish

4) forming plurals

5) numbers (cardinals and ordinals)

6) Some Turkish prepositions
https://fluentinturkish.com/grammar/turkish-prepositions
https://ling-app.com/tr/turkish-prepositions/
https://www.lingohut.com/en/v776983/turkish-lessons-common-prepositions
https://mylanguages.org/turkish_prepositions.php
https://polymath.org/turkish_prepositions.php

7) To be (which doesn't exist in Turkish)

https://www.colanguage.com/verb-be-turkish-conjugation

There's "olmak" which means "to become" - it's used in "olmak ya da olmamak" - to be or not to be
But other than that, there's this grammatical form

8) Turkish past tenses

9) Colors in Turkish

10) telling the time

11) One 1000 common words list :-D

Turkish has become a popular language among language learners, so it has quite a lot of resources on the internet.

https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/tr/en/Learn-Turkish
https://www.lingohut.com/en/l98/learn-turkish
https://www.mondly.com/how-to-speak-turkish
https://elon.io/learn-turkish/lessons
https://www.digitaldialects.com/Turkish.htm
https://turkishwithemre.com/
https://turkish.yasar.edu.tr/?l=en
https://www.turkishtextbook.com/
https://www.turkishclass.com/
https://www.livelingua.com/courses/Turkish
https://www.loecsen.com/en/learn-turkish#/en/Essentials
https://www.busuu.com/en/course/learn-turkish-online
https://www.lingq.com/en/learn-turkish-online/
https://turkishbasics.com/
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-turkish.html
https://mylanguages.org/learn_turkish.php
https://www.50languages.com/turkish-for-free
https://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-en-tr
https://www.lingo-play.com/en/turkish-lessons-online/
https://app.memrise.com/community/courses/english/?q=turkish
https://readlang.com/tr/library
https://www.learnalanguage.com/learn-turkish/

52 in 52, 2024 edition :-)

This time around, the 52 languages are the ones I want to learn better. There are not many new languages here.

Right now the languages are:

Albanian*

Basque*

Breton*

Bulgarian

Chaldean Aramaic

Cherokee*

Chinese**

Czech*

Danish***

Dutch**

Esperanto

Estonian***

French*****

Georgian

German*****

Greek*

Hawaiian

Hebrew*

Hungarian***

Icelandic

Igbo*

Irish Gaelic*

Italian****

Japanese**

Klingon

Korean**

Latin*

Latvian

Lithuanian

Maltese

Navajo*

Norwegian***

Occitan

Persian (Farsi)

Polish*

Portuguese****

Romanian****

Russian****

Sami***

Scottish Gaelic*

Sign Language**

Silbo Gomero

Sindarin

Spanish****

Swahili*

Turkish**

Vulcan

Walloon

Welsh*

Xhosa

Yiddish

The "workout"

1) Learn the personal pronouns

2) in all cases

3) How to say"yes, no, OK"

4) forming plurals

5) numbers(cardinals and ordinals)

6) Basic, most common prepositions/cases

7) To be

8) past tenses

9) Colors

10) telling the time

11) One 1000 common words list:-D

100 Goals you can have as a language learner

 

Originally posted by Lovely Blue Panda

A follower of mine asked me what are some realistic goals when you’re learning languages but before giving you 100 examples, I want to mention that you can have daily, weekly, monthly or/and yearly goals. If you get easily distracted and need motivation, set goals for each category; however, if you can focus and be motivated for a longer period of time, you might not need daily or/and weekly goals.

Also, the numbers/minutes/hours are an example, you can change them according to your time, resources, motivation, etc.

Daily goals

1. Read 1 article in your target language.
2. Learn 10 words.
3. Learn 1 poem in your target language.
4. Learn a song in your target language.
5. Watch a movie.
6. Read 1 page from a book in your target language.
7. Sing 1 song in your target language.
8. Talk with a native for 10 minutes.
9. Learn 2 idioms.
10. Translate 1 song.
11. Translate 1 poem.
12. Write 1 short text about anything.
13. Watch 1 episode from your favorite show dubbed/subbed.
14. Get 50 points on Duolingo.
15. Make a vocab list.
16. Learn 1 new grammatical concept.
17. Think in your target language for 10 minutes
18. Read to a podcast for 15 minutes.
19. Learn 1 tongue twister.
20. Spend 15 minutes on WordBrewery.
21. Play on Babadum for 15 minutes.
22. Use Clozemaster for 15 minutes.
23. Listen to an audiobook for 10 minutes.
24. Revise your notes for 20 minutes.
25. Learn 1 vocab list.

Weekly

1. Read 10 articles in your target language.
   
2. Read 2 books for children.
3. Learn 5 poems.
4. Learn 3 songs.
5. Watch 3 movies.
6. Learn 10 grammatical concepts.
7. Talk for 2 hours in your target language.
8. Learn 5 vocab lists.
9. Learn 100 new words.
10. Finish 8 lessons on Duolingo. (I mean the entire bullet/dot/set of mini-lessons)
11. Watch 10 episodes from your favorite show in your target language subbed/dubbed.
12. Learn 30 idioms.
13. Write 3 A4 pages about anything.
14. Translate 5 songs.
15. Learn 3 vocab lists.
16. Revise with the help of some tests online for 2 hours.
17. Change your phone settings to be in your target language.
18. Make a summary of the books you’ve read.
19. Read 10 pages from a complex book in your target language. 
20. Make 5 vocab lists.
21. Write a motivational text of 10 lines for you in your target language about why you enjoy learning languages.
22. Think for 2 hours in your target language.
23. Translate 3 pages from a book in your native language.
24. Translate 3 pages from a book in your target language.
25. Discover 10 new songs in your target language.

