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Learn Body Parts in Vietnamese | Total Beginner Vietnamese
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Hi, I'm doing ~12h a day so just to clarify how this is possible from a time management perspective. I'm from Sweden and you get some financial support for studying here. I study at math/statistics/ML at 50% pace without actually going to class, I just read about the subjects ~3h/day in Spanish and sign up for courses I already know I'll pass from self studying. If there are periods I don't have any course I think I'll pass I make sure to sign up for Spanish beginner courses which I pass without effort. I've also started to work ~20h a week where I can spend about 80% of my time listening to podcasts. I've basically delayed my education 1.5 years in the long run to be able to listen to languages 24/7. This whole thing is new to me and I just decided it is what I wanted to do for a few years.
Spanish 1700h - I have basically 98-100% comprehension for anime/youtube/gaming streamers and podcasts in general. Reading university courses in Spanish isn't easy and it's a lot slower than doing it in English/Swedish but it's fine and it gets better every week. I currently don't do a whole lot in Spanish besides reading, podcasts at work and I'm trying to seek out Spanish speakers when I play padel for speaking practice. Besides reddit, Spanish has replaced English 100%. There are still some movies etc on netflix that would trip me up but there is so much native content I understand easily so I just avoid this type of content for now.
Mandarin 410h - I'm starting to get very comfortable listening to upper beginner content I'd say. I'm using a method where I basically repeat a playlist until I have close to 100% comprehension. At early levels this meant I watched videos about 15 times, now I still watch stuff 3-4 times. I'm in no rush to reach native content and I think I'll stop repeating content once I reach 1000h or so. It's hard to tell how long I think it's going to take compared to Spanish, 2x might be a good estimation and 3x seems too high. I try not to worry about it and enjoy the process.
First 100-150h really sucked, from there it just keeps getting easier and honestly now it's no big deal doing 3-4h a day. I'm not overly reliant on visuals for videos I've already seen once, but obviously I need visuals the first time I see a video. 2nd-4th time I can more often than not rely on the descriptive words to remember what the video was about and use the videos more as "podcasts". I came across this song and found it beautiful, maybe someday I'll understand it.
Russian 100h - Now Russian is a lot easier than Mandarin early on, not sure if it's because the sounds are somewhat similar to Swedish but I tend to do 45-60 minutes a day and it's honestly rather chill. That said I'm still mainly just repeating Inhale Russian but things stick so much faster than Mandarin.
I'm 1/4 Russian but I've never really been exposed to it at all growing up, my Mom speaks it fluently so I look forward to reaching an intermediate level and watching content/speaking Russian with her and some other relatives. In general I expect it to take about as long as Spanish. Not too worried about the grammar, I managed to learn Spanish/English grammar just listening/reading and I'm confident it will work for Russian as well but time will tell.
Korean 85h - I'm very far behind my Russian comprehension despite being somewhat close in hours, rather expected I suppose. I'm not studying any grammar in any language early on and just going in blind but I've figured enough to understand past/present/future tense, and ~4 particles (I think they're called that) are starting to pop out. Same story here, a lot of repetition to make sense of the grammar before moving on to harder content.
The sounds of Korean are a lot easier than Mandarin so it's not really difficult to listen to the same way Mandarin was at the start but the grammar seems more complicated. My general strategy for Korean is that I've heard that 60-70% of the more advanced vocab comes from Mandarin so if I learn Mandarin first it will be exponentially faster to learn Korean so I try and keep the ratio like 30-40m Korean to 3h Mandarin and just learn the basics for now.
Portuguese 40h - Now Portuguese is like a breath of fresh air amongst all these difficult languages. It really is extremely easy once you know Spanish and my intention was to just go slow with it until I was completely fluent and "done" with Spanish and then switch to PT. My GF is 100% Swedish, but her parents moved down to Portugal 30 years ago so she was born there and lived there for 19 years, her dad still lives there. We just decided we're going down to Portugal for 3 weeks this summer (in 2 months), and I've never liked the fact that everyone has to switch to English because of me so now I'm going to cut down all my other languages to some kind of maintenance mode and try and see how far I can get with Portuguese in these 2 months.
I'm still going to use Spanish while studying/working but I think I can manage about 4-5h a day since I'm not very reliant on visuals. That would put me at about 300h before going to Portugal, hopefully it's enough to understand but I don't expect to speak. Ojalá que mi español me ayude bastante en mi aprendizaje del portugués :)
At the end of the day Spanish/Portuguese/Russian sort of makes sense to learn and Mandarin/Korean I have absolutely no idea why I'm learning but for some reason after learning Spanish I decided I enjoyed the journey so much I'm willing to delay my "career" 1.5-2 years and the thought of traveling to China/Korea and speaking with the locals just feels really cool so I guess I'm investing like 5000-6000h to do something that seems cool. Actually I'm interested in the South Korean E-sports scene and Chinese history. I'll do an update every 2-3 months mainly for myself to track my journey and see how everything unfolds.
New-ish CI channel with chats and more importantly for me, gameplays!!!
Just wanted to make a post sharing two good sources for Russian CI that probably make up 80% of my hours.
Russian with Max. He makes insanely interesting vlogs and podcasts (intermediate level). He talks slow. Vlogs are usually outdoors doing some type of activity. And yet, somehow, he manages to keep the audio insanely clear and of good quality. Not sure how he does it.
Russian Radio Show. Makes podcasts and videos for all levels (mainly intermediate-advanced). His audio is so crisp and clear, you can hear each individual letter being pronounced, even when he is talking fast.
I took a 1 semester Chinese course in college, but I've been wanting to try CI for Mandarin. How long did it take you to no longer need visual cues? I'm worried the progress will be slow, as I really prefer podcasts.
When learning Russian, from 100 to 150 hours I started no longer relying on visual cues, wondering where that point is for Chinese?
I was watching a youtube with a few of the more famous polyglots where they were talking about ways they learn new languages. One of them talked about watching a comprehensible video a few times, and then listening to it several times until the listening without watching is comprehensible as well. Has anyone tried this? Is it a good idea?
You'd still want to follow the guidelines of not stressing about it, not worrying about individual words you don't understand, etc. Just trying to decide if it's worth trying out. I'd love to get some extra input any time i'm driving, but i'm still too early to really listen and comprehend most things (I just hit 50 hours of dreaming spanish).
I speak Arabic and English and I have 1158 hours of Spanish (I’m happy about my level right now; I can basically understand almost everything I watch except movies since I’m not really interested in. However, I had only few conversations with Spanish IRL and understanding them was easy. Speaking was another thing however I managed to get my points across most of the time).
I plan to start Japanese in a month or so, I know there is CIJ but I’m afraid it’s not enough. After Japanese I plan to go with Russian but I’m not sure if there is enough CI.
I plan to do Japanese for 2-3 years (3000h) and later Russian (2250h).
Any tips?