Let’s get into my language study plans that I have for this quarter!
Road to polyglot
After I have been travelling a lot in the first quarter of this year, I noticed my language skills had improved a lot. But I also knew it was going to be hard to reciprocate that in the months after. My number one priority was work so naturally the language skills I developed during the second quarter were all languages I had to use for work. Besides English (and my native tongue, Dutch) I worked in German and French.
My language skills have improved, but there is also still a lot of work to do before I can say with full confidence that I am a polyglot. Luckily there are six more months in 2025, so let’s go further down the road of becoming a polyglot!
Korean, I miss you!
To be honest I haven’t studied the language as much as I had hoped so far this year. But I do keep up with skills I already have inquired. I mean… I can even hear when watching a show if the translation is correct or not, or when the nuance doesn’t exist in English. That’s a positive. But even though I am happy I have been leveling up in other languages, I just love Korean a lot and it makes me sad I could not find the time to squeeze in more Korean lessons. I want to work on it and find more time to take multiple classes in the upcoming weeks.
French, are you there?
During the last check in I mentioned French used to be my third language, I spoke it at A2 level with high understanding and reading skills. This was back in 2015 to 2019. A few years ago French unfortunately dropped to be my fifth language after German took its place. But like I also said during the last language update: It is just a matter of time getting back to A2.
Well, as of May I got back to A2 level in French! On a random day I was curious about my skill set. My reading skills are quite good considering I don’t use them a lot. But also I can spot mistakes in grammar. So I was like: why not put it to the test? I got A2 pushing B1. My knowledge is still scattered and honestly there is still so much I don’t know even at A1 or A2 level. But I am happy that I at least roughly know at what level my overall skills are and that I made it back to A2.
Italian cosy on the backseat
Sometimes you have to make certain decisions. And I decided that it is best for me to pick up this language once my French is better. Once that’s done, I am planning on language stacking. Meaning: I am going to study Italian from the French perspective. For some reason I personally don’t like to learn Italian from my native language (Dutch). I have the feeling too much is lacking. The same reason why I personally dislike that I have to learn Korean from an English standpoint even though my native language has more in common with Korean. Oh, the fun you can have by studying multiple languages at the same time!
Even though I leveled up with French, I want to fully get to B1 level before I take the plunge of language stacking. Hopefully it will happen during the last quarter of the year.
A Japanese autumn
At the moment it is not my plan at all to speak Japanese fluently. I want to be able to do basic things and that’s it. But I do want to level up with Korean more. So right now I will also set Japanese on the backburner for a bit. I am however shadowing the language a lot by shadowing (thank you anime!). So, I am still learning. Just not with a textbook or any other official study material.
German is here to stay in my daily schedule
In my day to day life I use a lot of German so I can maintain my skills and also expand them over time. I love reading and listening to German books. Not just books, I have been reading more articles and following German content creators. This helped me to understand daily spoken German.
However I might have overdone it? Haha, no it’s a good thing! My algorithm thinks I am a German speaker? Because almost half of the content and ads I currently see are in German. Like I am not mad about it. It’s funny to me. I want to keep the language up in my daily life, so it will cement itself as my third language. But honestly with the amount of German books that will be published this summer that I cannot wait to read, says a lot about how crazy I am about the language.
Love,
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