Monthly

1. Learn 350 new words.
   
2. Read 1 advanced book in your target language.
3. Finish a grammar book.
4. Finish 10 stories for kids.
5. Learn 80 idioms.
6. Learn 20 vocab lists.
7. Finish 35 lessons on Duolingo. (the bullets/dots/set of mini-lessons)
8. Make 20 vocab lists.
9. Watch 10 movies in your target language subbed/dubbed.
10. Translate 10 songs.
11. Learn 10 poems.
12. Learn 5 songs.
13. Talk to natives for 10 hours. 
14. Write summaries for every chapter/article you’ve read.
15. Watch 15 YouTube videos in your target language.
16. Make a story of 5 minutes while looking at a random picture on Google.
17. Understand a song (that you don’t know) without checking the lyrics too often.
18. Read 20 articles.
19. Make a dish while reading the recipe in your target language
20. Revise for 20 hours.
21. Keep a journal with your daily progress and at the end of the month, read how many things you achieved.
22. Read to a podcast for 24 hours.
23. Think in your target language for 24 hours.
24. Play babadum/clozemaster for 10 hours.

Yearly

1. Be mistaken for a native.
   
2. Know 50 poems.
3. Be able to sing most Disney songs in your target language.
4. Watch movies without subs.
5. Learn 10.000 words.
6. Read 10 advanced books.
7. Finish Duolingo/whatever course you use.
8. Be able to think in your target language effortlessly.
9. Master irregular verbs.
10. Have at least 5 native friends that talk to you in your target language.
11. Be proud you didn’t give up.
12. Study a bit daily.
13. Finish 3 grammar books/workbooks/books for advanced learners.
14. Have a decent accent.
15. Be able to read without translating anything.
16. Watch more movies in your target language than your native one/English.
17. Have favorite YouTubers that are native to your target language.
18. Keep a diary and read how your year has been.
19. Be able to talk about advanced stuff.
20. Have very detailed descriptions.
21. Know the most popular songs in your target language.
22. Read mostly in your target language.
23. Know several new recipes that are cooked only in the country where your target language is spoken.
24. Being able to say that you’re bilingual/multilingual/a polyglot.
25. Learn your next language through the one that you mastered already.

Long time no seen, huh?

 Well... here I am again. 

I am living proof of that when it comes to learning languages, your talents, aptitude, intelligence, ability to learn, interest, access to materials, all that isn't worth much. The thing that matters is tenacity. If you give it 15 minutes every day, come shine, come rain, you will learn much better than when I give it 24/7 for 3 weeks and then - nothing. Sure, I can learn 100 words in an hour, and still remember most of them 10 years later, with nothing done to upkeep them during the time, but what does that do? 

I wish I could keep up with just 15 minutes a day, or learn just 20 words a day, but every day. I would be using more languages than I have right now. Sure, I have sentences in a lot of languages, and I can read books in more than five languages, and I do consider myself a polyglot, but... hmmm...

"Polyglot: Considered to be the genius in languages who can communicate in several different languages, however, only less than 1% of Homo sapiens can converse in five different languages flawlessly."

- When Can You Call Yourself a Polyglot: How many languages can a polyglot speak?

Flawlessly? I don't think anyone can do that. 

Anyway... in a dream world, my goal for 2024 would be

- to become fluent in German and French

- improve my Scandinavians and Fennics (that would be Danish and Norwegian, and Sami, Estonian, and Hungarian)

- improve my Spanish and Italian (maybe also Portuguese. I think I need to finish my Ecclesiastes project.)

- learn Maltese and Polish well enough to be able to read the books (Sqaq L-Infern by Simon Bartolo and Loranne Vella, and Krew elfów by Andrzej Sapkowski)

- learn Russian well enough to be able to read those books

- Improve the languages I have started.

that would be

- Japanese

- Korean

- Chinese

- Dutch

- Arabic

- Turkish

- Sign language

There's also Cherokee and Navajo, the Celtic languages, and Basque on this list, but I think that might be a little too much with all those others... but I can save them as candy for the times I don't want to think about those others :-D

Also Swahili, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

- For some reason, I need to learn Igbo. I don't know why, I don't know where the need comes from, I just woke up one day knowing I needed to learn Igbo. Weird. 

Hebrew, Farsi, and Juhuri

 “That had better be my Annushka and not some horrible bureaucrat!” Babulya yelled in the language she had brought with her from her homeland, those seaside southern mountains that Anya swore she would see someday. Juhuri—a mix of Hebrew and Persian—could be so soft and musical, but not when Babulya spat it out like she was doing at that moment. “I’m not in the mood for bureaucrats!”

- Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack

Discovering the unexpected connections between Persian and Hebrew