My 2022 Language Learning Plans, Goals, and Resolutions (& Quarter 1 Goals)

New year, new language goals! I'll be making quarterly updates videos again this year, but for now let's talk about the 6 (or will it be more than 6?) languages I'm studying in 2022 and what I'm hoping to work on and accomplish this upcoming year.
Watch my reflections on 2021 and my goals from this past year here: • 2021 Language Learning...
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Chapters:
Intro + My Views on Goals 0:00-3:20
Overall Plans and Goals 3:20-12:07
Bulgarian 12:07-15:19
French 15:19-23:08
German 23:08-27:08
American Sign Language 27:08-28:28
Spanish 28:28-30:23
Italian 30:23-32:05
Japanese, Gaelic, Dabbling 32:05-34:59
Quarter 1 Plans and Goals 34:59-37:25
Outro 37:25-38:09

[@anarghav5211]

I've been in a language learning slump the second half of this year but rediscovering your channel has definitely helped improve my outlook for the coming year. Thank you Abigail!!

[@PolyglotProgress]

I'm so happy to hear it! I hope you find your way out of the slump this coming year!

[@paholainen100]

Grüße aus Australien. Greetings from Australia. Viel Glück beim Deutsch lernen. ich lerne Deutsch seit vielen Jahren und Deutsch ist meine lieblings Sprache. Deutsch war am Anfang, schwierig zu lernen aber jetzt ist es einfach. Good luck with your German, keep it up

[@lingokev]

I totally agree with your fluid and flexible approach to goals. Language learning should be fun and once something doesn't feel right or fun anymore we shouldn't force ourselves to move forward just because we set a "goal" in the past. Wish you a fruitful language learning year!

[@R_b_cc_]

I really enjoyed watching switched at birth which is a tv show featuring a Deaf cast that use asl as their first language. I think it would be great for people who are learning because it comes fully subtitled and the plot line involves the Deaf girl being introduced to her hearing family and them learning asl so it has a lot of the basic everyday signs included at a not too fast pace!

[@PumpkinMozie]

I really like the sound of a time-based goal. It’s easy to beat yourself up if you make your goal “go from B2 to C1” or something if by the end of the year you don’t feel like you’ve quite leveled up. A time-based goal takes off a lot of that pressure. I think I might try that!

[@PolyglotProgress]

It definitely does! I used to set CEFR goals and even if I had made a lot of progress I felt pressure to progress and I honestly don't think I felt as fulfilled at the end of the year as I do now. I really recommend the time-based approach!

[@londongael]

Bliadhna Mhath Ur dhut! Tha mi'n dochas gum bi thu ag ionnsachadh beagan Gaidhlig na h-Alba am bliadhna. Happy New Year to you. I hope you do learn a bit of Scottish Gaelic this year. Tha i sporsail! It's fun! (Can't do accents on my machine, but there should be grave accents on U of Ur, and the a of Gaidhlig). Best wishes for whatever you do, anyway. Some features of Gaelic you might find interesting: No specific words for "yes" and "no". A tendency to prefer noun constructions to verbs - no verbs "have", "know", "own" and many others. A fairly regular and phonetic spelling system (trust me). A wealth of beautiful poetry and song. Useful, modern reading material at every level. Only 70-80,000 native speakers - Gaelic needs you!

[@keislanguages1296]

I really like how thoroughly you break down each of your target languages' goals, and the time-based goals are also a good idea which I think I'll implement in my own language learning this year... Also, 40-60$ for 'The Little Prince' is an outrageous price, especially since the book itself is worth 7,90 leva here. If you decide that you want it anyway, I can buy it from here and mail it to you. Благодаря за страхотното видео и успешна нова година, Абигейл!

[@learningitalianwithmargherita]

Ciao Abigail, buon 2022! 🍀Non conosco esattamente i tuoi gusti, ma ti consiglio di provare a leggere i romanzi di Alessandro Baricco e di Margaret Mazzantini, sono due scrittori eccezionali. Buona lettura e buono studio!

