Well, it's the end of the year and we're nearing the end of the year.
And, uh, I'm going to make a video about my new year's resolutions.
I did make a video last week where I talked about how the
brain evolves during our lives.
Some of the psychological inputs or, or, or background to how we
react to activities, including the decision on a new year's resolution.
So the first thing I would say is that there's nothing
special about the new year.
Apparently the ancient Babylonians had New Year's resolutions, which were
more like a commitment and other people throughout history have also done so.
But the new year, I think for the Babylonians was March, for the Romans was
March 15th, for the Iranians, March 15th.
For Nowruz is around March sometime, I think Chinese new year falls
somewhere between January and February.
So there's nothing special about this time of year.
And even in so far as making a new year's resolution, not every culture does this.
Although many do, but, uh, you can, uh, nudge yourself to
get active anytime you want.
Uh, it doesn't have to be around New Year.
And, uh, the thing about the New Year's resolution, in my view,
is that it's not sort of a goal, it's not a goal setting thing.
It's not, I'm going to make a million dollars.
I'm going to get the body of a Greek God.
Uh, I'm going to reach, uh, you know, C1 in my Spanish.
Those are not commitments to actions.
Those are simply goals.
You may or may not achieve those goals.
Those things are outside of your control.
The new year's resolution in my mind would be, I'm going to go to the
gym three times a week, though you either do that or you don't do that.
Uh, I'm going to be active in language learning.
For example, I can go to LingQ, like as I did with Turkish, I want to
increase my known words total six months prior to going to Turkey.
I want to increase my known words total from 8, I know
I can do that on the system.
So that was an action that I could control.
I want to read so many words.
I want to listen to so many.
Hours of whatever language I'm learning.
It's actions that you can control.
That should be basically what you are committing to do with
your new year's resolution.
I'll show you this.
Lengthy dictionary definition of resolution.
There's all kinds of meanings of the word resolution.
I prefer the word commitment.
And I gather that throughout history, whether in ancient Babylon or in middle
ages in Europe, these were more like pledges, pledges to the church, pledges
to people, uh, commitments rather than sort of some vague goal of what
you hope to achieve, which is not.
To my mind, what a new year's resolution is, and probably to most people, however,
you know, having a distant goal is, is certainly motivating and motivation
is a big part of actually carrying through on your new year's resolutions.
Now, apparently a high percentage of people do carry through on
their resolutions, at least for quite a period into the new year.
Of course, we all want to be amongst those who do.
And I think there it's important to make it easy on ourselves in the case
of language learning, find content of interest to you, make sure you think
that spending time with the language is valuable to you, have a positive attitude
towards the process and the language, vary the type of activity you're doing so
you don't just sit there like reviewing Anki decks, you listen, you read, you
review words, you talk to people, the greater the variety of activity, The
easier it is to stay with the language, remembering that the essential elements
of language learning are your attitude towards the language, towards the
process and the amount of time you spent.
So in order to make sure that your commitment is fulfilled,
try to make it easy on yourself.
Don't get frustrated if you don't see immediate results, because as long
as you are active, you are improving.
And it's important to be aware of that and remind yourself of that.
You might find it interesting to see how I spent my year.
In language learning in 2024, we have this year in review feature at LingQ
and it shows that Turkish was my main area of concentration, not surprising,
uh, as I was preparing to go to Turkey, but I did also spend a fair
amount of time on Arabic and Persian and dabbled in a few other languages.
Arabic was the number one language that I listened to, at least according
to my LingQ statistics, but of course this doesn't reflect the fact that I
did most of my listening, or at least not necessarily most, but a lot of
my listening on an app like Storytel, which is not reflected in the statistics
at LingQ because I'm not able to download the MP3 file to convert it
into a text or to get at any kind of a digital text that I could read.
On the other hand, when it comes to reading, Turkish was
my main area of concentration.
More than double my Arabic and a lot more than my Persian.
And I was active for, you know, 366 days.
Baha, which is a course put together by my Turkish tutor, which is very
interesting, was my favorite course in Turkish, or in any language, of
the material that I did on LingQ.
And I completed this many lessons, most of which were imported,
met a number of milestones, and participated in challenges.
And I added a total of 36, 000 known words.
