Polyglot in Progress Issue #9

Issue #9: September 1 - October 28, 2025

This report provides a brief yet comprehensive overview of my language learning situation over the past two months as well as an overview of my current language situation.

Target Languages

Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Telugu, Slovene, Japanese, and Mandarin.

Activity Overview

Over this period, my time was distributed across these 3 activities: Comprehensible Input, Audio-Reading, and Speaking with most of my efforts dedicated to French.

Brief Updates

Language Priming

This is a passive listening exercise I carry out in any language learning efforts in order to get customed to the sounds of the language. This is normally conducted before the active learning stages. My goal here is to get 100 -150hrs of passive listening in the language while doing other things throughout the day. My results so far are shown below:

• Current Languages Being Primed: Portuguese (80hrs), German (82hrs) and Telugu (117hrs) are being primed through a mixture of Youtube videos and radio. A listening session can be between 15 minutes to as long as an hour. I didn’t achieve much passive listening in this time period. Both Portuguese and German are expected to get to 100 hours of priming before the end of the year.

• Already Primed Languages: French, Spanish and Japanese do not need further priming due to massive amounts of passive listening done in the past.

• To Be Primed In 2026 : Mandarin and Slovene are the languages set up be primed next year. While both have received some level of priming in the past. I deemed it insufficient and have decided to restart this process.

Comprehensible Input (Listening)

This is actively watching or listening to videos or audio at my current level in order to develop and build oral language comprehension ability. This should naturally come after Language Priming. The goal is to get to 1,500 hours of CI Listening in the target language. My results so far below:

• French : In this period I watched 295 episodes of Plus Belle La Vie (PBLV) which is about 114 hours. I completed Season 4 and went on to Season 5. I have slowly recognized that each arc of the series cycles through a different set of useful French expressions and vocabulary that is repeated so often during the arc that I automatically pick them up along with the ability to use them even if I don’t understand them 100%. In episodes where I find a significant dip in comprehension, I activated the subtitles despite the numerous errors it produced.

• Spanish: In this same period, I completed Al Fondo Hay Sitio (Episodes 191 - 248) season 1 and started season 2, achieving 63.93 hours (57 episodes). The subtitles were very accurate in these episodes to aid with any new words or colloquial expressions that I encountered. I think my comprehension fluctuated at a high level.

• Paused Language: Portuguese (29 hrs), German (18 hrs), and Japanese (16 hrs) were paused due to the loss of the audio courses I was using. I plan to replace these with content from YouTube channels such as Easy German.

• Other Languages: Telugu, Mandarin & Slovene are have no progress due to no active effort into finding content for these languages or also the lack of content for beginner level thus requires extra effort to start.

Mass Sentence with Anki:

This stage replaces traditional grammar study with mass sentence-based repetition. My goal is 10,000 sentences per language, approximately 350 hours or 100,000 repetitions, to build intuitive grammar and natural phrasing. My results so far are shown below:

French: Using an 11,000-sentence deck with audio, I have seen 52.98% of the cards and completed 11,807 repetitions. Although I paused for over a month, I noticed steady improvements in articulation and rhythm. Pronunciation issues persist, particularly with complex sentence structures, but repetition is clearly helping.

Telugu: A smaller deck of 3,000 sentences produced 1,096 repetitions (8.63 hrs), exposing me to 14.96% of the material. I remain in the early stages, so progress is primarily foundational.

Other Languages: Spanish (258 reps), German (212 reps), and Portuguese (20 reps) have begun their Anki cycles at lower frequencies. Each deck contains 10,000+ sentences to absorb over time. Slovene, Japanese, and Mandarin decks will start later.

Audio-Reading

Audio-Reading combines listening and reading simultaneously to strengthen pronunciation, comprehension, and reading speed. The goal is 150 hours per language.

French : I have reached 66.28 hours of audio-reading. This practice has sharpened my pronunciation and boosted reading speed, though complex Substack articles still pose challenges. I continue reading from several French writers whose essays are both intellectually and linguistically demanding, providing valuable exposure to advanced syntax and style.

Amongst the writers I read:

Ève Antonov

,

Florence HANCZYK

,

Geneviève Pettersen

, and

Clémentine et Pauline

, their works were very informative.

Je ne trouve pas qu'interdire les téléphones dans les écoles, c'est une bonne idée finalement

Speaking

French : I currently hold weekly speaking sessions with a native French speaker, focusing on text analysis, interpretive questions, and hypothesis-based discussions. The texts come from Fabulang. These sessions often push my limits, as I work to express abstract or critical ideas using accessible vocabulary. I struggle at times to retrieve passive words and maintain fluency when explaining nuanced concepts. To date, I have logged 12 hours of formal speaking practice.

I also hold informal conversations with a Haitian friend on weekends. Her accent and rhythm still challenge my comprehension, but these exchanges strengthen my listening agility.

Miscellaneous Observations

French: Despite extensive study, my initial native-speaking session revealed many weaknesses: frequent pronunciation errors, tense mismatches, and hesitation. I still overthink grammatical forms, and comprehension of Québec French remains limited. I also noticed that even two or three days without exposure causes a perceptible decline in fluency.

Telugu: While listening to a bilingual video on Instagram, I recognized several verbs I had previously studied in Anki, confirming that repetition is beginning to connect with real-world listening, thus making other content more comprehensible.

Portuguese: I recently began exploring 1980s and 1990s Brazilian music, curated by my Brazilian friend Jana. These songs are an enjoyable form of linguistic immersion.

English: Interestingly, I have felt slight regression in my English proficiency due to sustained immersion in other languages. This suggests a genuine cognitive shift toward multilingual processing.

Engineer Your Own Polyglot Brain

For unfiltered transparency, deeper dives into the data, and the raw realities of building a polyglot brain with quantifiable results and strategic insights you won't find anywhere else, hit that Subscribe button. I'm honored to have you alongside me in the Acquisition Laboratory.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day.