[@paholainen100]

since you asked, here's a book recommendation "Supergute Tage oder Die sonderbare Welt des Christopher Boone". If you want to read something in German which isn't too hard or too easy. It's a fun book and was originally in English. I was able to read it quite quickly.

[@theoraven]

I'm not sure if you have seen the Queer Lit Readathon around, but it might be a fun one to do. One of the hosts is Rogan Shannon, a deaf creator; their videos are all in ASL. I tried to do their first weekend challenge this year in Spanish, but my books didn't come in time. I'm going to try to read at least one book for the next challenge in Spanish.

[@PolyglotProgress]

Oooh this is absolutely something I'd be into! I hadn't heard of it but I'll definitely look into it!

[@nextlifetimebrendan3940]

For standard italian music i loooove Giorgia Todrani (who is basically the Whitney Houston of italy), Mahmood, Elodie, & Laura Pausini. Also Neapolitan music i love Rocco Hunt, Geolier, Pino Franzese. For shows "Baby" on netflix is great, or My Brilliant Friend on HBO, and a movie i recently watched which was kind of disturbing but good is "Favolacce/Bad Tales"!

[@michaeldresco7285]

Thank you for recommending Polylogger! It’s so helpful!!😊

[@claire_450]

Yeah I completely agree, it's really helped me to see all the ways that I am passively learning the language and to also encourage me to do little bits here and there when I find small spaces of time 😀 Thanks Abigail for the suggestion 😊

[@PolyglotProgress]

I'm glad you're both enjoying it!!

[@erickstime8696]

Lovely video! I loved how you explained how a language learning routine can get into your daily life without even noticing it, enhance the less amount of effort you'll put in next year to get into the "flow"! nice!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Thank you!

[@katherineelisabeth4387]

Happy New Year, Abigail!!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Happy new year to you too!!

[@daniel.mojimaki]

Your videos are always so motivating for me, thank you! Bonne chance en 2022!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Merci !!

[@lewishendo9328]

Happy new year :)

[@PolyglotProgress]

Thank you! Happy new year to you too!

[@joreneereads]

Omg I loveee the idea of participating in a readathon in TL, totally stealing that one!

[@PolyglotProgress]

I hope you enjoy it!! And definitely feel free to let me know when you participate or how it goes! I've never tried it before but I also feel like it sounds really fun!

[@ivysplays7096]

I really enjoyed watching "the Fosters" in Italian!

[@FrugalOverFifty]

I enjoyed the premiere, and I had to come back here and tell you that you inspired me to download 3 of the Percy Jackson books in Spanish from my library. ¡Adelante!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Ah that's great! I hope you enjoy reading them! Thanks for hanging out with me at the premiere :D

[@tstikvoort4646]

Love the book bingo idea!

[@PolyglotProgress]

I'm really excited to try it out!

[@someperson9536]

I'm learning Japanese and ancient Greek. For my Japanese learning, I'm reading and listening to stories in Japanese. I get practice speaking with a partner from italki. I'm pushing myself to use different vocabulary words and different sentence structures. For ancient Greek, I'm going through Biblingo, a grammar book, and a book with a collection of stories.

[@nextlifetimebrendan3940]

Omg that is soooo cool that you're going to start making a con lang!!!! I would love to do that too eventually

[@PolyglotProgress]

I'm really excited about it too!

[@gingerhabbyshaw4012]

What is a con lang?

[@nextlifetimebrendan3940]

@@gingerhabbyshaw4012 a constructed language..basically one you make up by yourself

[@castellanspandrell891]

i'd recommend Easy Ways to Enlarge Your German Vocabulary by Karl A. Schmidt! I was able to pick it up from Thriftbooks for a couple of books, but it takes a linguistic approach to help you with things like finding cognates between English and German, as well as looking at how words are constructed. It also has quite a few excercises to practice!

