...

I mentioned in the last post that I've been studying some Portuguese. It's a language that's been in the back of my mind as one of interest for some time, and I suddenly decided to start learning some, just for fun. Not taking it seriously. Putting in the bare minimum, only doing whatever sounded the most fun to me at any given moment.

So why's it going so dang well for me?

I have no rules, and it's kinda sick tbh

I have some guiding principles, but I don't have a rigid structure to follow. Having stucture does help me when learning a language, but I'm finding that fast and loose has major benefits as well.

In Kató Lomb's Polyglot: How I Learn Languages (a book I will never not talk about), she mentions all the languages she can speak and read. And it wasn't until just recently that it struck me; those were 2 different lists for her. She had a list of languages she could hold a conversation in, and a separate list of languages that she was only serviceable in—give her a book and she could work through it.

Portuguese isn't a Major Language of Importance to my personal language inventory, not to dismiss the language. It's one that I thought was neat, and not much more. And boy howdy, wouldn't it be cool if I could read some? Just read. I like reading (both novels and comics). I don't have anyone to practice speaking Portuguese with at the moment, and I don't tend to watch a lot of videos. So why bother with speaking and listening?

In the span of about 2 weeks, I did some intro vocabulary building on Pronunciator, opened up a textbook, and downloaded a grammar. I spent only about a day or 2 on any given chapter in the textbook; I wasn't trying to memorize the vocabulary it was teaching me, I was just getting a feel for grammatical elements in context, with its dialogues and its language points. When the textbook was too vague on a topic, I looked it up in the grammar to get the exact answer I needed. And by week 3, I'm reading books and comics.

Not very well... but reading nonetheless.

So essentially, by not denying myself the pleasure of only studying exactly what I wanted to, and freeing myself from boring vocab drills and such, I've received nothing but serotonin or dopamine or whatever. It's all fun, and it's all interesting. How could I not be improving quickly?

That's cool and all, but what's this mean for other languages?

I'm optimistic about this approach working well for me, for any language I'm interested in. Even if I want to practise speaking, listening, and writing, reading is the most accessible to me personally. I can take advantage of that to make myself feel accomplished and powerful in my study, further building my motivation. Adding other elements in on top of it later on means learning fewer things all at the same time—I'd be building a skill off of my existing knowledge from practising reading, from a place of greater confidence.

I'm not going to say that this is The language learning method, because everyone needs something different. But there's still a power here that I think anyone could harness in their own language study adventures. Here are my latest takeaways, combining old and new knowledge:

• Start only with what interests you personally.
  • This includes both mode of communication (reading, speaking, etc) and topic.
• Engage with target-language media very early on.
• Learn as much as you can in context.
  • If you look up a translation for a word, you won't remember it tomorrow.
  • Use what you already know to deduce that which is new.

Granted, it's only been 3 weeks. My interest might fade, and if not, then school is going to take up all of my language study time. So I'm not sure how far this guerrilla method will take me. Not that it's especially important to me anyhow. I just wanna read some books.

I'm gonna go do that now.