How many of you have heard of Benny Lewis? That famous Irish polyglot who starts a new language mission almost every 3 months and, in that time, he tries to learn a new language from scratch to a pretty good/fluent level. He often states at the beginning of his mission that he would like to acquire at least C1 in the language in those 3 months. I do follow Benny’s blog and fancy his style of learning. But I’ve asked myself more than once, is it really possible to learn a totally new language up to C1 in just 3 months? I am always an optimist. But I am also a realist. Language learning is not something that should be taken for granted. It’s not just the process of learning new words and ways to communicate with other people. It’s also the process of getting to know an entirely different culture in great detail. Are 3 months really sufficient to do this? Or does it take more? Yesterday, I got a pretty good idea about how to find out the answer.
My notes for Chinese, Arabic and Greek back from the time I was learning them
I have been learning foreign languages for a long time. But never have I tried to challenge myself to see how quickly I can actually learn it only if I try hard enough. Okay, I did challenge myself once with Dutch but that lasted for just 2 weeks so it doesn’t really qualify as a successfully done challenge. This time, though, it was action time! I decided to learn a new language for 6 months and by the end of these 6 months, I have to have at least B2 level in it (which is advanced conversational fluency). The decision has been made! Now I only needed a language to learn. I didn’t really want to dabble with something too easy but I also didn’t want to spend the first month learning the new script or the tone system. I was looking for a language that was going to be challenging, although not impenetrable in 6 months. I thought for a while. Then, I opened up my internet browser and navigated to Duolingo, a website designed to help you learn a new language with ease. It’s been some time since I last visited it so I wanted to see if they had any new languages in stack. It turned out they did! In fact, they had a couple of new ones. Skimming through them, my glance fell immidiately onto the perfect solution to my problem – the exact thing I had been looking for! It was time to announce the winner. It was DANISH!
A book in Danish
Danish isn’t a rather popular language for many. It is spoken primarily in Denmark, a Scandinavian country with the population of approximately 5,5 million people. What makes it so appealing (to me) is its pronunciation. Much like other Scandinavian languages, Danish has quite a mellifluous tone to its pronunciation. Deemed funny by some, I find it to be special and that’s exactly what I wanted from the language I had been looking for.
So what’s the plan? The plan is to learn Danish in 6 months to a level of advanced conversational fluency (B2), which is a level at which one is able to talk and read about virtually any subject without much difficulty. At that level, you know enough vocabulary to express your thoughts about almost everything you want.
Okay, so that’s the plan. But how exactly do I plan to do it? What resources do I plan to use? And how much time do I plan to dedicate to it every day? To put it simple, I don’t know (yet). The thing is, whenever I start to learn a new language, I don’t immidiately think about all the things I will ever use for it. Because I’ve found that the best resources are always discovered along the way. I will start by doing the Duolingo course, which will, hopefully, provide me with a lot of vocabulary to use. Besides Duolingo, I will also use, as a grammar reference, Colloquial Danish and Teach Yourself Danish.
My progress so far with Duolingo’s Danish course
To keep track of my progress, I will write a new post every Monday (I know today is Tuesday but, unfortunately, I didn’t have much time yesterday) in which I will explain everything I’ve done, everything I plan to do next and describe how much of the language I have learnt already. After some point when I reach a good-enough level, I might also post video updates so that you can also see how well I speak, as well as interviews in Danish if I manage to find a Dane willing to help me with it.
If you know anyone who would be willing to talk to me in Danish and help me practise it, I would be very grateful if you could leave me their contact either in the comments below or by a private message on italki (http://www.italki.com/teacher/1552143). Here we go! Wish me luck!
Language learnt: Danish
Start date: November 3rd, 2014
End date: May 1st, 2015
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