Polyglot in Progress Issue #12

Mar 06, 2026

Today’s issue of Polyglot In Progress for the month of February 2026

Language Targets

Proficiency Target - C1: Spanish, French, Portuguese
Proficiency Target - High B2: Mandarin, German
Proficiency Target - Conversational: Telugu, Slovene
Proficiency Target - Lower B2 (Listening Only): Japanese

Activity Overview

The month of February bore many fruits in my language acquisition journey as I worked to pull all my languages along for the ride. I hit the 100-hour mark in Mandarin priming and the 50 hours mark in Portuguese. German also got a boost. I restarted Telugu, did some work in Slovene and of course, Spanish and French continued quietly on their journey. Here are the numbers below:

The graph will need to be recreated to account for my newly refined language acquisition system. So please bear with it for the time being.

New Born Languages (Slovene, Mandarin, Japanese, Telugu)

Slovene: As the chart above highlights that Slovene is still in its pre-input stage and thus, priming is needed. However, for february, zero priming hours were recorded. Instead, I started the first step of my Grammar Study process involves just reading through the book called Colloquial Slovene by Andrea Albretti, noting only the grammar rules. No drills or active learning is done. The goal is structural familiarization. I have currently spent 2.39 hours in this stage. The process however, was not as tedious as I expected as it help me to discover many things about the language. I can also write basic sentences in Slovene thus far.

I have also listened to 4 episodes of the radio show Let’s learn Slovene with Dave, which admittedly, doesn’t have much value when it comes to learning Slovene but it is entertaining.

NB: I will do an article on my Grammar Study system in the near future.

Example: Dober dan. Jaz sem Shamar. Rad te imam!

Mandarin: I completed 100 hours of language priming for Mandarin. My weekends became occupied thus I had less time to sit comfortably and watch more series in Mandarin. I therefore, decided to listen to the technology business podcast (see below) while doing other activities. I realized then that I did not feel the same kind of feeling for the language 80+ hours as I did with my other languages. Mandarin, still felt external to me. Around 88 hours, I decided to switch to Lazy Chinese Youtube channel. The speakers were clear and spoke at a slightly slower pace. My feelings for Mandarin didn’t change at 100 hours. Thus, I concluded that it will require more priming however, I will more this language towards input in March while still priming this language to 130 hours.

Telugu: I restarted my Mass Sentence method with Telugu 3.3k Deck which is geared towards tourists in Telugu. I deemed this deck to be appropriate for now. I have now completed 10 hours of Anki in Telugu equaling 1,536 repetitions. During these reps I saw my articulation ability improve as well as I have a few sentences memorized. I learned more words now and I am still decoding the structure of the language as well as remembering some of the structure I’ve forgotten. As Telugu’s language structure resembles the Japanese language. Here is a sentence I remember.

Example: Nenu kenada lo unnaanu (నేను కెనడాలో ఉన్నాను)

Japanese: There is still no activity in Japanese but there will be soon as despite no learning attempts, I still watch anime in Japanese.

Infant Languages (Portuguese, German)

Portuguese: I completed 50+ hours of Portuguese input mainly watching videos from Barbara from Brazil, Speaking Brazilian School, and Brazilian Portuguese with Sofia. The month started off badly has a hadn’t touched the language two weeks prior. At this point, Portuguese felt a bit distant. In addition to that, I found myself mentally drafting as the content was boring. Once I reached 50 hours, I started varying my content and discovered several things. Talking head videos i could understand and follow clearly at a 80-85% comprehension level however anime were difficult to adjust to. I felt a drop in comprehension to 60-70% when I tried to watch as slice of life. By the following day, my comprehension for the anime episodes improved magically. Thus I judged my Portuguese to be unstable. I explored several kinds of videos to check my understanding. I can watch native level videos with no subs and feel no negative cognitive load. Theme specific content with specific vocabulary will drop my comprehension considerably however my ability to understand the overall message did not weaver.

