Reflections on learning languages at home

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I enjoy reading and seeing others' experiences learning languages at home. I thought I'd share a status update on some of my languages.

  • Japanese
    • Status: Maintenance
    • Level: Fluent; N1 certified
    • Hours: 894 (last year only for N1 revision - Active: 285; Passive: 609); lifetime is likely over 20,000 hours.
    • Comments: Continue to watch, listen and read books in Japanese, per usual. Used professionally for over 3 decades.
  • French
    • Status: Learning
    • Level: (self-assessed) Production - A2/B1; Comprehension - C1/C2/Native
    • Hours: 850 (Active: 186; Passive: 664)
    • Comments: I have been lazy with French and haven't finished all the textbooks and workbooks I've purchased. I just watch and listen to interesting things in French. Have difficulties with informal register due to my favorite media content being formal.
  • Turkish
    • Status: Maintenance
    • Level: (self-assessed) C1
    • Hours: 4490 (Active: 279; Passive: 4211)
    • Comments: I love Turkish. I do not know why. I still have exercises incomplete in my C2 textbook. A lot of the C1 textbook grammar I neither hear nor read. Admittedly I consume a lot of romance content.
  • German
    • Status: Learning
    • Level: (self-assessed) Production: A2/B1; Comprehension: B2/C1
    • Hours: 822 (Active: 439; Passive: 383)
    • Comments: German is extremely hard for me. I am still working through my C1.1 textbook and workbook. Sentence structure still feels illusive and unnatural compared to Japanese and Turkish. I finished my first full German novel yesterday: My Forced Husband by Leander Rose. I can understand native content when it's about books, pop culture or general current affairs. I think I will do what I did with Turkish and French soon--stop the textbooks now that I have intermediate-level comprehension and watch 200 hours of Rosamunde Pilcher films and come back to them to perfect my production skills.
  • Spanish
    • Status: Learning
    • Level: (self-assessed) Production: A1; Comprehension: B2/C1/Native
    • Hours: 337 (Active: 76; Passive: 261)
    • Comments: I am watching Turkish series dubbed in Spanish, listen to intermediate-advanced learners' podcasts, but watch native news and YouTube Booktubers.
  • Swedish
    • Status: Learning
    • Level: (self-assessed) A1
    • Hours: 36 (Active: 19; Passive: 17)
    • Comments: I have two textbooks I am using. Very fun and casual. Rely heavily on English and German to guess word meaning while reading. Currently reading Harlequin romances translated to Swedish. Learner podcasts only, but can follow 3-minute daytime talk show videos from Nyhetsmorgon with subtitles and occasional dictionary look-up.

I have several other languages I listen to in the form of podcasts or YouTube channels simply because they became accessible via the languages above: Azerbaijani, Italian and Dutch. I can read Norwegian beginner material, but no idea about the pronunciation.

Do you track your hours? Why or why not? Any bonus languages because of your target language?

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