Repetition is the mother of all learning (read this in a heavy Slavic accent please)
Learning a language from scratch | Week 1
Hi all!
If you were here a week ago, you already know that I’m learning Swedish from scratch and documenting my progress along the way. So here's a review of my first week on this solo (for now) learning journey. Learn from my mistakes and take away any nuggets you might find useful!
So what have I been doing?
My three main tools for the next three months are the SwedishPod101 podcast, Memrise, and the Complete Swedish textbook. This week I have:
Studied half of the first chapter, learning the very basics of greetings, numbers, and present tense sentences. So far, grammar seems easy but I’m ready to be humbled.
Learned 50-60 words through Memrise flashcards (and more through video and audio)
Completed 6 lessons from the SwedishPod101 podcast. And when I say “completed”, I mean that I listened to each lesson AT LEAST FIVE TIMES…
Now, the last point needs more emphasis. To really learn stuff, you have to repeat the same thing over and over again. We see it as something natural for things like learning a musical instrument, where folk will play the same chords for hours on end. But it might seem ludicrous to listen to THE VERY SAME RECORDING many times.
Variety might be the spice of life but REPETITION IZ ZE MAZER OF ALL LEARNING, as my Maths teacher used to say. With that in mind, you need to embrace repetition and be ready to go through the very same material many times. For example, this week I think I watched this video from Slow Swedish about breakfast more than 10 times:
And with every single time, I start understanding more. A word here or there, a full phrase, a sentence, a thought. Progress would be much more difficult if I watched 10 different videos instead of 1 video x 10 times. And if you feel progress, watching a video 10 times is anything but boring.
Observations about Swedish
What I like and appreciate: very little irregularity when it comes to verbs, no need to learn conjugation
What I find challenging: I hoped the pronunciation to be easier, but there’s a bunch of difficult sounds I need to learn how to produce. I mean, there must be a reason videos like this exist:
What about your other languages, Oleg?
I don’t want to go all in on Swedish and let my other languages languish.
Spanish. For now, my plan is to finish the third season of Valeria on Netflix (thanks to
for recommending it a few moons ago). It’s soapy and fun to watch with my breakfast cereal (get it, a serial with cereal…), but it’s about to end, so I’m open to any recommendations you guys might have. And I’m up for rereading my book of Borjes short stories in the coming weeks as well. I’d really love to start getting lessons again, maybe starting in January.Turkish. I haven’t really done anything with Turkish in a while, but I don’t feel it’s deteriorated much. There’s a new Nuri Bilge Ceylan movie that I’d like to watch though:
Hej då!!
I'll update you on next week's progress, well, next week! No surprises there, huh? And I’ll try to squeeze in another language-related post in between. I’d love to hear from you and if you’re not yet a subscriber, there’s literally a button for you to smack below:
Listening to the same thing over and over again is so counterintuitive... One way I found works for me: there's this super interesting German podcast episode about design, it's pretty long so I couldn't finish it in one go. Every time I play it, I start from the beginning. I get new insights every listen!
Bra! Love it. This is ONE of THE phrases that stayed with me after a close friend said it years ago, "Repetition is the mother of skill", and of course he said more than just once, and on more than one occasion.