Time for an update. After returning from Thailand last month, my plan was to hit Italian hard again, learning the subjunctive on the way. I wanted to make sure the language was firmly in my brain, so that when I finally decided to hit Portuguese again, there would be no risk of forgetting Italian like I forgot Portuguese previously. However, about a month into the spurt, I realized that my Italian was already at a steady B2, and I started to question my strategy. I was thinking of two things.
First, even though I’d put a lot of time into it early on, my Korean was finally slipping into the A2 realm. This was very worrying, since it was such a hard language. Of my difficult languages (Japanese, Mandarin, Thai and Russian), Korean was the one I’d studies the least number of hours and the least number of years, by far. I needed to take some kind of action soon.
Second, the fact the my Italian had suffered so little damage in the 6 month break had made me confident that I could recover Portuguese now if I chose to. I wanted to spend a few months doing it, because (besides Isaan) it’s my least studied language by far. At this point, I had 5 months left before my next trip, which was enough time to pull it off.
Finally, I decided to study Portuguese half the time, and alternate between Korean and Italian for the other half. I’m maintaining my other languages in morning review sessions as always. My schedule is a ten-day cycle that looks something like this:
Some notes:
The Italian days are meant to ensure that I don’t forget it. I will substitute Portuguese for one of them if I feel my Italian is still strong. The morning sessions include 30 min conversation classes, and I don’t curate items to feed into anki after the classes. The afternoon Portuguese classes are 60 min; Korean and Italian are 30 min. I curate items for anki after all afternoon classes. I believe that 5 months of this schedule will be enough to recover and Portuguese and lift it to B2ish, while keeping Italian at roughly the same level. I also think that this will raise my Korean back to where it should be, so that it’s easy to maintain. After putting out these fires, I’ll resume my plan of greatly improving my Japanese reading, and then doing a long spurt in Korean. This current Band-Aid step should get me safely to the spurt. Here is my plan for the next 2.5 years:
2025 May – Oct: Portuguese/Italian/Korean
2025 Nov: Practice Portuguese, Spanish and maybe Italian and German in Southern Brazil and Argentina
2025 Dec: Practice Swahili in Tanzania, and maybe Portuguese in Mazambique.
2026 Jan – Feb: Practice Thai and Isaan in Thailand
2026 March – April: Learn Cebuano in the Philippines
2026 May – Oct: Improve Japanese Reading
2026 Nov – 2027 Apr: Practice and Maintain while travelling, giving priority to Korean
2027 May - Oct: Korean Spurt
10 day update on the new routine:
I'm already noticing the difference with Korean. Essentially what I'm doing is doubling the frequency, which I've done before with only moderate impact. But doing it in conjunction with the anki work is a new thing; it's more time consuming, but appears to be effective.
My Portuguese is coming back too. After a week of study and conversation classes, I feel low A2ish, and the main issue is speed. Plus and minuses with my teachers so far. Plus - they have all been very patient. Minus - all but one have had weak internet connections, meaning audio issues.