)It is only fitting that I speak about the languages I intend to work on this year (and maybe the ones I want to do in the near future as well
), so here goes:German: Since about two months ago, I've been going through Begegnungen A1+ to review and expand my German. I had been using a few different resources, but I like immersive resources so I settled on Begegnungen. As this is both one of my heritage languages and one I fully intend to use for my potential PhD. studies, I'm in it full throttle! I hope to complete the B1+ textbook in the series and move on to the Erkundungen B2+ textbook by Summer.
And, as Vijay rightfully pointed out to me recently, it's important to not just use a textbook, I intend to supplement my textbook use with the videos on the Easy German Youtube channel, use the Pimsleur course, and go through the exercises and explanations in Basic German: A Grammar and Workbook and Intermediate German: A Grammar and Workbook. I'll also watch streaming TV from Germany, even if I don't understand what's being said; once I start understanding German well enough to know what's going on, I'll pick out a specific series to watch. (By understand, I don't mean fluency. I mean that I can catch a good chuck of what's going on.) I'll also read some German short stories, and work my way up to full novels and other books.
Finally, I want to give myself bi-weekly challenges in reading, writing and listening. For writing, I'll just pick a random writing prompt. For reading: I'll pick a short story and translate it. For listening: I'll pick a free podcast (that has a text available) and I'll transcribe it as I listen. (I'm purposefully not selecting a specific podcast to use.) I'll start short with all of this, so as not not overwhelm myself at this early stage. I think I'll make my cut off for now a paragraph (3-6 sentences, depending on the difficulty of the source material or task). That's also why I'm making it bi-weekly, instead of weekly.
For brevity's sake, I'll point out that this will be my general modus operandi with most of my languages from now on.
Polish: I'm basically doing Polish for the same reasons as German (the only difference is, I have no clear idea how it will help me with my future studies at this point), and I'm going to do the same things with this language. The only (other) difference really are the resources I'm using. I've been using First Year Polish and the awesome workbooks that follow the text from Ohio State University.
Japanese: I hope to ease this language into the mix by Summer. I want to use it specifically for my thesis, and thus will need to know it pretty well. It's lucky that I've studied it off and on for a long time. I intend to use Minna no Nihongo as my textbook (all the volumes in the series, not just the beginner textbooks).
Biblical Hebrew: I can still read some basic Hebrew, but I need to review it. I hope to fit it in at some point this year. If/When I do, I will use Biblical Hebrew: A Text and Workbook. [For this one, and for all non-living languages I won't be doing the bi-weekly challenges. Or at least not the writing and listening once anyway.]
Classical/Koine Greek: Same deal as Hebrew. Only difference is, I think I'll use Reading Greek as my textbook. We'll see.
Others:
I want to learn Irish and Swedish (possibly, the jury's still out on Swedish) due to family heritage, but I don't know when I'll take them up. I did study Irish pretty well in recent history, but decided to stop to focus on German and Polish.
Other languages I want to serious study for my future studies are - Chinese (Mandarin + others), Korean, Vietnamese, Latin. I hope to ease some Chinese (probably Taiwanese Hokkien to be exact) into the mix sometime this summer, but we'll see how things go before I commit to any plans.
I've been learning some Old English on the side, for fun, and it's been going good so far. I'll keep at it for now.
I haven't given up on my interest for learning Iroquoian languages (or other NAILs for that matter), I just realize that I need to really focus on my languages I want to use for my studies. Therefore I don't know when I'll add these back in, but I hope to do so some time in the future.
United States (United States)
Germany (Deutschland)
Canada (Canada)