Learning languages since that intensive week

Hi, this is an update on my progress in language learning.

Before I describe it, however, I should explain why I learn two languages simultaneously. First of all, it is not something rare among polyglots (meaning: people who learn languages for fun and often know lots of them). This way of learning requires time and commitment, but is not ineffective. If the two languages differ strongly, it is much easier, because the risk that you will confuse words from one and the other is low. Swedish and French are not from the same language family, so there are very few really similar words.

Why did I chose French and Swedish? I wanted to try learning as much of a language as I could in a week from scratch, as an experiment. At the beginning of May, I already knew the basics of Swedish, so I had to find another language. I chose French because I like it, people in a large number of countries around the world speak it, and it is really similar to Spanish, so also easier for me.

Maybe this is not the best method for learning languages, because, for example, when I focused on French, it was really hard to practice Swedish too. However, I enjoy learning these languages and want to learn French on a strong conversational level without losing my Swedish skills. I hope that when I have more time during the holidays, I will be able to learn both of them pretty fast.

This weak has not been an easy time to learn languages, because we are going to get our final grades soon, and we've had a lot of work to do. However, I have done something to improve my skills in French and in Swedish every single day since May 2nd. The first small change: my phone as well as social media are in French and I read most of the news in either Swedish or French (I read the news a lot). I also watched another French movie, Les Intouchables, which is a famous comedy, and some episodes of Les Shadoks. As I had planned, I bought two books: one about Swedish grammar (for example, now I use it to learn the differences between "en-words" and "ett-words"), and "Le Petit Prince". At first, I had a lot of problems with the 2nd book, but I got kind of used to the way the sentences are constructed there, especially questions, and with the help of glossary I can understand it quite easily. I continue to listen to music in my target languages and I use my wordlists.

My newest books for learning languages

During the first weeks after my most intensive week (May 4th to 10th) I was able to dedicate at least one hour a day to learning languages and some more time to learning about those languages and countries (e.g. I read about Sweden or explore the origins of the québécois accent). I used Memrise and learningswedish.se for Swedish, apps such as Lingvist and Busuu for French, and sometimes a bit of Duolingo for both. I also continued reading in the two languages and listening to content in them, for example, La Cottongue.

Unfortunately, such a routine has not been possible recently. I've hardly had any spare time and was simply too exhausted to be productive after school. Thus, I reduced my efforts to achieve a good level of Swedish and French to the everyday practices I've already mentioned, such as using my phone in French.

The next Wednesday we will get our final grades, and from that day I will finally be able to return to the more intensive manner of learning languages.