New Year Learning Goals!?!

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Hey all.
Just wondering what everyone’s New Year learning goals are?, what does everyone hope to achieve within the year?

I myself have just learnt that there is a lot more cultures/countries that have New Year on different days than I realised before. All I had learnt of before was that Chinese New Year was on a different day, but I now know there are plenty of others as well.

Anyways, apart from just learning about that, my aims are to continue my Japanese learning and get JLPT N4 and N3 down, and be able to hold conversations. So another goal on top of that will eventually be doing language exchange, I might also take the JLPT exams as well. I hope to get this all done by sticking to and hopefully learning 100 words/phrases/sentences a day (Monday - Friday), and on the weekends reviewing everything.
I am also going to start adding in Korean as well, learning probably only 5-10 words a day, and possibly Norwegian as well.
Main thing for me though is for the first three months is to get Japanese down to a level I feel confident enough to hold conversations at and start doing language exchange.

So, what is everyone else’s goals? Language learning or any other learning? :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi Tampora!

I see a lot of goals in your post. I hope you will achieve them.
My goal is to keep continue my Spanish from A1 to higher level (maybe B2, hehe big goal) and maybe I will find someone to make conversation in Spanish, because talk to myself is not the same as talk with native ( the way of speaking, accents etc.).
Hmm maybe in this topic will be someone who is learning Spanish as me and will want to write in this language.

But for now, happy New Year y buena suerte!

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Those are all good goals! Sounds like you’ll be very busy : )

I’ve never even really considered taking exams in anything, but I suppose it’s the logical conclusion of learning anything.

Mainly, I plan on getting all the way to Französisch 7 without going completely insane and continuing with my studies in German and Norwegian (which are far less scary). Although, I have also been thinking of taking a stab at Korean, as I speak no Asian languages and I’ve heard it’s nowhere near as difficult for a European as some of the others from the area.

So… I guess I really want to just keep learning, rather than throwing in the towel on anything (I have a bad habit of growing demotivated easily). I think I’d also like to start practicing actually using languages I’m learning, though it can be hard to find someone (especially that you trust not to make you feel stupid, lol).

Other than that… I do a lot of illustration and surface design in my free time, so I’d like to learn how to make that into a viable career and put an end to the nine to five slog of office hell.

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@DobreNoNie Thanks, hopefully I will achieve my goals, I’m probably being a bit too ambitious but I like to aim high. :slight_smile:
Oh, is there a list anywhere of what each level of a language is (A1/B2 etc…)?
As I did find a site before where it said what each level is, but I can’t seem to find it now.

@isharr The exams are something that I thought could be a good extra motivator for myself.
I get demotivated quite easily also, ie; when I first started trying to learn languages I would change every few weeks/months the language I was learning (done that for about a year, until I stuck with Japanese).

For practicing the languages and speaking to other people/ checking your grammar etc…, italki is supposed to be really good.
There are tutors on there and there are also plenty of people looking for language exchange. I haven’t used it myself yet, but people have told me that is one of the best places for language exchange. :slight_smile:

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@tampora Here you are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages

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I used to HelloTalk and Tandem apps but I don’t know, maybe I didn’t have luck, but people after short conversations didn’t reply. I had a few situations when men wrote to me, quick conversation and when they found out that I’m not a girl, they didn’t reply. I think those apps now are more like Tinder.

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Thanks for the advice. I’ll look into it but as, I assume, it’s an app, and my phone is ancient, it may not work; it’s why I do all my stuff on desktop. Personally, I don’t know about taking exams in anything, but I’m going to keep it in mind. I’m not very confident in what I’ve learned so far and I have problems with oral, due to a hearing issue, so I can barely understand people when they’re speaking English, lol, let alone something I’ve not learned to lipread.

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Don’t worry my friend! I think a lot of people who are learning new language(s) are not confident even me even in English, so head up.

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Your English sounds fine to me. If you’re not native, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t said (although, apparently I’m not the best judge anymore, as my own sentences have a habit of Germanifying themselves if I don’t pay attention, lol).

And I know… it’s just hard when your not obviously deaf, so people don’t realise you can’t quite understand them as well as you ought. It makes speaking on the phone and stuff basically impossible, and I know a lot of tutors are voice only… so… meh.

If not English, then what’s your first language, if you don’t mind me asking?

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If you are form Germany, I’m your friend from your right border.
Why do you want to learn Japanese? I’m just curious.

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Since I’m from Germany, too… :wink: Right border - on a map, I’m guessing Eastern Europe? :thinking:

To also be contributing to this thread (at least a little):
My goal is to finally stay with Portuguese. For the last 2 years it was rather a stop and go with us. This year I’ll hopefully start through and don’t stop for nothing at all :slight_smile:

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No, no – I’m just learning German – for about eight months now. The problem is sometimes, I can’t stop myself code-switching; even worse, I seem to have developed a habit of placing secondary verbs at the end of my sentences all the time, even though nobody’s done this in English since the Chaucer days. It gets weird looks. I knew I wanted to stick with German and become fluent when my mind first decided it was an acceptable language to think in – if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is. I definitely, despite all attempts at learning it, never think in French!

I beleive it’s @tampora who’s learning Japanese – that language terrifies me! (Though admittedly not as much as Portuguese, so kudos to @Kajo76 : ) – but I do have some interest in Korean just to get out the European-languages comfort zone.

Though:

Wouldn’t that depend on whether one’s facing north or south, lol?

But no – I’m from Scotland.

