7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 49
Hey everybody,
I hope your week was marvelous!
Updates
This week was just the follow-up I expected from last week. Nothing very surprising for languages.
I kept on practicing my Korean and Chinese throughout the event in Genshin Impact. Doing the same thing in both languages in a row helped my comprehension a lot so I’m looking forward to doing it again in the next event (which should be within two weeks I guess)!
I also finally finished learning the Thai script so I began looking more closely at sentences. I tried to guess the tones used for words based on the rules I learned but, my god, it's incredibly tough. I get it wrong most times. This week, I’ll try to make my own first sentences so I might tweet one or two as practice!
I also took the weekend off learning to go celebrate a friend’s wedding. 💒 It was amazing to see the married couple so happy surrounded by their families and friends. Learning languages is great but never forget to live your life as well!
Alrighty then. Let's dive in!
7 Bullet Points
Each week, I share 7 things that could be useful to your learning odyssey. I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.
One video: Entrevistei o maior poliglota do mundo! — By Mairo Vergara
If you don’t speak Portuguese, you’ve probably never heard of Mairo but it seems he’s a well-known English teacher in Brazil. Luca Lampariello and he interviewed each other in English about their methods. I chose to put forward Mairo’s interview but both interviews are amazing!
In this one, Luca explained his morning routine in great detail, his stance on accent and pronunciation, and many other things. In the other interview, Mairo explained how he reached such an amazing English level through a lot of exposure before even getting the opportunity to speak the language out loud!
One article I read: Get Dramatically Better Results In Life With Ruthless Focus — By Anthony J. Yeung
I’m a bit of a productivity geek. I love it and always try to do more, often ending up with the opposite result because I spread myself too thin. This piece by Anthony was a great reminder I should be careful of this habit. Maybe you should too?
As he said, “What many people say they want are often things they kinda want (i.e. they would do it if it fell on their lap).” That got me to reevaluate how good I want to get in my languages, and especially regarding trying to pass the Kanji Kentei Level 1 in Japanese—a test only 3 non-Japanese have successfully passed so far.
One article I wrote: 5 Weird Habits You Can Start Today to Become Fluent Faster
I love writing about quirky habits or methods to get better at a language so this piece was a lot of fun! I talked about singing, playing games, acting, being thankful, and making your own textbook as ways to become fluent. Curious about how these could help you? I’m sure the article will answer that question!
One podcast episode: Productivity Rituals Worth Adopting — By Time and Attention
Who doesn’t want to get more things done with less struggle? This episode goes well to complement this week’s article by Anthony mentioned above. I love rituals and Chris and his wife’s rituals were very inspiring. I especially liked the idea of having a structured and unstructured part of the day so I’ll try to see how I could use this to divide well active and passive study!
One tool to try: Spotify Lyrics
You've been living under a rock if you don't know Spotify. What you might not know, however, is that Spotify just allowed users to see the lyrics as they listen to songs. Not just a few famous ones but many, many songs. Like enough songs to last you until long after you even become fluent. Enjoy practice your reading speed and listening comprehension with some great music! 🎶
One quote to ponder: “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.” — James Clear
New biweekly challenge: Set your 2022 goals
And plan how you'll reach them! Of course, no pressure here. Goals change. But for them to be able to, you have to set some first!
Why choose your 2022 so early? Because you're not over-confident yet! At the very end of the year, we choose to make huge changes and then give up. Instead, make reasonable goals and leave space for bonus growth. 📈
In the next two weeks, I’ll decide which languages I want to focus on throughout 2022 and what I want to accomplish with them. I might say how many books I want to read in Korean or movies I want to watch without subtitles in Chinese for example. Or maybe conversations of more than 10 minutes in Thai? We’ll see!
Sum-up of the second week of the last challenge: Make a tiny presentation to yourself
Will Smith’s autobiography, Will, was amazing so I wrote a presentation in Korean based on it as I mentioned last week. I got it corrected on Lang-8 (unfortunately closed new sign-ups) but also just put it on Journaly to get more varied feedback.
I didn’t get the time to record myself saying it but I’ll do it this week and even get feedback on my pronunciation on HiNative.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to add a short presentation in Thai as I planned but it’s only a matter of time before I do it!
Let me know how it went for you!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
For more of my articles, you can find them here.