In terms of learning cultural norms, I have been quietly doing some weekly short but sweet lessons with Prof. Talita Souza via her articles. Here are her articles for February: “A gente” ou “nós”? Uma escolha que diz muito, As pequenas palavras que fazem a conversa fluir, Como expressar opinião em português sem parecer rude and Como reclamar educadamente em português. While reading in portuguese is pretty easy, writing is a more difficult at this level as my Portuguese output is still dependent on spanish.

Note: Eu acho que minha professora Talita Souza sabe perfeitamente como eu sou. Então, ela escreveu esses artigos para mim. Agora, eu sou mais educado.

German: I completed 45 hours of German input. Like Portuguese, German got off to a rough start and I needed to spend the next 2-3 days adjusting. By the 4th day, I was blew through A1 German videos with little to no cognitive load despite the constant new vocabulary and a few weird sentence structures. These unfamiliar structures were later clarified by Prof. Atia - your German Teacher. Towards the middle of the month, German had seemed to overtaken my brain as I had increase significantly German input in hopes of getting to 50 input hours (that failed). Easy German had given me quite a bit of vocabulary without realizing it myself. After this realization, I went to test my comprehension ability against Workout videos on Youtube however my comprehension was a solid 10-15% comprehension ability. Approaching the end of the month, I felt a huge difference in terms in cognitive load when I heard words or chunks that I know versus the ones I am learning. I felt my brain switch from almost no mental exertion to a slight rise and back again. The rest of the month saw stable input with little cognitive load. At the end of the month, I went to watch Nico’s weg A1 however, I still found myself lost some of the later conversations.

In terms of writing, I have been writing simple German sentences as my input volume increases. I am still unable to spell properly. And despite being exposed to the past tenses in addition to the present, I feel has boosted my written communication ability despite no grammar study. Each time I write, I can hear the German words echoing in my mind from Easy German.

Note: Meine Lehrerin Atia - your German Teacher hat viele ressourcen in ihrem Newsletter. Sie sind Gold wert. Mein Lieblingsartikel ist The ultimate guide to free german learning resources (A0–C2) . Probier mal!

Early Teenage Languages (French, Spanish)

Spanish: I reached 319 input hours. I watched 20+ episodes during this time of Al Fondo Hay Sitio. At the beginning of the month, I felt my brain in switching to Analytic mode however I intervened to stop it. I started using subtitles again however it felt strange, as if I wasn’t processing the subtitles at all despite no mental overload. One evening, I listened to PPP Radio in Lima, Peru, but for some reason, i did not appreciate it. It wasn’t my first time listening to it however, it the programs felt confusing and haphazard unlike France Culture which i am used to. Towards the middle of the month I found myself getting bored with the series thus leading to wanting to neglect Spanish input. I instead spent time search for other content made in Peru. As the month continued my brain claims 100% comprehension however i was doubtful of it thus I used subtitles when they were available. One day while watching one of the episodes, I paused it to use the bathroom, then suddenly i caught myself thinking in Spanish. Towards the end of the month, the series picked up and I started enjoying the episodes again. I felt enormously attached to the songs as well as the characters in the series.

In an attempt to start diversifying from listening input, I started reading Diario de un duelo’s newsletter where she takes about grief. Far outside of what i would normally consume however, I expect stronger emotional connections through reading her work.

Diario de un duelo

El duelo no es un enemigo

Hay un momento en el duelo en el que muchas personas empiezan a preguntarse si algo está mal con ellas…

4 months ago · 4 likes · Diario de un duelo

Note: Ya sé que a este nivel debería hacer otras cosas con el español, pero por ahora no tengo ganas. La resistencia es real. Mi foco está en otra parte, pero espero empezar pronto.

French: I ended February at 1460 hours of Input. Over this period, I have significantly reduced the volume of French input via watching my normal soap opera Plus Belle La Vie. Within the first week when I started to reduce contact with French, I woke up 3 mornings straight my internal monologue in French. After that, French started to feel distant as if it was a rejected pet throughout the month. I also realized that my emotional engagement with this French series is far less than I have with my Peruvian Series. I also realized that I liked specific French accents: Leïla Kaddour-Boudadi on France Inter probably southern influenced accent and Louise Aubrey’ from Inpower Podcast’s more modern Parisian French accent. They make listening without visuals pleasurable.

