Difficulties keeping up and being overwhelmed. Swedish, Russian and Work

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Hi all.

I have been studying Russian here at lingQ for 9 months now. I’ve gotten very far and I feel comfortable in most content (Almost). However since I have landed a job in Sweden (I’m Danish so the languages are close). I want to learn Swedish as well as I do not like being in the country and not being able to speak the language.
But at the same time I have been doing internship, writing my bachelor and I have now been hired at the company I interned at. So I have way too much going on.

In the beginning I had so much time for Russian with the lockdown, and I learned so much. But now I’m stagnating a lot and it’s a bit demotivating.
I still like the Russian language, and I have a ton of interesting content to pick from. But I simply find myself spent when I try to sit down and read.

And as I said I wanted to learn Swedish as well - I think I need about 3 months of intense training to get really comfortable since I’m Danish.

But doing both at the same time and having so much to do on the side is daunting.

I’m afraid to put Russian aside to focus on Swedish. as I don’t feel the language have settled completely yet, and it might suffer too much for being on the shelf for some months.

What would you suggest to do?
How have you gone about improving (and not just staying at the same level) in your languages when you have had too much to do.

Thanks -

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My advice would be for you to concentrate on Swedish for a few months. Don’t worry about leaving Russian aside for some time. You may forget some of it but it won’t take you long to catch up when you get back to it. You may even feel that it has become easier. Scheduled breaks from learning a language are not a bad thing and the worst you could do is push yourself and get burned out.
Steve talked about this not long ago. Have a watch, it may give you some peace of mind:

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I would take some time off, a week or two to recover and freshen up. I wouldn’t put Russian aside, just keep up with it for maybe like 30 mins a day, or listening to something on commute. Then i would mostly focus on swedish, just to get the basics ;).

Remember we’re all human, we have limitations to what we can do in a limited amount of time.

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Thank you so much! :slight_smile:

Yeah I think a break is well deserved. I guess I can keep watching some of the easier series in Russian just to keep it somewhat fresh. But I’m glad to hear it will likely be easy to awaken again.

Gonna see how fast I can get comfortable in Swedish then. Should not be so bad.

Again thank you.

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