In January I set some very ambitious language learning goals. I wanted to spend 120 hours this year studying 5 different languages.
By this point in the year, I should have logged 40 hours of language study. As of 1/28, I’d completed ~2 hours of study. Since then, I’ve logged 2.25 more hours of iTalki lessons, and attended two language meet-ups (~3 hours total). I’ll log an extra 2 hours of reading time.
That brings my total up to 9.25 hours. I’m more than 30 hours behind where I should be at this point in the challenge, and I don’t think I’ll meet my goal by the end of the year. In this article, I’ll talk about the obstacles I’m facing, how my understanding of myself has changed, and propose some updates to my goals to better match these changes.
Obstacles / Challenges
Here are some obstacles I faced in prioritizing language study. Many of them are the same as in this article.
- Other things are a higher priority, including job searching and up-skilling
- There are many other fun things to do in NYC now that makes it harder to focus on boring things that pay off later (delayed gratification)
But there are some other obstacles I noticed:
- My Anki decks are screwed up. Instead of figuring out how to fix them, I avoid it. Spaced repetition is my best strategy for language learning, and not being able to use it makes it harder to get study time in
- My motivation for learning a particular language fluctuates based on where and with whom I’m spending time
- I added Bengali to my list because at the time I lived next to a Bengali owned pizza place and wanted to go in and say high to them. After moving, I felt less motivated to learn it. Now that I tutor part-time in a school with Bengali students, in a neighborhood that has many Bengalis, I want to study it
- My interest in maintaining Spanish feels less relevant now because I hardly encounter Spanish speakers in my neighborhood. It’s easy to go days without using it (but I do have some Spanish speaking students)
- My desire to learn French and Haitian Creole is sustained by a handful of friends who speak both – but if I go a few weeks without seeing them, then it feels harder to prioritize
- I want to study every language, so it’s hard to focus on one
- The utility of speaking more languages feels less clear – the reality of how much time it takes to maintain them is also more clear
- I feel a lot of pressure to get my language goals done now, because my time horizon is so constricted
Updating my language goals
It’s clear that my previous goals were unrealistic for a lot of reasons. I overcommitted myself and was too eager. I was anxious about just achieving, and not over-achieving. That’s probably rooted in anxiety and neuroticism and perfectionism.
Here’s a more realistic set of goals, with a longer time horizon: Over my lifetime, I want to study the following languages, for the following reasons. I will not hold a high degree of fluency in all of these languages at the same time, and may not study them until later. But these are the languages that I have felt a strong interest in:
- Spanish
- French
- Telugu (for family)
- Hindi/Urdu (for music, travel, communication)
- Punjabi (for music)
- German (I lived in Berlin and I like the Germans I’ve met while traveling)
- Hebrew (I lived in Tel Aviv and used to be able to speak it)
- Bengali (there are many Bengalis in New York City, and in Hamtramck/Detroit, where I used to live)
- Levantine Arabic (There are many Arabic speakers in Tel Aviv, and I used to live in Michigan which had a big Levantine Arabic speaking population)
- Haitian Creole (It’s a cool language, and it might be easier to pick up after French)
- Portuguese (I want to travel through and learn more about Brazil, plus it would be quick to pick up)
Assuming that I live until the average male lifespan in the US (77.8), I have about 50 more years to work on them.
I think for the remainder of the year, I want to focus on Telugu and French. I’ll let myself queue up study materials and write about the other languages, but I’ll focus my active study on those two.
For Telugu, I plan on spending time with my grandparents this summer, which is a good opportunity to practice it with them.
For French, I plan on visiting Montréal in August or September, and want to brush up on my French. I also want to get the French B2 diploma and complete the NAFTA Trifecta (Spanish/English/French at B2 or higher).
I’ll target 30 hours of dedicated study for the remainder of the year, with 15 hours being in Telugu, and 15 hours in French. The next time I can update these goals is at the start of Q3 on July 1st.