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.
