So here I am, back on this oft-neglected blog with some fun stuff planned for this coming month. As it is, I’ve got this full month in the UK and then I’ll be off to Europe, so I’m hoping to get some kind of regular posting schedule up and running before then.
However, that’s not the point of next month – I’ve finished university, so my only obligation is working (part time); that leaves me with a lot of free time on my hands and a sudden urge to be productive with it. Therefore, I have some cool stuff planned.
Firstly, it’s August, so that means another round of the 6WC is starting. If you’ve not heard of it, I’ve spoken about it before, but essentially the goal is to pick a language to focus on for six weeks and try to make as much progress as possible. I’ve chosen Italian for this round, but I’ll explain my motivations for that in another post later in the month. 😀
I’ve already mentioned I’m heading off to Europe in September – specifically, to Austria, to be an English language assistant in a school. That means I need to get my German up to scratch too, whilst also making sure I’m working on my Spanish (which is not much improved from May) and Mandarin. My goal this August, therefore, is to spend at least 60 hours (15 hours a week) studying languages (combined), though I’m hoping to hit a much higher number than that!
Second of all, is what I’m planning for the blog this month. Every April, the Blogging from A to Z Challenge runs. I didn’t take part this year because (a) I was coming up to my final exams and my dissertation deadline and (b) I couldn’t think of any kind of theme/enough things to talk about. However, I’ve thought of something! My plan for August then, is to do my own kind of A-Z blogging challenge, where I’ll post about endangered languages every day except Sundays for a total of 26 days. I’ve chosen endangered languages because I think they’re very interesting; my dissertation this year was based around the status of ethnic minority languages in China, so it’s one of those things I like to talk about. I’m going to post information about the languages, about the communities who speak them, and about any and all revitalisation methods and resources I can find.
Hopefully you’ll all find it as interesting as I do; if not, I’m going to be running other posts on the Sundays as well, so there’ll be some more practical language stuff going on.
I’m going to post the complete list of languages I’ll look at with the first post tomorrow; so if anyone has any suggestions or information they want to share, feel free to get in contact. My email address is on the ‘about’ page; or if you prefer, I also have a tumblr connected to this blog. Let me know if you’re doing the 6WC as well! 😀