[@zourou319]

If you haven't already, for French, some great movies if you like something to laugh is anything with the actor Louis de Funès. He is known and liked through much of Europe. I grew up watching his movies.

[@zourou319]

Here is a list of some good movies with him incase you want somewhere to start without having to search much(in no particular order) : La Folie Des Grandeurs Hibernatus L'homme Orchestre Le Gendarme Fantomas Le Petit Baigneur Oscar L'avare Rabbi Jacob L'aile ou la cuisse Le Grand Restaurant

[@Tofuwabofu]

For German vocabulary I'm currently working through Using German Vocabulary by Sarah Fagan, from the Cambridge university press, and I'd recommend it so far. It has a pretty lengthy introduction covering how to use effectively use a dictionary, how to study the vocabulary -- they recommend flashcards, I use Anki -- there's a premade deck with all ~14,700 words, and I just add additional pictures, example sentences, etymological info etc. as I see fit. The last segment of the introduction covers ~80 different common prefixes and suffixes that make up German nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and I've found it quite interesting and helpful for learning new words. Then there are lists of vocabulary split into 20 units based on theme, further split into 2-3 subunits each, and 3 levels of frequency/difficulty for each unit. Each level of vocab in each unit has a corresponding set of exercises. I'm hoping to get through the whole book in about a years time. Maybe you'd find this helpful, maybe not.

[@PolyglotProgress]

Ooh I'll definitely have to look into that! I'm just starting to get into anki (I've used other SRS systems for a while but have never really stuck with anki) so that premade deck sounds really intriguing!

[@nikolgerova5440]

Направи видео на Български…ще бъде страхотно 😍👏🏻

[@annap1871]

I wrote a list of languages goals for 2022! I used your idea of dividing the year into shorter periods. We will see what I will accomplish, but I'm optimistic :) After a huge break, the last two years were great regarding language learning. p.s. My friends from uni were learning sign language; however, I am not a fan of the idea that every country has its own.

[@Nadia24]

Lovely video! ^__^

[@PolyglotProgress]

Thank you! 😊

[@bunnyteeth365]

In 2021 my goal was to improve my reading comprehension in Hebrew since it was way below my listening comprehension. I think I did achieve that goal, but it wasn't actually all that satisfying to be honest. I found my progress very satisfying in 2020 since I went from a beginner level comprehension to an intermediate level comprehension very quickly. Right now my progress isn't enough to really satisfy me, so I'm finding other things that can satisfy me. I guess I'll focus more on why I learned Hebrew in the first place and start learning about more and more topics in Hebrew. It's so easy to get lost in the process of language learning, especially if you're a beginner or lower intermediate. For me it's hard to notice a difference between my listening comprehension in 2020 and 2021. There is one difference I do notice. In 2020 I relied on my existing knowledge to help me fill in the blanks and understand podcasts. That often made them seem shallow and less interesting. The novelty of being able to understand Hebrew kept them interesting to me. In 2021 I seemed a lot better at actually learning new things from podcasts. So a lot of the podcasts I listened to in 2020 seem more interesting to me now. I still feel like I'm at an intermediate level. I guess my big theme for the year will be finding purpose. I still don't have too many concrete goals to be honest.

[@kasiabudzynska2432]

If you are interested in teen adventure/fantasy fiction in Italian I would recommend books by Pierdomenico Baccalario (Ulysses Moore, Century). I read them when I was younger (in polish translation, because i know no Italian whatsoever) and loved them a lot. I recently though about revisiting them and maybe i will try to read a translation to one of my target languages 🤔

[@PolyglotProgress]

Ooh thank you for the recommendation! I added the first Ulysses Moore book to my to-read list, that sounds like it might be the perfect book for my Italian level and a really fun read :)

[@lunar.diaries]

I'm also learning German and have been thinking about getting a textbook to structure my learning more~ have you done a review of the Aspekte neu books before? If not I would love to see one :) Viel Erfolg beim Deutsch lernen!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Thank you! Happy New Year to you too!!

