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Ikh lern zikh Yiddish איך לערן זיך ייִדיש

One of the language-related life goals I have is to learn the major Germanic languages. The complete family: English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Yiddish, Icelandic, Faroese, Luxembourgish, Frysian and Limburgish. There are of course more regional variations, such as Swiss German for example.I am focussing only on the bigger ones, being Dutch (my native language), English, German, Afrikaans, Danish, Luxembourgish, Icelandic (all fluent or in the learning stages).I will (at the moment) not study Swedish and Norwegian, because I already speak Danish and I don’t want to ‘contaminate’ that. Frysian and Limburgish are also not on the list.Which leaves me with Yiddish and Faroese. I have dabbled in Faroese for half a year, but then decided to switch to Icelandic, because of the many resources (which Faroese doesn’t have).The moment I master that to a good extent, I will pick up Faroese again.So. Yiddish. I don’t know what triggered it, probably someone on Twitter t…
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Update summer goals #clearthelist

Summer’s gone, way too fast. We are preparing for autumn (and maybe making some new language learning goals for the rest of the year).But before we look ahead, let’s take a look back and see what the summer was like as far as my language learning goals are concerned.What didn’t go well: the blog in my TL’s. I don’t know why I keep making these goals, even though I know I will not write a blog. It just isn’t my thing really. I did write 3 blogs though, but then stopped. I guess I don’t really know what to write about … So let’s not do that anymore next time!The language that got a bit neglected is definitely Danish. I didn’t do anything, except for an italki class in July and one in August and I watched an episode of Rain, but I won’t continue. I liked the first season, watched the second one but it was a bit mèh and now the third one, I won’t watch it anymore. But … I think I finally found a teacher that I would love to work with, Tatiana. Let’s see how that develops in the future. I …
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#40h7dLC

At the start of summer, I had this vague idea of upping my levels for Spanish and Italian. I have been knocking on the B2 door for a while now (it’s ajar already) and I thought this would be a good occasion to finally push it wide open. I knew I was going to book a package of 5 lessons with my italki tutor, but apart from that, I didn’t really have any vast plans.A little more than a week ago, I came across a language challenge on Twitter that was more or less the same as what I was going to do this week, so I thought, why not try that: study your target language for 40 hours in 7 days (credits to @languagecomeup and @seaboltspeaks). 40 hours/7 days of total Spanish immersion! What a treat! And … I had no work planned this week (but I know from experience that can change in an instant).I had initially planned to just immerse myself in Spanish as much as I could for a whole week, without a specific number of hours to reach, but then again, well, why not! Unfortunately I didn’t reach 40…
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#summergoals writing skills

One of my summer goals for this year is writing a short text in all of my target languages.They are French, English, German, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Afrikaans, Luxembourgish, Bulgarian and Icelandic.
First up is Spanish! Second blog is Afrikaans, which was quite difficult (more than I had expected).
The third blog I wrote, is in Luxembourgish, a language I really love. The text itself is not really long, mainly because I have no inspiration, I don't know what to write about and everything I do write, seems so 'artificial'. Although that is not important (and the whole point of this exercise is to practice my writing skills), I find that this holds me back. Anyway ... below is my Luxembourgish attempt.
#LëtzebuergeschElo ass et Summer hei an der Belsch a normalerweis gëtt et an dëser Joreszäit ëmmer schéint Wieder, awer haut net.Et ass bedeckt an et gesäit aus wei et geschwënn Reen gëtt, obwuel et och sonneg ass (ganz komesch).Mir ginn gär spadséieren mee elo bësser net. Nobä…
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#10funfacts (language and other) about me

I thought it would be nice to tell you a bit more about who I am. This makes me more than a name on the screen or a twitter account that you follow. Here we go!A long time ago I graduated as an interpreter, although I have been working as a translator for more than 15 years and never did any interpreting work. I prefer to be home, in my quiet living room, bent over a text, pencil in my mouth, wrestling with a terribly difficult sentence (preferably from a non-fiction book), my well-thumbed dictionary within reach, sweat dripping from my forehead as the deadline comes creeping up on me … No, just kidding, I am a girl of the 21st century and I do have a computer and a digital dictionary. All the rest is true though!One of my dreams was to publish a book and seven years ago, I did it, I wrote my very own 1st book – one thing off my bucket list. It was so much fun to see the other side of the publishing process, as a book translator I am usually just one little link (at the very end of th…
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#clearthelist

Do you like to read how other people study languages? What they do on a daily basis, what resources they use? I for one love to follow YouTube channels, read blog posts and even tweets about language learning and people’s journey to fluency.Recently I discovered Clear the List and I loved it so much that I decided to clear my own list as well! Especially so because I often get the question: how can you study/maintain all these languages? Where do you find the time? Well … here!I didn’t do a lot in June, because I had an enormous translation project, so all my energy went into that. But … July is just around the corner and that’s always a bit more relaxed for me (workwise that is). I plan to do a lot! However … I have a shoulder operation mid July and I might either be in too much pain to do anything, let alone study languages, or all might go well and I will have a week off with nothing to do, except for languages. Fingers crossed!My overall plan for this summer is to write a blog pos…
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Ég er að læra íslensku

Okay, so I did this thing … Call me crazy, verrückt, folle, tosset, matta, whatever you like, but I have decided to swap Faroese for Icelandic and see how that goes.

For the past half year I have been studying Faroese on and off and I really love it! I love the melodious sound of it and the accent that reminds one of English, but is actually a completely different language. But … the thing I miss the most is being able to speak to someone. I have only 1 textbook with audio and that’s it. There was an italki teacher, but he decided to stop teaching shortly after I contacted him. There is almost no authentic input available, no YouTube, no Netflix, no nothing. And after all that home studying, I really feel that I need authentic input and a conversation partner in order to achieve good results and stay motivated. Conversation is the oxygen to my language studies.

So it’s decided. Icelandic it is. There are many YouTube videos, there is a lot of content online, so I am hoping that will hel…
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