My Language Learning Routine

I recently saw a couple people talking about their language learning routines, so I thought I would write a post about my own, even if it's only for my own posterity.

I start with a series of Duolingo lessons in the languages I'm studying that don't use the Latin alphabet (Hindi, Ukrainian, Yiddish, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew, and Greek) and one lesson in a language from those that I study less frequently, cycling through them over the course of about two weeks (Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Irish, Navajo, Polish, Scottish, Swedish, Turkish, and Welsh).  If I trigger something to get double points for my lessons, I continue with the languages I practice every day (German, French, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Esperanto, Portuguese, Romanian, Klingon, and Spanish); otherwise, I do the rest of these lessons throughout the day.  I also do an Indonesian lesson every day, but I treat this language a bit differently.  I write down a couple words, phrases, or sentences from each lesson, and when I get to a new page in my notebook, I watch a video from IndonesianPod101 (starting with the oldest ones) and write down the vocabulary from it.

(I've been using Duolingo since 2013.  It's gotten worse over the last few years, but I continue to use it, although I've moved back to the browser version to avoid the absurd new "energy" system.)

Next, I work through the Daily Doses (Hebrew, Aramaic, the Greek Septuagint, the Greek New Testament, and Latin).  I copy out each verse by hand and - where applicable - read it in a variety of languages:  English (obviously), German (I have only a German New Testament, along with Psalms and Proverbs), French (only the New Testament, without Psalms and Proverbs), the Latin Vulgate, Italian (I've been referencing this Bible from 1894), and Anglo-Saxon (via The Daily Dose of Aramaic, I found this book of the Gospels).  Since May, I've also been reading the Psalms in German, covering at most a column at a time, not necessarily a whole chapter.

Then, I read a bit from a handful of textbooks or other language-related books (many of which I got from Internet Archive).  I'm progressing at an intentionally slow pace (glacial, even), but I feel that this helps me learn the material more deeply.  Currently, I'm reading/working through:

• A Greek Grammar of the New Testament by Curtis Vaughan and Virtus E. Gideon
• Wheelock's Latin, 7th Edition
• Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book by C. Alphonso Smith
• A Grammar of the Sanskrit Language by F. Kielhorn
• Arabic Grammar by Dr. A Socin
• Philemon: A Visual Reader by Sawyer D. Moranville (via The Daily Dose of Greek)
• Grammar of Palestinian Jewish Aramaic by William Barron Stevenson (via The Daily Dose of Aramaic)
• The History of Language by Henry Sweet
• A Primer of the Gothic Language by Joseph Wright
• New Testament Greek for Laymen by Michael A. Merritt (via The Daily Dose of Greek's resources page)
• Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics by Daniel B. Wallace

In A Primer of the Gothic Language, I've been stumbling through portions of the Gospels (currently Luke 2, which is seasonally appropriate), so I also read the corresponding verse in Anglo-Saxon.

In the evening (usually), I do some translating work:  a sentence or so of Wer die Heimat liebt wie du (a 1916 German novel that I found in my grandfather's basement about seventeen years ago), a stanza from Kirchen-Gesangbuch für Evangelisch-Lutherische Gemeinden (a collection of German hymn texts; I have a copy from 1902), and a sentence or so of Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Jules Verne's French novel better known in English as Around the World in 80 Days).  These efforts may seem laughably small or even insignificant, but with consistency, they add up.  I also do a bit more reading:

• Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition (my family regularly mocks me for reading this, but I've found it beneficial)
• A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew by J. Weingreen
• The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words by Anu Garg
• Colloquial Polish by Bolesław W. Mazur
• Elementary Turkish by Lewis V. Thomas

I also follow a few routines that aren't daily.  Since January, I've been trying to watch an Aleph with Beth video every Sunday and an Alpha with Angela video every Wednesday.  When there are no new Alpha with Angela videos, I use my Wednesdays to try to catch up on Aleph with Beth, in which I'm something like two years behind.  There's no real schedule for watching the videos, but I had been on track in the early days and want to be up-to-date again.

When I run across a reference to a language (or, more frequently, a reference to a country after which a language is named) from the group that I don't practice every day, I do an extra Duolingo lesson in that language, sometimes immediately but more frequently days (or weeks or even months) later.  Recently, I've been trying to watch a corresponding [language]Pod101 video for every time I encounter Norwegian, Arabic, or Russian.  Generally, I start with the oldest, but for Arabic, I've been going over the alphabet, which I still don't have a good handle on.

