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Day 503 of German | Day 1 of Italian: The Path of Least Resistance

Today marks day 503 of my German journey and, perhaps foolishly, day 1 of my Italian. The decision to learn two languages simultaneously came after hearing the announcements for next year: the Polyglot Gathering will be in Brno, Czech Republic, and the Polyglot Conference will be in Bologna, Italy. Although the thought of another language with declensions is overwhelming at the moment, I feel I can probably pick up a bit of Italian before next November, even while acknowledging that life circumstances might prevent me from going.

Throughout the later half of November, I borrowed Italian books and watched YouTube videos about how people go about learning Italian, but mostly procrastinated. Nevertheless, I started my Italian learning this morning, December 1st. What better day to begin a language than the first day of a month? Waiting until January 1st seemed too clichéd.

There are all these amazing ways of learning languages backed up by personal stories, but in the end, I chose the path of least resistance: opening one of the simplest lessons in LingQ, a platform I already have access to.

The LingQ lessons were fine, but they quickly led to grammar questions. I ended up spending at least 30 minutes with my AI tool, which I treated as a patient tutor, seeking explanations for basic conjugation and gender agreements. My AI tutor then offered comprehension checks, and none of my answers were 100% correct. If I got the conjugation right, I would miss the gender ending; if I remembered the gender agreement, I’d forget the proper preposition. It was a definite struggle, not nearly as fun as some language game apps, but one learns from struggle.

When my brain was completely saturated, I asked my AI tool to give me the basic conjugation for essere and avere in spreadsheet format. I’ll try to memorize this throughout the day.

I’m not sure if I’ll get as far in Italian as I have in German. This is only day one, and I suspect I’ll need more conscious motivation than I did with German. Still, the journey begins with “to be” (essere) and “to have” (avere).

December 1, 2025

AI Tutor, Italian, Learning Strategy, LingQ
Bridging the Gap: The Listening Challenge

Day 465 of German

Despite the metrics in my LingQ app showing that only about 5% of the words in my imported German YouTube videos are new, I still have a hard time keeping up with the content by simply listening. This difficulty is especially pronounced when the videos feature two people speaking rapidly.

I understand that my brain isn’t processing the known vocabulary quickly enough. Even when I “know” a word, I often still need a split-second to translate or fully recall its meaning. While reading affords me the luxury of pausing to figure things out, listening demands instantaneous recognition.

To address this gap, I asked my AI for ways to improve listening comprehension. One of the best suggestions was to listen to short segments of a video, paying close attention to the sound and rhythm. The practice involves trying to mimic what I hear immediately afterward to familiarize my mouth and mind with the language’s natural flow.

This approach seems perfectly doable, as it only requires tackling short, manageable 5–8 second segments at a time. For now, being able to listen and understand is much more important than being able to speak.

October 24, 2025

LingQ, Listening Comprehension, Mimicry, Processing Speed, Pronunciation Practice
The Hin und Her of Learning

Day 460 of German

It took me three days to work through the transcript of the Tagesschau broadcast from October 17th.

My learning platform, LingQ, has been buggy: the text underlining feature—which normally follows the audio—disappears whenever I pause to look up a word or process a sentence. To work around this, I now read the entire transcript first for comprehension, then listen to the audio with the text-tracking enabled. This method helps, but the platform friction certainly doesn’t speed things up.

Last week, I felt great about my listening comprehension because the crisis in the Gaza Strip dominated the news for weeks, giving me consistent exposure to the same core vocabulary. Now, the news cycle has shifted, and I’m encountering a whole new set of terms. Even factoring in work and life obligations, taking over three days just to understand a single 15-minute news broadcast is rather discouraging.

On the bright side, one news item was mildly amusing. I learned that Austria has a Fuel Price Fixing Act (Spritpreisverordnung) that prevents gas stations from increasing the price more than once a day (though they can decrease it freely). Germany, however, lacks this regulation, meaning prices can fluctuate several times daily. Many would like to see Austria’s Spritpreisverordnung introduced in Germany. One person in Germany’s Baden-Württemberg complained that this back-and-forth must stop:

Herbert Palme in Tübingen findet, das Hin und Her an der Zapfsäule muss bald aufhören.

What I find amusing is that someone has the patience to observe gas prices all day just to track the fluctuation. I wish I had that kind of time on my hands! That kind of focused observation is a luxury, but my own daily Hin und Her—that constant back-and-forth and distraction—is just the reality of language learning.

October 19, 2025

Discipline, Frustration, Hin Und Her, LingQ, Tagesschau
25000 Words

This has been a very busy week with work and obligations, but I was quietly satisfied to see my LingQ word count cross the 25,000-word mark today. While this counts individual words and not word families, it’s a small victory that reminds me I’m making incremental progress toward proficiency.

While listening to the Tagesschau, I was able to understand most of the content without relying on visual or image cues. My working vocabulary was sufficient to bridge the gaps of the unknown words. This moment brought genuine happiness—a profound joy that is difficult to describe adequately.

I find the best expression for this drive in Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Dream:

Volition is the driving motivation behind our thinking, speech, and actions. It determines everything. Everyone of us has a strong goal for our life. We want to achieve something. We feel a ball of energy in us, a tremendous, powerful source of energy. We want to feel truly alive.

For now, I will happily follow this internal volition and enjoy the daily dopamine hit it provides, regardless of how ridiculous the goal of learning German might seem.

October 10, 2025

25000Words, LingQ, Tagesschau, Volition

Day 503 of German | Day 1 of Italian: The Path of Least Resistance

Bridging the Gap: The Listening Challenge

The Hin und Her of Learning

25000 Words