My Audio Reading hours got a bumped up by 3 hours to 122 hours in total. One the first day, It felt a little tough and I even heard a mental deviation in the “en“ and “u” sounds that reminded me to continue working on pronunciation. Eventually, I felt no deviation in my subvocalization.

Outside of listening, I did some work on reading comprehension and literary analysis tasks on the weekends. These exercises proved surprisingly difficult, particularly literary analysis questions that required identifying figurative language or describing characters in detail. While I could understand the text itself, generating structured analytical responses in French required much more effort than expected.

In writing I would struggle to apply orthographically perfect grammar despite knowing all the rules. I occasionally find myself dropping the “e” in feminine past participles, and sometimes I make subject–verb agreement errors. I have also noticed that I sometimes use “vous” where “tu” would be more appropriate.

Speaking, I did not do much speaking this month as both my friend and I were caught up in the annoyances of life. Thus my speaking ability diminished somewhat. I noticed one day after increasing german input volume that I attempted to think in french but I found myself struggling to do as my brain was still in German.

Note: Je suis parfois écœuré par la quantité de travail que je dois faire pour maîtriser cette langue. Il y a des moments où je me sens proche du but, et trop souvent je me sens loin d’un bon niveau…un niveau que je pourrais maintenir sans trop d’effort.

Miscellaneous Observations

Several smaller observations emerged throughout February that are worth documenting.

During a short interaction with Karlien De Klerk, I was able to partially understand a sentence in in Afrikaans through my knowledge of German as well as I was able to quickly adapt and respond.
In German, I was trying to hit the 50hrs input mark. I realized that I was unable to pass the 32 mins when before my brain gets bored of the content. Despite the fact that I was motivated.
I feel little to no fatigue having to interact with 8 of my target languages on a daily basis.
In doing some writing in French while listening to Portuguese, and then found negative interference as I was writing Portuguese words instead of French words. I think decided to intentionally test this against Spanish audio input that the results were the same. On my final test with English audio input, i discovered no interference.

Psycholinguistic Analysis

Based on the observations recorded throughout February, I wanted to focus on two psycholinguistic patterns that emerged.

Language Activation Depends on Input Intensity
When daily French exposure decreased, the language likely fell below the activation level needed to feel cognitively “close,” even though comprehension skills remained intact. This happens because the brain strengthens retrieval pathways through frequent input. With reduced exposure, the language becomes temporarily less active in working memory, creating a feeling of psychological distance without actual loss of ability.
Illusion of Comprehension
In Spanish, the brain often assumes full understanding by filling in missing words through contextual inference. Strong contextual cues allow the brain to fill in gaps automatically, giving the impression of full understanding. As a result, comprehension may be overestimated because some words are inferred rather than truly heard.

My Thoughts

If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together

I firmly believe in this African proverb as I try to handle the complicated task of raising eight + 1 language children. Ideally, I would like to go fast and far, however the current situation does not allow for such. Thus, all my languages and I will bundle up inside my small Skoda and take to the road. They are all mine after all.

Ideally, I would have liked that my languages followed a well defined/oiled system however, I created my system after having learned how to properly acquire languages. Thus French and Spanish will tend to have a more haphazard approach versus than the others that will have a more streamlined approach.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about adopting a Japanese accent… straying away from the conventional standard Tokyo accent or Tokyo-ben. I have always liked the Kansai regions of Japan. I have seen were Osaka-ben is seen as more energetic, friendly and humorous which is more of my style. However, the Kyoto-ben is more refined and elegant while has a certain appeal to me. Luckily, I met a person who lived in both Osaka and Kyoto, Sakura and thus has instantly became my most favourite Japanese person. ありがとうございます!

Finally, I found a wonderful site to watch Slovene dubbed movies interacting with the language will no longer be a soulless activity activity.

Thank you for reading!

Now it’s your turn.

“Have you ever experienced the illusion of comprehension in a language you’re learning?”

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