Whenever I see any Latin, I copy it in a notebook and parse it, but I'm often behind in this practice.  (I've been procrastinating on a slew of complex and lengthy quotations I read in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II back in May.)

I'm subscribed to a handful of YouTube channels for language learning (some of which I watch more regularly than others), and I follow a dozen or so language teachers on Instagram (mostly of German and French, which are my first two foreign languages).  I'm very fond of français_avec_nelly and also really like deutsch_eins.

Library/Bookstore

Recently, I was thinking about the French words bibliothèque (library) and librairie (bookstore).  Both are related to words that mean book:  the Greek βιβλίο and the Latin liber.  (The Italian biblioteca and libraria are comparable.)  The same situation also exists in English with library and bookstore:  library comes from the Latin liber, and bookstore contains bōc, the Anglo-Saxon or Old English word for book.

Everything is shifted over a language, but the same relationships exist:  the word for library is related to book in an-other language, and the word for bookstore contains book in an older form of the same language.

Solstice/Equinox

Yester-day was the summer solstice, which reminded me of a neat etymological feature regarding the words solstice and equinox that I realized last year.  Solstice comes ultimately from Latin words that mean sun (sol) and stand (stare).  Equinox, the opposite, comes from Latin words that mean equal (aequus) and night (nox).  Consequently, the words for sun and night, which are associated with or describe opposite times of day, appear at different ends of solstice and equinox, matching the meanings in a way.

Cardinal Directions in Latin

Yester-day, I discovered via the Vulgate translation of Revelation 21:13 that the words for the cardinal directions in Latin start with only two different letters:  aquilone (north), austro (south), oriente (east), and occasu (west) (those are all in the ablative case since that's how they appear in the verse).  Consequently, the directions at each end of the two major axes (north-south and east-west) have the same initial letter, creating a nice balance.

I also lookt up occidens (an-other word for west) in my Latin dictionary and discovered that it comes from the verb occidere, which means (among other things) "to fall" or "to set," as in the sun.  Similarly, oriente comes from oriri, "to rise."  If I'm not mistaken, the Greek words for east and west, ἀνατολή and δυσμή respectively, also come from verbs that mean "to rise" (ἀνατέλλω) and "to set" (δύνω, δῦμι).

Was machen die Elefanten mit den großen Stoßzähnen?

Lately, I've been working on the German Duolingo skills under the heading "Describe the Berlin Zoo, discuss volunteer work."  A few times over the last month or so, I've gotten the sentence "Was machen die Elefanten mit den großen Stoßzähnen?" which I translated as "What do the elephants with the large tusks do?" but which Duolingo notes can also be translated as "What do the elephants do with the large tusks?"

I found it interesting that, while ostensibly translations of the same German sentence, "What do the elephants with the large tusks do?" and "What do the elephants do with the large tusks?" have different meanings and that these different meanings depend entirely on the placement of the prepositional phrase "with the large tusks."

In "What do the elephants with the large tusks do?" the prepositional phrase acts as an ablative of description because it immediately follows a noun, but in "What do the elephants do with the large tusks?" it acts as an ablative of instrument because it follows a verb.

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To-day, I also reached a 3,652-day streak, which means I've done daily Duolingo lessons for ten years.

Conquered German Skill Tree... Again

I conquered the German skill tree on Duolingo... again.

I completed the skill tree on the web version on 30 September, but there's some discrepancy between the web version and the app, so I had to do two more skills on the app in order to get this graphic.

I've completed the skill tree at least twice before.  Here's a post from August 2020 when I got the level four trophy, and here's a post from December 2021 when - after Duolingo updated the skill tree and took that trophy away - I reached level one again.  Sometime after that, Duolingo must have updated the skill tree yet again and taken away an-other of my trophies.

Conquered Ukrainian Skill Tree

I completed the Ukrainian skill tree on Duolingo!  It took me almost exactly seven months; I started on 22 February.

Conquered Danish Skill Tree

I started learning Danish on Duolingo on 24 September 2015.  Because it was a lower priority language for me, I did lessons only infrequently, but for the last month or so, I've been doing a lesson every day (although I might have missed a day here or there), and I conquered the skill tree to-day!

Dutch Level 4

I reached Dutch level 4 on Duolingo, but then I discovered that, apparently, Duolingo did away with the graphics that show these specific milestones.  Now, all I get is a more generic course completion graphic:

Italian Level 5 Trophy

I reached Level 5 in the Duolingo Italian course:

Esperanto Level 2 Trophy

I reached level 2 in the Duolingo Esperanto course:

Hebrew Level 3 Trophy

I reached level 3 in the Duolingo Hebrew course: