My main target languages - with my current level in parenthesis:
German (University, plus time in country; C1+?)
Italian (British A Level; B1/B2?)
Russian (Novice)
Mandarin (Complete Beginner)
Farsi/Persian (Complete Beginner)
Modern Hebrew (Complete Beginner)
(There are other languages that interest me - but they are down the agenda for the foreseeable future.)
Do any of you guys have a definite list of languages that you’re planning to learn?
Wow. Definitely use lingq for italian, they have some very decent intermediate material.
This year I’ll mostly be working on Russian and Ukrainian and as soon as I feel like I have a solid base in Ukrainian I will be adding Latvian.
I just received “Latvian in 3 months” from someone very dear to me so I feel obligated to give it a real shot. For those interested, here’s a sample of how the language sounds: - YouTube
It’s extremely melodic and grammar heavy )
Once I get to 500 hours of listening and close to a million words of reading in Russian, I think I’ll try a different language. Currently, I’m at 260 hours of listening and 560k words of reading. So, I’m about half way there!
I’ve been looking at doing Korean and German. I looked at Romanian, but there’s not a lot of resources out there. I think instead of Romanian, I’ll give Spanish a go, because there’s some crossovers.
I can’t make out my level in the languages. So I can’t set goals as you do.
English… I can understand the Radio Talks - movies and many other things or read the novels here, however, I don’t feel well enough when it comes to writing and speaking. I want to get better in these fields.
German… Before this year ends, I want to read at least 2 books in German. One of them is Erinnerungen eines Soldaten by Guderian. I got the printed version. Besides, I want to read a novel on the LingQ.
Spanish… I made progress in this language and actually things are going better than I expected. I read and listen everything I find interesting. In these days I want to focus on my output skills actually. In the short and middle term, I want to get better and reduce the unknown words of the texts on LingQ that I find interesting.
There is no any other language that I want to study this year.
Long Term Plans
I love how Italian sounds. Italian is so similar to Spanish and there are a lot of high quality contents. Maybe Italian for the next year or Dutch?
Waarom niet? Ik kan Duits spreken en ik denk dat ik kan snel leren. (I don’t know if this was right. 3 years ago or something I tried to learn Dutch- just for fun.) The History of the Netherlands is very interesting btw.
Garmarna makes Swedish very charming but …
If I don’t start a course in Italian or Dutch, I will go for French. (Of course, if I don’t find it so difficult. Yeah, I don’t like the extremly difficult languages because I want to skip the beginner materials as much as possible and read meaningful things.)
If you guys still read this, sorry for the long post.
I’m focusing on Korean right now, made a bit more urgent as of today as I suddenly find I have a concert to attend in Seoul next month. So basically this month’s goal is “Make Korean into a tool of communication (however primitive) rather than just something that’s for studying.”
My wife wants to start studying Chinese together with me, so that’s probably next in the queue. But I first want to get a more solid foothold in Korean before I dive into the infinite hanzi ocean.
Indonesian is something I want to get deeper into One Of These Days, but it’s become a pretty low priority for the time being.
My companion and I have been learning Mandarin for three years by watching Chinese dramas with English Subs on YouTube. And we have been using Pimsleur.
Last month, I started on LingQ and have made some real progress. I believe I will keep learning Mandarin throughout my life.
After much debate within my own psyche, I added German last week. It is an ancestral language for me. When listening to German on LingQ, it feels like hearing a long lost cousin.
A third language I would begin learning tonight if it was available on LingQ is Gaelic. I imagine there are some real obstacles and difficulties in adding this relatively obscure language to the offerings.
I still continue in learning Italian which I want to learn really well. Next important aim is to improve Greek beyond beginner level. Then long-term aims are revising Russian which is not so difficult because I learnt Russian for many years at school and also it is a Slavic language same as my native Czech so it does not pose any real problems. The difficult one is Chinese and I am not sure how much Chinese I will be able to learn at least I have started. But I think this one will go very slowly.
Main targets: (goal language level in parenthesis)
Mandarin (C1+)
German (B2)
French (B2)
Potential future targets (unlikely in the medium term):
Cantonese
Russian
English (can’t say what level right now).
Russian will be next.
Targeting a advanced level (B2-C2)
Spanish
French
German
Targeting a high level (B1-B2)
Italian
Russian???
