About the Project

On July 1, 2009, I began a long-term language project. The goal: to learn as much as I could of a bunch of languages spoken around New York City. Why? I love languages, and I love New York. Also, I may be a wee bit compulsive. I had studied German, Spanish, and French in school, but I wanted to go more global this time. The thing about this project is, it kept growing. The initial plan was a year, but that soon became two years, which eventually became three years. The schedule now includes 15 different languages involving a total of nine different alphabets and writing systems. Following is a chronicle of my linguistic adventures, some misadventures, and the mental and physical fallout of spending a lot of time outside one’s own alphabet and grammar. My blog is intended to be a tribute to the joys of language learning, and to the extraordinary linguistic riches of my beloved adopted city and makeshift language-learning lab: New York.

Read the first entry.

Ellen’s Study Schedule

The plan: was initially to devote two months of daily study to languages I knew nothing about, and one month to languages I had studied previously (as refreshers). What I found, though, is that I often couldn’t bear to part with whatever language I was working on, so I kept sneaking in extra months here and there and adding to the overall project length. Then, in late summer 2011, after 771 consecutive days of study, I suddenly couldn’t take any more. So I instead took a break. Then recovered, more or less. Then was back at it by October 1, 2011. The current plan is to cross the finish line with Chinese in August 2012.

Russian • 7/1/09-8/31/09
Arabic • 9/1/09-10/31/09
Italian • 11/1/09-1/31/10
Korean • 2/1/10-3/31/10
Spanish • 4/1/10-5/31/10
Greek • 6/1/10-7/31/10
Hindi • 8/1/10-9/30/10
German • 10/1/10-11/30/10
Japanese • 12/1/10-2/28/11
French • 3/1/11-5/31/11
Polish • 6/1/11-8/10/11
Mental Vacation After Brain Exploded • 8/11/11-9/30/11
Italian Review as Mental Therapy, Followed by Return to the Plan • 10/1/11-11/6/11
Hebrew • 11/6/11-1/31/12
Dutch • 2/1/12-2/29/12
Portuguese • 3/1/12-5/31/12
Mandarin • 6/1/12-8/31/12