Most of that was in Turkish.
So that's kind of my year, and now I'm looking forward to the coming year.
Which reminds me, we are hosting a special sale until January
19th, 50 percent off to power your language learning in the new year.
Check it out.
So with that introduction, which languages am I going to go after in 2025?
Initially, and of course, we all need a trigger.
So New Year's can be a trigger for a commitment, but in order to get
really turned on to a language, you need some other kind of trigger.
And that's been my experience.
Uh, for example, going to Turkey, six months, I was able
to totally dive into Turkish.
I've said before that my interest in the history of Central Asia and Middle East
was a trigger for me to spend a lot of time with Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.
This year, my wife and I are going to Scotland and Ireland via, uh, So,
uh, am I going to learn Irish Gaelic?
I don't think so.
Am I going to learn Icelandic?
I don't think so.
Why?
Not because those languages aren't valuable, but because in my experience,
it takes so much time to bring your language up to a level where you can
actually function when you get to the country where the language is spoken.
It's not a matter of weeks or months.
And I've just had the experience so often where I actually did put
a fair amount of effort into say Croatian or Vietnamese, I don't know.
And I found that when I was in the country, I wasn't able
to do as much as I had hoped.
So I'm kind of reluctant to do that again.
So it's unlikely that I will spend any time, maybe just a quick cursory
look on Irish Gaelic or Icelandic.
Now I had mentioned that we are getting both Irish Gaelic and Punjabi at LingQ.
So I said, maybe I'll learn Punjabi because there's a lot of
Punjabi speakers here in Vancouver.
We have Punjabi television and radio and so forth.
And very often you come across people in stores and shops and taxi drivers who
are Punjabi speakers, but there again, I'm kind of less keen on that now because
from my experience, again, it takes a long time to get to a level where you
can have a meaningful conversation.
I can learn enough very quickly to say, hello, how are you?
And count to 10 in Punjabi.
And maybe I'll do that just for fun, but that's not meaningful to me.
So then I kind of have slid back to my previous position.
So my commitment is to stay active.
I will definitely stay active, but I think I want to go back to
the languages that I have never achieved the level that I want to in.
And the leading candidate to get to B2 is Persian.
And so I'm going to commit.
Myself to spend a lot of time on Persian.
Again, for variety is the spice of life.
I may go off and do some Arabic.
I may go off and do some Turkish.
So as not to fall too far behind in that from where I was when I was in Turkey.
And I got to be careful, Turkey, okay.
But we're all used to saying Turkey.
And my hope is that I can achieve a B2 level in Persian
sometime during the coming year.
But my commitment, my resolution is to spend the time because we can spend the
and there's no guarantee what we will.
I hope that's of interest.
I'd be interested to hear, uh, other people's, uh, commitments or goals
or resolutions for the new year.
I will stay with my, uh, language learning activity.
I'm quite convinced it's good for the brain.
I mentioned that, uh, Manfred Spitzer in his book says that, uh, you
know, when we were young, we have.
Poor impulse control.
When we're older, we're easily distracted.
Older people know more, they might be interested in more things.
There's all kinds of different things about our temperament, our personality,
our stage in life, which can influence how successful we are in language
learning, influence how successful we are in staying with our commitments.
But I ignore all those things.
Because whatever my temperament is, however suited I am to language
learning, it really doesn't matter.
You know, people say, Oh, you're talented.
Or someone else is not talented or whatever.
It doesn't matter.
I know that if I put in the time, I will improve.
And everyone who puts in the time and is interested in learning will improve.
So whatever other theoretical advantages or disadvantages,
optimist, pessimist, outgoing, not outgoing, none of that really matters.
None of that affects input activities, which is the core of language learning.
Okay.
So while it's interesting to look at those things, and I thought it was
very interesting to read his book and sometimes it maybe helps explain certain
things, but basically it's simple.
Commit to being active, staying busy in the language.
If you're on LingQ, get those reading statistics, those listing statistics.
Keep going, even if you don't feel you're making progress.
You are, and with that, I wish everyone a happy new year, all
the best for the coming year.
And I'd be interested in hearing what your goals and commitments are with
regard to language learning for 2025.
Thank you.
Bye.