Turkish???
I am aiming that I would reach a somewhat fluent level by the end of the year with Spanish and French. Mostly reading I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of grammar so it has more to do with vocabulary at this point. There are some grammatical things I need to refresh or take a closer look to get a better grasp.
German is by main focus I got to a good start last year but I feel I have regressed, still it doesn’t feel as hopeless as a year ago.
I hope I can use my knowledge of French and Spanish to my advantage when learning Italian and get fluent in it as well. As for Russian and Turkish they are part of a group of languages that I have at one point wanted to learn for no particular reason.
I would like to learn Russian because I have Russian heritage so it would be kind of cool to know it, it is part of what I consider to be “the five big languages of Europe”.
In addition to these languages I have for a long time wanted to learn a more exotic language that I have no “or almost” prior knowledge. So that is part of the reason why I might learn Turkish or I might go for Polish, Swahili (if it gets added to lingq), Japanese or Latin (not that exotic but still).
I think it’s important to have a definite target list - it helps approach things in a planned and focussed kind of way.
(In the past I have tended to have commitment issues - I might start language X, then I’d be in a bookstore and see a grammar or dictionary for language Y…and I’d be tempted to jump ship! Experience has shown me that this kind of indiscipline means one ends up not making much headway in any language!)
Let me know when you get to modern Hebrew, I have some additional late A1-B1 material that I can share privately
Great post here is mine -
German (C2 - I’m at intermediate level wish I could become advanced)
French (C2 - I’m at an more upper beginner level with this wish I could be advanced too)
Having French and German at the C2 level would mean I could potentially train to become an interpreter. I would love to work with languages! I know you can be an interpreter with just one language but this is usually translating to and from that language. I would prefer to only translate into my mother tongue English. I also feel having French and German together would be a good combo to be working with professionally.
There are other languages I would love to learn though -
Welsh
Russian
Urdu / Hindi
Hebrew
Italian
Swedish
Greek ?
Turkish ?
Korean ?
Mandarin ?
Swahili ?
Irish ?
Spanish ?
Hausa ?
Realistically, speaking more than say 6 - 8 languages is going to be very difficult to maintain. I believe each language needs to be contacted for at least the same amount of time each day (at least half an hour). If that isn’t possible it will stop being a living language in your life and will deteriorate. So will I be able to learn all these - probably not. Each day I manage to contact French and German (absolute must), I usually manage Russian, Italian and Welsh too. Anything beyond contacting those 5 for half an hour becomes hit or miss. I should probably be investing in my Urdu but I feel my motivation has dipped a bit. I passionately love the language and know the script and some vocab but in all honesty I’m not sure I will ever travel to Pakistan…
So there we are for now! I’ve liked sitting down thinking about this. I find everything so fascinating and want to understand and learn so much but alas I can not understand everything I am a finite being …
I have loooooads of resources for Romanian (native books, Podcasts etc), so if you would like to look at any material, just let me know and I can share it :). I was also worried about lack of material when starting Romanian, and whilst its obvious not as amazing as German (which has everything I could ever dream of lol), I am surprised by the brilliant things I have found!
After Mandarin
Spanish
Russian
Farsi
German
Farsi rocks. Apart from the darned script, it is a learner’s dream, pretty much.
Âre!, zabân-e fârsi kheyli khub-e
Make nastaliq your friend 
I found some nice youtube videos for persian (which looks a lot like nastaliq Urdu)
My goals are:
Then I plan to improve my Italian, as I only have a passive knowledge of the language.
And… Farsi! Can’t wait to learn it really.
After that I might want to learn Romanian, Indonesian, Turkish or Urdu but I’m not sure yet.
Of course this list can also change if I go working elsewhere or if I meet a beautiful girl from another country.
What would be great language learning-wise would be working in Iran and meeting an Iranian girl.
Iranians usually write in Nastaliq (and in Nastaliq shekaste when they write by hand) but they don’t seem to be so attached to it as Urdu speakers seem to be.
They use the standard arabic font (the name slipped my mind) when using computers and it’s ok for them if you write in it by hand, which is what I do because it’s so much easier.
Of course, Nastaliq’s beatiful
Anyway, my medium-level farsi is by now completely rusty ((( Such a shame!