this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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Haven't done Irish in a bit. Keeping up with Japanese though. Spanish is a bit hectic, but surviving a lot better than my Irish. Maths is completely fallen over and my reading habits are just standing there laughing at it.
Despite the lack of language effort, I'm reading a chapter a day, and despite reading a chapter a day it still feels like I haven't even eaten part way into Lord of the Rings.
Japanese has seen better times, I was a bit skimpy on the vocab up until recently. Ended up knocking a 200 word a day pile down to 70. Spanish and Japanese see some sight of Busuu, bit of Duolingo, and a bit of Migaku. This all being said, there's still not enough done. I genuinely feel like at this moment in time, I could do with hard copy physical books, not just apps, ironically though what would help my Irish a lot are apps that don't suck like Duolingo or RosettaStone.
Time is however short, and I have no idea how I'd divide my attention per language, then again per activity for hard study. Life would be a lot easier with a teacher or some guided activity cheat sheet or something.
Despite my love for languages, and I've been doing this for like 2+ years, I still have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.
Yeah, it is really hard to know how to best divide your study.
I think paper books are really nice to have. Textbooks are literally from someone sitting down and saying, "What's the best way to teach these things to someone", so those are good for structure.
Textbooks aren't a whole picture though, and I think that's why some people are hard on them. They mostly wind up focused on analytical approaches, which to an extent should follow exposure and intuition.
To get that exposure, I think it's important to listen. Listening and speaking are just harder than reading and writing. So IMO a good plan should have at least a few minutes (maybe 5) where you deliberately, attentively listen to native speakers with no subtitles.
Paper books are great for extensive reading too, but I wish I had libraries around me with more non-English books. Can get a limited selection of Spanish, but Japanese is unlikely. I don't necessarily want to keep stacks of random easy books around the house just because they're in another language.
In general I'd also say it depends a lot on what you enjoy and what you're willing to do. In your case tho, you seem pretty disciplined and I'd pretty much trust you to make some kind of plan and follow it.