[@DespicableGru]

Happy New Year, Abigail! Do you watch news program on your languages? Maybe I have forgotten you mentioned it in your past videos. :) Do you have a language that you have a love & hate relationship? Mine is Spanish. I've been learning it for over a decade now, but I still couldn't speak beyond basic sentences.:)

[@PolyglotProgress]

I don't really! I don't end up watching many news programs in English either though, I tend to prefer to read about current events instead of watching or listening to programs on them. And hmmmm maybe Bulgarian? But it's really all love, just very much so still at that basic sentence level even after a lot of study!

[@anartisttravels9279]

Thats so cool about creating your own language! PLEASE make a video about what thats called, how it works, etc :)) I'm a writer and the idea of creating a language for stories is fascinating to me but not sure where to start! X

[@PolyglotProgress]

I definitely still need to learn how to it myself first! But maybe some day I will make videos on my progress with it!

[@anartisttravels9279]

@@PolyglotProgress yes please do! :)x

[@katarinakat1455]

Abigail thank you for this video! As for Italian I can recommend Baby on Netflix (hopefully it is available in the US, if not VPN might help :) )

[@PolyglotProgress]

I've heard a lot of people recommend Baby so I'll definitely give it a try!

[@vicentema31]

A while back I read The Art of Language Invention (by David J. Peterson), it explains the process behind conlanging through linguistics and stories/jokes. It could be a useful book for your reading and conlanging goals.

[@PolyglotProgress]

It's definitely on my to-read list!

[@alisonpudwell4054]

This is sort of up to taste, but there are a lot of beautiful Italian arias and operas. They're pretty repetitive too, so maybe good for learners? But it does mean you have to like classical music

[@PolyglotProgress]

I don't think I've ever actually listened to or watched a full opera or aria... I should definitely give it a go at some point! Thank you for the recommendation!

[@SaintYaronimo]

You look so beautiful in this video!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Thank you so much!!

[@danmzungu3427]

How many politi languages do you know ha ha ha ha ha, NY? I love spanish i know swahili. I’d love to learn Spanish, French, Russian, that’s man because you’re here a lot of it on TV, and friends in Spanish is beautiful, but because I don’t have anyone consistently to speak to any of these languages, it’s hard to find a good enough reason to study them all, I’ve always been curious why you study all the languages you study which I’ve heard you know Spanish, Italian, now you’re saying French Bulgarian, German, I’ve always wondered why are you study hall you study, and how are you stare so motivated

[@booksandthreads]

Do you have a PO box or an address you're comfortable sharing? I happen to have a copy of The Little Prince as well as Alice in Wonderland (in Bulgarian) I could give away. Feel free to message me if you want them!

[@PolyglotProgress]

Aw that's so sweet of you to offer! I actually do have a separate mailing address I could give you! What is the best way to message you? :)

[@booksandthreads]

@@PolyglotProgress I messaged you on instagram as i think my comment got deleted :)

[@Anettegraphy]

Anna Gavalda is a French author I would recommmend you check out if you haven’t already :)

[@PolyglotProgress]

I hadn't heard of her but a lot of her books sound right up my alley since I love character driven work! Will definitely try one of them this year :D

[@llunabuades8452]

Now I'm reading Thomas Rapahël's "J'aime le sexe mais je préfere la pizza" and it's pretty good. I recommend if you have a B1-B2 in French. Some advice? P.S.: Also, I highly recommend Émilie Roy if you like literature and books!📚

[@PolyglotProgress]

Yes! I really like his videos! I'll have to check out the book you're reading, thanks for the recommendation!

[@soundlyawake]

I’m about to review how well I did with my language goals and I am NER-VOUS but I think I was a lil too lofty when I set them. I like what you said about keeping it realistic and attainable so I’m definitely gonna lower my goals this year 😅