Dear all,

Yesterday I reflected a bit on my language learning journey. Where am I? Where do I want to go? I am already satisfied with what I achieved language-wise. My goal number one, for a long time, has been Russian. And it still is. I fell in love with this language and spend a lot of time on it. My Russian is not exactly where I want it to be, but if I maintain this tempo, it’s just a matter of time before I reach the level of comfort I’m aiming for.

German is the language that I should be working on. It’s the one I use the most and where I feel the limits of my vocab and grammar. My sentences are not always well structured - I’d like it to be pleasant to listen to, to be a bit more free to allow for more metaphors, sayings, and for more precise words. To achieve this, I should read and listen German. I believe discussions alone, even if they happen every day, don’t allow for a finer development of the language, one needs more elaborate input on top of that. But whenever I have the choice to listen, watch, pr read something, I always pick Russian instead of German. As a result, my German is stuck at a good level but not quite the one I’d like.

At last comes Swiss German. Sitting with colleagues at lunch, it can happen that I don’t understand a crap of what they are saying, and even though I’m focusing hard and catch a sentence here and there, it doesn't add up to coherent messages. In many situations, people switch to standard German because I’m there, and I know that they'd prefer speaking in their language, especially given that they are very proud of their region, culture and many dialects.

To sum it up:

! Note that 5/5 does not mean I’m perfect in the language - far from it - it means that I’ve reached the level I currently want. 

So what’s new? Well I’m finally starting a new language: Swiss German (Bern’s dialect). And it’s not just empty words, I actually signed up and paid for a 5 months course, one session each week, in presence. So… I’ll have to show up. What are my ambitions with this new language? They are far more modest than those for my Russian/German. I’ll put a 5/5 in the table whenever I can understand people and hold simple conversations entirely in the language. I mainly do it for practical reasons: not only will basic Swiss German knowledge allow me to understand colleagues and people around me in their mother tongue, it will also be a nice professional skill here, but this language also has a nice singing melody and it will be interesting to connect with the locals on a deeper level. I don’t know how long I might stay in Switzerland and it makes sense to invest in a useful skill earlier than later. I’ll start with this single session a week, on Wednesday evenings, and see where it goes. 

Have a good weekend everyone.