Since I stopped using Duolingo how have things gone?
For Italian I started reading I Giorni Dell’Abbandono - it has taken me a whole month to read one chapter. To be fair I’ve been quite busy, but it is legitimately slow going. I’m probably at toddler level Italian and should be reading kids’ books as opposed to a proper novel. I tend to read it sentence by sentence with the English version open at the same time but only looking at that as a last resort after the first resort of using Google Translate - there are lots of words and/or forms of words I don’t know! It is interesting (I suppose obviously) how much is not a literal translation and some short parts of sentences don’t even exist in the Italian version, but I guess sound better that way in English. E.g this in the English version:
I roused myself only when I heard the sound of a car parking in the little square of our building.
vs this in the Italian:
Mi riscossi solo quando sentii il rumore di un’auto che parcheggiava.
No mention of “in the little square of our building”, but it would sound odd without that in English.
For Scottish Gaelic I’ve started listening to the SpeakGaelic podcast on BBC Sounds. I should have started years ago, at the same time I did Duolingo, but who has time for these things? It’s interesting just listening and not seeing the words at all - fortunately/amazingly all that time on Duolingo has rubbed off a bit as for some words I can hear them and then see the word in my head and know how it’s spelt (sounding nothing like it’s spelt). I’m trying to do a minimum of one episode a week as I think I can fit that in. That means there is enough to keep me going for well over a year.
For a bit more fun (and linked to changing up how I’m listening to music this year) I’m also listening to Rapal on Radio Nan Gàidheal. I don’t understand it, but I keep hearing the same phrases, so hopefully eventually I’ll figure it out. It’s a new music show and argueably more exciting and interesting than BBC Introducing in Scotland (which I’m also listening to, but that’s a different post).