{"id":692,"date":"2018-04-01T02:24:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-01T02:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theholisticpursuit.com\/?p=692"},"modified":"2021-04-06T12:14:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T17:14:57","slug":"how-much-of-a-new-language-can-you-really-learn-in-1-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theholisticpursuit.com\/blog\/how-much-of-a-new-language-can-you-really-learn-in-1-month\/","title":{"rendered":"How much of a new language can you really learn in 1 month?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our friend was learning Spanish on Duolingo and she told Calvin and I that we should learn a new language so she could have some competition. We laughed about it but then thought, “why don’t we?” We both had written down learning another foreign language on our dream list earlier in the year. We just thought it would be later down the road, and in the country that the language was spoken. Calvin suggested we study in the evenings after the kids go to sleep (which is 6:30pm) and at first I was like no way.<\/h4>\n
\n

I am usually so tired in the evenings and I look forward to mindlessly looking on social media or watching my hallmark movies, but I decided to give it a go anyways. Here’s what I did and what has happened in one month’s time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I knew it would be different this time around. When we learned Spanish we:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Didn’t have any kids.<\/li>\n
  2. Went to Mexico.<\/li>\n
  3. Did 3 months of formal training with a private teacher.<\/li>\n
  4. Actually personally knew quite a few Spanish speakers.<\/li>\n
  5. Went on to live in Spain for 2 years.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This time we:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Have 2 kids.<\/li>\n
    2. Are in Hawaii\u201412 time zones away from Italy.<\/li>\n
    3. Are doing it on our own. (Me studying Italian and Calvin Portuguese).<\/li>\n
    4. I didn’t personally know any Italians. (Now I have met one here in Kona). We know a lot of people that speak Portuguese.<\/li>\n
    5. We don’t have any plans to move to Italy or Portugal\/Brazil.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      With Spanish as our first foreign language and both languages falling under the romance category (meaning there would be similarities from the Latin roots (what Rome spoke, hence Romance Languages), we set out on our journey.<\/p>\n

      \"Latin
      Romance (Latin) Language Tree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      Here is a bit of my process:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. \n
          \n
        1. \n
            \n
          1. \n
              \n
            1. I started out with Duolingo<\/a> and went through the entire program in the first two weeks. Duolingo was very repetitive so I learned a lot of new words, sentence structure, pronunciation and listening skills. I was pretty addicted as it’s a competitive game as well.<\/li>\n
            2. Along with Duolingo I listened to a “Earworms: Rapid Italian<\/a>” 3 hour audiobook set to music and with lots of repetition when I went walking. I also watched lots of Youtube videos finding Weil\u00e0 Tom<\/a>, Italiano Automatico<\/a>, and Italian Made Easy<\/a>. All incredible and extremely helpful.<\/li>\n
            3. I quickly realized I wanted a grammar book to help me so I found one on Amazon called Italian Demystified<\/a> and focused on that in the last two weeks doing more than half of the book. It was full of explanations, exercises and even tests at the end of each chapter.<\/li>\n
            4. I also started listening to Pimsleur Italian<\/a> on my walks since my audiobook had finished.<\/li>\n
            5. I had also messaged the only girl I knew that spoke Italian as a second language, and quite well since she had lived in Italy and I asked her if I could message her to practice. We began sending short messages every other day which was very helpful. I had to use google translate for almost everything. She also recommended that I watch tv shows and listen to music. I watched a season of a dubbed tv show on Netflix and found Marco Mengoni (seriously so good).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n