Thursday, November 27, 2014

Irish AND Swedish? Month 1 Update

Oh, New York City--one of my fave cities that really got me into travelling. <3
Hey all,

Well. Would you look at who hasn't been spending time on her blog? Yep, that's me.

In fact, I've been thinking about blogging for so many days now that it feels like I've written several, when in my fact my last post is from the first of November. Today's the 26th.

Damn. Sorry, y'all. You know what life can do in a moment's notice to plans.

Anyways, what matters right now is that I'm here---yay! I have an exciting update for you all and hope that this can help you in some way.


Some things I have learned within this month of starting Irish.


Time goes by REALLY slow when unmotivated, and fast when you're in action. It feels like it has definitely been more than a month since starting Irish, but it actually hasn't. The first two weeks were a breeze, where I could breathed in the Irish. Oh, how wonderful!

I love birds. This really has nothing to do with my language learning :) but my cockatiel, Holly, had his seventeenth bday this week and I must say, I really miss having him interact with us and perch on our fingers. I've been working with him everyday for a week and a half and today my mother and I finally got him out of his cage! He was as excited as we were ;)

Actually, practicing with Holly has helped me with my language learning. You need a crapload of patience in order to accomplish anything--and you need to remember this. You can't get a bird to suddenly trust you after being with it for an hour. You need to be reliable, determined, and willing to sacrifice your time for practice/training. Bam; I just connected cockatiel taming to language learning. You're welcome.

Memrise is a saviour. I first started off using Anki, but the interface became dull for me very quickly and I became discouraged in practicing my new vocabulary. Memrise makes learning vocab feel like a game--basically because it is! 

Tacking on other languages is sometimes a good idea. I had no intention starting Swedish--in fact, I was planning on projecting that project sometime next year (with Romanian). Due to my impatience, though, I simply can't wait. I love to learn. I love being curious. Swedish has been going on strong with me as I'm going through the Irish vocab I'm having trouble on, which reminds me...

Review review review! If you aren't comfortable continuing, then go back to what you've already learned. Learn the basics by heart--this is how you'll stay strong as you progress. As I continued to push my Irish further and further, I acknowledged that I was losing vocab by rushing. Truth is, you need to take it slow. That solid month of August, when I was learning Portuguese, I kept a slow, steady pace. That's what you need to win.

These are what I have learned during my Irish/Swedish project. IMO, I think my Swedish is actually better than my Irish (lol). Although I picked up on Swedish only about a week or two ago, I am more accustomed to the way sentences are structured, but that doesn't mean I haven't made big improvements in Irish. This month has taught me a lot about changing my ways of language learning to make it easier for myself, and to help other learn languages they desire.


Level:

Irish--able to form sentences and conjugate verbs in present tense, very hard to think on the spot (
Swedish--able to form basic sentences (jag tycker om mina djur ;) (duh!))

And remember--my project date for Irish is still December 22nd. I will try to post more updates more frequently as the date gets closer, and maybe I'll make a video with it! :)

Hej då/Slán/Bye!


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