Language Journal #1: What’s Up

¡Hola! Happy Labor Day! Since I haven’t been writing about my language practice consistently, I thought it’d be a good idea to start a “language journal” to try to summarize my progress so far. This first post is basically a way for me to keep track of what’s going on and where I am at the moment, so let’s begin...

What I Know

So far, I’m fluent in Spanish and English because those are the languages that I grew up with. In Puerto Rico, the most spoken language is Spanish. It’s learned at home, taught at school, and it’s the language of instruction for most courses in our public universities. However, my mom taught me English and spoke to me in that language pretty often. It’s also the language I’ve used to talk to my best friends in elementary school. I’ve also preferred to watch American TV over Latin American TV (I still do). So I learned both languages in parallel and through my education and jobs I’ve had to get used to writing technical reports, so I feel pretty confident with both languages, both in written and spoken form.

I also consider myself proficient in Portuguese, to a certain point. Though I started learning recently, the many similarities with Spanish have given me an immense head start in learning this language. Reading was easy at first, because even though the words are not entirely the same, the stems of words are usually similar. Writing was a bit of a challenge, since it’s much easier to recognize a word than to reproduce it. Speaking was somewhat easy but the intonation and accent required a lot of practice. Listening was the hardest part of the language at first, but with constant conversations with native speakers, that improved. Eu acho que agora posso falar de muitos temas; mas quando falo com brasileiros eu aprendo muitas palabras e frases novas. Isso me convence de que há sempre algo novo para aprender.

What I’m learning

I practice Portuguese consistently. Every day, I use Duolingo to review my grammar. About three to four times a week, I speak with Brazilians (thanks to iTalki). Finally, I try to watch series and movies at least once a week. My intention is to keep practicing Portuguese rigorously until I’ve reached a level of fluency that I’m comfortable with. (You can read more about my Portuguese resources here).

Besides Portuguese, I also practice Greek almost daily. Generally, I listen to two lessons per day on Language Transfer (a review from the day before + a new lesson). Lately, I’ve tried listening to the audio lessons while commuting to work, but that didn’t work out for me. At least in my case, I need to sit down to concentrate on the lesson for it to take effect. My progress with Greek is very slow, though I can dominate verb conjugations fairly well (thanks to the Classical Greek courses I took when studying Theology). For now, I am limited to very basic exchanges, such as δεν θέλω να το κάνω σήμερα or similar examples.

About a week ago, I decided to learn Italian, since I’m comfortable enough with Portuguese to start learning another Romance language. For now, I’m not trying to do any intensive study, since I’m focusing most of my attention in studying for my Professional Engineering examination. At the moment I practice Italian daily. I listened to the introduction course on Language Transfer my first day, and the rest of the days I’ve completed several lessons on Duolingo. I also watch Easy Italian on Youtube to have an idea of how Italian is pronounced. So far this first week I’ve only learned basic sentences like: Ciao a tutti! Io sono un ragazzo.

There are other languages that I’ve practiced sporadically this year: Mandarin, Quechua and Russian. Out of those three, my strongest language is Mandarin. Having a Chinese girlfriend is probably the reason for that. I usually text in Chinese and sometimes try to speak a little bit. Most of what I know is limited to what our conversations are about, and the phrase I’ve used the most is probably 我好饿啊. I’ve been writing about learning Quechua, but it’s been mostly stagnant. I can recognize several nouns, particles, and pronouns, but it’s not enough to strike up a friendly conversation fluently. If I’d ever have to greet someone in Quechua, the most I would be able to say is: ¿Imaynalla? ¿Walejllachu kanki? For Russian, I’ve only shown limited interest because of the way it sounds, so to try it out, I took a 30-minute trial lesson on iTalki and learned some basic conversation phrases. I really liked this language so I plan to learn it sometime. For now I could walk up to someone and say: Привет. Как у тебя дела?

What I want to improve

For the next month or so, most of my efforts will focus on improving my Portuguese. Thankfully I’ve found really good language partners on iTalki, so I’ve had help in improving my pronunciation and my conversational skills. Every day this month, I’ll also continue using Duolingo, as I need to get used to several tenses (especially those that differ from Spanish and English).

My current plan this month is to keep the same consistency with Greek and Italian, and not try to dedicate any extra time to these languages until I pass my Professional Engineering examination. So far the plan is to try to finish the Language Transfer Greek lessons this month, and to finish several lessons on Duolingo for Italian.

For the other three languages, Chinese will probably remain the same, I’ll learn new words if they pop up on my conversations with JiaJia. I’ll probably only focus on Quechua during the weekends, and try to complete a chapter of Método de Quechua (Grondín) weekly or bi-weekly. During work, I’ll usually try to listen to Rimasun Quechua Language Podcast which features interviews with Bolivians in Quechua. I think that listening practice will help my ear get used to the language and pronunciation. For Russian, I agreed to help a native speaker with Spanish in exchange for teaching me some simple Russian phrases and for helping me with reading and pronunciation. At the moment I’m focusing on memorizing the Cyrillic script so that I can recognize words and text. That way, when the time comes for me to start learning formally, I’ll be able to follow along by reading.

Resource Spotlight:

To conclude today’s post I want to try to suggest a language-learning resource each week. For this week, that resource is iTalki. This website provides users with a community of language learners, tutors and teachers. Among the many things this website offers, you can:

  • Connect with affordable, professional teachers and schedule video-chat lessons through their website.
  • Connect with affordable, community tutors to practice your conversation or for informal tutoring, including instant tutoring which means that you can get live tutoring sessions within minutes of requesting them.
  • Connect with language partners to do a language exchange. This means you can find someone who speaks your target language, who is trying to learn your native language, and you can “exchange languages” in conversation by splitting up your time between both languages.
  • Get answers to language-related questions. Your questions are answered by other users and the best answers are voted up, similar to how Yahoo Answers works.
  • Proofread your text. This is probably one of the features I use the most. Native or proficient speakers of your target language can correct your text and the best corrections are voted up.
  • Read language-related articles and participate in discussions.

Using this website is free. You would only have to pay if you want to schedule a lesson with a teacher or tutor. Most language learners I follow on YouTube recommend this service. I’ve used it for a few months and through it I’ve met great language partners and also taken lessons, so I highly recommend it. If you’re a first time user, use this link to register and receive a $10 credit after you purchase your first lesson.

Well, that’s all for today. Until next time. ¡Adiós!

Pictures in this post are not mine. Sources:
Jeremy Brooks
Serendigity
Fredel23
Fastweb
iTalki