#40h7dLC? More Like 22h7dLC!

What’s up, lovely people? I hope you all had a good week – I certainly found myself in the middle of a busy one!

Of course, last week marked my second attempt at the #40h7dLC, which went markedly less well than my first. Well, in terms of hours at least. I still spent time with languages, and that’s the most important bit!

How did I do?

I ended up spending 1,343 minutes (22h23m) on all my languages last week. Honestly, although I would have loved to have hit the 40h mark, I still think I saw a lot of progress and improvement; and I had a lot of fun. Plus, I’m pretty sure last time’s attempt left me a little burnt out after, which I’m not feeling at all this time around.

These were my final times:

language	minutes	hours
German	886	14h46m
Mandarin	218	3h38m
Spanish	154	2h34m
Korean	0	0
Scottish Gaelic	60	1h
Arabic	25	25m

I also saw a difference in my active and passive learning time this around – with 66% of my time being spent on active learning activities, 34% on passive ones.

Despite not hitting 40 hours, I did spend 65% of my time on German, too, so well over that 50% mark I wanted. It was useful because I wasn’t only spending time on the translation; I wanted to work on vocabulary building and reading, too, as they’ll make translating a lot easier.

How did this look day-to-day?

Obviously, I knew ahead of time that I was going to have a busy week. I’d gone back to visit my mum in time for her birthday on Monday and didn’t get back to my flat until Tuesday evening. I had friends over on Saturday through to Sunday, which meant I was pushed for time on those days, too.

It all ended up looking a bit like this:

date	minutes	hours
Mon 16 Aug	178	2h58m
Tue 17 Aug	150	2h30m
Wed 18 Aug	506	8h26m
Thu 19 Aug	207	3h27m
Fri 20 Aug	84	1h24m
Sat 21 Aug	31	31m
Sun 22 Aug	187	3h7m

I really hit on something on Wednesday, but by Friday I was pretty tired (and, I think, looking forward to Saturday!), so the numbers dipped. All I managed to do on Saturday itself was to fit my reading in – I’ve been reading 30m/day in either German, Spanish or Mandarin all year – and then got back up to three hours on Sunday, but I knew even then that I could have managed a tiny bit more.

Still, I’m not disappointed. I got things done!

What did I achieve?

So, there’s a few things I managed:

• I watched all six episodes of Triad Princess on Netflix (which I plan to review next week because that ending got me)
• I translated about 8,000 words, so while I’m still behind, I’m 8,00 words closer than this time last week!
• I finished reading Das Erbe des Zauberers (Equal Rites – Terry Pratchett) and started reading Hex (Thomas Olde Heuvelt)
• I maintained my writing streaks for German and Spanish – even if I took a (written in) break on Saturday
• I had a lot of fun!

The past few months, between all the different things I make sure to do every day, I’ve been averaging about six to seven hours per week on language learning. Considering how many languages I’m trying to learn, it’s really not a lot. What was nice about this round of the #40h7dLC was that I didn’t feel like I pushed myself too hard, but I still spent a lot more time with all my languages.

Well, not all of them…

Yeah, I didn’t spend any time on Korean this week.

Look, I really want to learn Korean. One of my friends has just moved there for work and I 100% want to go and visit him and spend time in the country when it’s safe to do so.

But I have got too many languages going on right now. I’m obviously not going to stop using German any time soon, and my Mandarin and Spanish are intermediate enough that working on them is less of a chore (though I probably do need to dedicate more time to study and less to the TV…)

The problem is those beginner languages. I’d like to get to a decent level with Scottish Gaelic; even if I’m not going to use it ‘in the wild,’ as it were, any time soon, it’s an interesting language and has me learning a lot more about the nation I live in and my own family.

Arabic is one I took on for the Free and Legal language challenge and although I know I’m not going to hit the levels I’m aiming for in the time limit the challenge was supposed to run under, I’d still like to learn more. Arabic is really cool!

So, I’m not going to drop Korean entirely, but I am back benching it until at least 2022. I’m going to finish up watching Crash Landing on You (I’ve still got two episodes left, haha!) and then I’m just going to let it chill. For now, it needs time I don’t have.

But, if I do work hard at learning Gàidhlig and Arabic through to the end of this year, then I have a very fun plan for when I pick up Korean again in January.

What’s next?

Back to the grindstone!

No, but for real, I’ve got a lot of book left to translate, so that’s going to be a lot of my free time for the foreseeable future. I also printed off a 30-day tracker yesterday, so my next goal is to learn some Arabic for at least 15 minutes every day for that long.

And, of course, I’m looking forward to the next round of the #40h7dLC.

Drop a comment below if you took part – either back in April or this month – and let me know about any other challenges you’ve found useful for language learning. You all know I like a good one!

---

Read more…