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started writing book reviews, movie reviews and translating songs i like. felt that i wanted some practice that wasn’t just the plain diary writing. i’m approximately 120 pages into my new book, too. it feels nice.

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one thing that is so interesting about learning a language, is that you learn things about the languages you already speak too. my swedish vocabulary is growing by the day, just from learning german. i find it very special, i really like the words i learn this way, they’re dear to me in a way. it feels like i’ve worked so hard to attain them.

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exciting things has happened, i finished my first german book today! sally rooneys “normal people”. i did not like the book so i am surprised i actually finished it. i think it wasn’t a good first book to read, since the conversations aren’t marked out. it would probably be confusing in my first language too, so you can imagine my confusion reading it in german. i also did not like the story, since i’m not very fond of romance books, but there wasn’t that many contemporary books to pick from. i also read half of “die tribute von panem” (hunger games) but i’ve already read it in swedish multiple times before so it wasn’t particularly interesting to re-read it very slowly lol. maybe in the future though.

it’s still very surprising to me that i’ve never read a book in english before. i’ve never had an interest to do it i suppose. i don’t like english very much, to be completely honest. anyways, i’m going to find myself a new book to read. something with quotation marks in the dialogue, preferably.

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i used to never ever practice writing, but last month i started a diary in my target language and since then, i’ve been writing a little almost every day. i’ve only filled six pages so far, but i’ve become a lot better at grammar, my active vocabulary feels twice as big and i’m much more confident about writing AND speaking now.

i can’t even begin to imagine how good i could be a year from now or even a couple months in the future. it’s really exciting and interesting to see how i’ve developed. i use a normal google docs document, and it helped me out with my grammar in the beginning, but it didn’t take long until i almost became my own spellcheck haha. i can almost always instinctively know what mistakes i have made when i see the blue line appear under a word or a part of the sentence. really interesting progress with way less effort than i thought was needed.

it’s so interesting, how i thought language learning would be like climbing a mountain, when in reality it’s just like climbing a little rock every day. small efforts make great achievements in the end. really happy.

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i’ve been grinding german recently and i feel like i understand 90% of everything i listen to/read. i obviously don’t read scientific papers or so, but i understand news articles, podcasts about trends or history, movies i watch and so on. i have a really hard time understanding song lyrics though, but i also have a problem understanding it in english and even in my native language, so i don’t worry too much about it right now lol.

anki is so so so good, i can’t believe i only started using it a couple weeks ago. it’s genuinely fun to play around with and i love making my cards a little dumb or funny, because it makes me remember even better lol.

i’ve also been watching some italian videos again, i didn’t touch italian for like three months, so almost everything i learnt is “gone” however, i immediately understand old words that i ‘forgot’, its just that they’re not in my active vocabulary (i don’t even have an italian vocabulary yet lol) but i think it’s going to come back to me quickly. i need to freshen up my memory. i’m going to go much slower this time around though. i think i burnt out a little last time.

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help i just applied for a job in austria :o

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i’ve become so so much better at german just in the past few months. i put in huge work in the beginning, but now that i am at a somewhat intermediate level, i feel like i can just read and listen comfortably and not at all feel burdened or overwhelmed by it. this week i’ve been listening to three hours worth of podcast about napoleon, and it wasn’t hard to me. of course i didn’t know every word, but i did understand it as a whole and it felt nice.

the same goes for writing or reading, if i think something, i can almost always just write it down. it’s not always perfect grammar, but when i notice i’m wrong, i can more often than not correct myself. when i read or hear, i can understand what most words mean without looking them up. it’s just nice and i feel like i need to remember how far i’ve come. just comparing to where i was a month ago, it feels like i’m a whole different person.

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my computer started again, but everything on it has been deleted. thankfully i only started anki like a week ago, but i did have about 200 cards on there. however, i am thankful that i have now learnt about synchronising my anki to ankiweb. i have to restart my deck but it’s whatever, since it wasn’t a big one anyway. i will remember to synchronise after this.

i’ve been writing diary every day in german, and i’ve tried it before, but only now do i feel like i am doing well. after practicing grammar almost every day for about a month, i feel like i have a sense of it. it’s not perfect but i almost always know what is right. my biggest problem is that i don’t always know the right articles for the nouns. that’s what i am practicing now with anki lol.

met a friend today, she told me she lives in france now and is studying french. i’m so jealous i could die. i wish this life for myself too. in a way, she’s shown me that it is possible, to move to a new land and relearn everything. i don’t mean to get religious but it felt like a sign to me. one day i’ll have that too.

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so i was writing in my diary in the computer and a random cat walked past me and then the computer just turned off… i believe i encountered a magical cat that hates that i’m relying on the computer for my german studying.

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reading, writing, watching youtube. today hasn’t been that good, watched two movies in swedish and then decided to look for a job. one of those days.

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Morgan Harper Nichols’ ‘Let July be July’

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i’ve been making and reviewing anki cards, listening to podcasts and practicing grammar, especially the dative case but also articles and adjective declensions. i did a few lessons on busuu which was surprisingly helpful to give me a new perspective on dative. i feel like i have finally started to understand it better, after months of putting it off. i’m hopeful that it will soon finally click in my head, and the pieces will fall together.

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started the anki free trial now, we’ll see if i like it or not. i have tried it a bit before but i quit because i thought it was useless without the paid membership. we’ll see if i was right lol. i’m just jotting down recent notes i took from der große schlaf which i’m currently reading. i think it’s the hardest book i’ve read in a foreign language yet, since it’s quite old. it’s pretty funny so far, but i’m only a couple chapters in yet. i think i will try and pick out some words from other books i’ve been reading as well. i hope it will be worth it haha.

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i really need to improve my grammar, so i’ve been keeping a document and copy pasting grammar rules and writing versions of different sentences to really practice wechselpräpositionen and articles. i’m learning it a bit but it’s not flowing like water yet, which means i’m not done with it. currently watching a complete unknown in german, needed a little study break lol.

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fuuuuck i just realized that the future idealized version of myself cant exist without current me being the catalyst for change and doing hard things. has anybody heard about this

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i’m currently trying to write more in german, and let’s just say that i’m bad at coming up with a topic to write about. anyways, i found a list of like 100 “philosophical” questions and i’m translating ones that i like or find interesting to german and then i’m answering them in a couple of sentences. i guess you could go on r/askreddit and answer posts on there in a word document or find questions from celebrity interviews or whatever other ideas that might come to mind. i just wanted to share this little tip i had.

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write a diary, find list of questions and answer them in text, letters to friends/fictional characters/historical figures etc, short stories, answer posts on social media, translate something someone else has written, write a short conclusion of a news article.