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Hehehe why?
I think it was to late to reply that post and I thought I wrote to @tampora…
Nice to meet you @isharr and @Kajo76

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@DobreNoNie Why I’m learning Japanese… Well I started with wanting to learn Mandarin and Cantonese as I watch a lot of Chinese movies/tv series, but after trying that for a few months I just found it way too hard to pronounce words, with the tonal pitch shifts it felt more like learning to sing than learn a language.
Then I decided I wanted to learn at least one language just so I could say I knew more than one language, so I tried French, in the end I couldn’t get the hang of the words being masculine and feminine…
So, I then switched to Korean, as I started to watch a lot of K-Drama’s, but my ears just wouldn’t recognise the way certain letters/words were said…
So, in the end I started to watch a lot of Japanese shows, started learning it, found it the easiest of the languages I had tried by far, and it just seemed to click and make more sense than the other languages I had tried before. I’ve stuck with Japanese long enough now though, to know that I’m going to see my language learning journey through with it as I really enjoy learning Japanese but never really enjoyed learning the other languages that much. :slight_smile:

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I don’t think it’s ever too late to reply to anything on here, unless it’s a locked topic : )

But, I don’t think in French because it just doesn’t click very well for me. I fear, no matter how much I study it will always be in the foreign languages category of my brain, where German has begun to slip into the habitual, everyday use areas.

@tampora, what exactly was it about Korean that was so tricky? Just so I’m forewarned, if I ever decide to go down that path.

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Wow! And then you already experiencing “germanifying” :+1:
I understood it like you were German and had difficulties with English.

Like I do… I never know (only have some sort of feeling), when I use the wrong word order. So that’s what I understood as “germanifying” :smile:

Cool! :star_struck: Love the Scottish accent - but without subtitles I have difficulties understanding everything.

That’s reminding me of this funny video: Scottish Voice Recognition Elevator - ELEVEN! :joy:

That’s cool! Good luck :slight_smile:
I never thought in English, not before I used it every day in (text) conversations. These days it’s different. Often I want to express something in German, but only the English word comes to mind or the other way around.

Likewise!

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@isharr The bit that I’ve found difficult about Korean is that some of the letters/words are tongue twisters, lol. There are sounds that Europeans don’t use in their languages but in Korean they do, although since I’ve got the hang of Japanese combining of the “R and L” letters, it has started to make Learning the other letters and words in Korean that are hard to pronounce easier.

I probably just over complicated it in my brain though, it is probably easier for other people. :slight_smile:

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About Japanese only I know that they have sense of humor and “intresting” shows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7tg8NflUQo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o-rfX0L5-M
ten, ten, ten…

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Well, one could understand that the Scottish do have difficulties with English, lol. Thankfully, I don’t type as I speak, unlike many. Though, my accent is a little atypical for Scotland, anyway, as my family is mainly from Ireland.

My German’s not that good yet. I don’t have too many issues with grammar, but I think I just have many words yet to learn and, also, sometimes I struggle when things seem to be put a little oddly. I can’t watch German TV without subtitles, for example, but when I’m not paying attention to which language I ought to be speaking, my English sentences now come out a bit ‘I must before I leave my keys find’ (instead of ‘I’ve got to find my keys before I go’). It’s an annoying crossover.

I love this video! It’s the first one I refer people to when they ask what I sound like, even if it’s a bit off in my case. It’s also so true. No voice recognition thingy’s ever understood me. Ok Google is just a disaster from my point of view.

Even I can’t understand my fellow countrymen when they’re drunk. I’ve a bit of a hearing problem, so it just sounds like sick whales trying to converse with rocks.

Yeah, this happens to me, too. Just the other day, I was practicing German while on the phone with a friend, and I was out shopping at that time. I was telling him what I had on my list, what I was cooking that evening and what I already had at home in the fridge. Except, I got stuck on the German word for cheese. It’s a word I definitely knew, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall it. My brain just kept going through different every word for cheese I know (so sir, ost, cáis, fromage) – was driving me crazy. Even worse, when I tried to tell him I couldn’t remember the German for cheese, I went and forgot the word for ‘remember’! I just ended up having to explain that I couldn’t [d’gegenteil von vergessen] it. So embarrassing. Wasn’t until I got home I recalled the words were ‘käse’ and ‘erinnern’.

Anyway… @Kajo76, why did you decide to learn Portuguese? Doesn’t it have like fifty-bajillion cases, or something? My nana lives out there and said I should learn so I can come make holiday, but I just… it’s worse than Spanish to me (which I previously declared my anathema).

@tampora, that’s good to know. I’m a little worried about trying Korean, but really it’s silly to have so many Germanic languages, which are relatively similar to one another and therefore almost mutually intelligible in many respects, when there’s a big world out there. It’s that or Arabic… But, Arabic’s pretty weird – I did some study on Babylonian in school and some of the systems remain similar, so I know it’s something you can only learn if you’re very serious about it. And prepared to spend the next decade doing so, lol.

You’re so crazy dedicated, though. On the 25th, you were steamrolling my leaderboard. I kept thinking… shouldn’t you be like, basting a turkey or something? I don’t know many people who would spend that much time learning on Christmas! Even this week you’re over a million points (good god, and it’s only Tuesday!), while I lag back at a lazy two hundred k or so.

I don’t know how you do it.

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@isharr I think I’m just a tad addicted to the learning. Plus I have to do something while waiting for the food to cook, lol. :slight_smile:

I want to learn Arabic as well, but every time I look at it I just get a headache, looks well out of my reach for language learning at the moment. It is definitely a language though that I want to learn at some point.