Current State of Languages
First of all, let me apologize to old subscribers for taking so long to revive the Learnlangs newsletter. If you are no longer interested in language-learning, use the Unsubscribe link at the bottom; I won’t hold it against you.
Conversely, if your New Year’s resolutions include studying a lot more languages, you may be interested in the monthly Zoom calls I’m hosting in 2024, during which I’ll provide mentoring for a select group of people to help them achieve their language goals. Join the calls by getting a “Founding Member” subscription (sorry for the silly name; Substack doesn’t let me customize it).
Still here? On to the actual topic for today:
Changing Language Levels
One thing I’ve really noted over the past few years is that languages rise or fall to the level you use them at. There are languages that I used to be able to speak quite well and which are now mostly passive. There are also languages in which my topic fluency now includes things I could never talk about before, e.g. economics, simply because I’ve consumed a lot of economics content in those languages and had the chance to talk about it.
Whatever you regularly do in a language, that’s what you’ll be able to do. (Force yourself at first; it will get easier within 5-10 hours). Whatever you no longer regularly do in a language, you won’t be able to do anymore; the language atrophies. I guess it’s the brain pruning any connections that haven’t been activated in a year.
My Languages and Levels
Here’s an overview of where I’m now, and links to the books I’ve read, for those interested:
German: my native language
English: feels like another native language, even though I only started learning it at 10 years old, at school, without anyone among my relatives who spoke it with me. Fun fact: in my first year I got a D.
Latin: studied at school, started tutoring people in it when I was 15 years old, at my teacher’s recommendation, I also ran online classes for a while and might again if there is interest
French: hated it at school, learned to love it through some online friends from Quebec, did a 5-year degree in French literature and linguistics along with computational linguistics. Books I’ve read in French (incomplete)
Esperanto: self-studied it, taught it occasionally, completed a C2 exam in 2022. C2 is the highest possible level on the CEFR scale. Books I’ve read in Esperanto
Italian: loved it at school, haven’t used it much since, read a fair number of books in Italian and still able to chit-chat or read books. Books I’ve read in Italian
Spanish: struggling to keep Italian from interfering with it, but it’s basically also okay for chit-chat and reading books. Books I’ve read in Spanish
Dutch: okay for chit-chat and reading books, did an interview on Dutch radio in 2012, now I’d probably want to invest 5-10 hours to refresh it before doing that again. Books I’ve read in Dutch
Mandarin Chinese: in 2014 I passed a mock HSK 5 exam and wrote an essay on linguistics in Chinese. Now I can’t even read my own essay anymore :( and my active vocabulary has also decreased, though I do have conversations approximately once a month. I can still read autobiographies and self-help books in Chinese, with more difficulty than before. Books I’ve read in Chinese
Modern Greek: the reason my Chinese atrophied is that the Greek Crisis dominated the news in 2015 and I got completely absorbed into studying Greek. My level is now C2 or approaching it - I’m now studying for the exam. Books I’ve read in Modern Greek
Serbian-Croatian: working on it intermittently since 2018, now approaching C1. Books I’ve read in Serbocroatian
Indonesian, Hebrew, Swahili, Arabic, Japanese: languages in which I was previously B1 or even B2, but which have atrophied to a large extent since the pandemic, which removed classes/people I was using them with. Indonesian is the only one I ever read books in. It’s the most accessible non-European language.
Russian: a quick challenge in 2022, during which I reached A2. Will push it further eventually.
Thai, Vietnamese, Finnish, Korean, Lithuanian, Maori, Norwegian, Portuguese: studied for a few months, years ago; atrophied to the point I barely remember “hello”.
The biggest surprise this year was when I re-opened my Arabic Anki deck from 2016 and I could still understand almost everything, and even the active cards came back to me after a few days! It feels like, if I were to refresh my Arabic now, I could start very close to where I left off in terms of vocabulary, though I’d need a lot more practice using it in conversations again.