Sup doods and doodesses?

I have said au revoir but not adieu to French for the moment. My yearly goals which continue to haunt me (as usual) stated that I would improve my spoken French to a good B1 or B2 during the year (2017), but also left some wriggle room to play with Romanian or German.

I don’t normally achieve these goals for all sorts of feeble reasons.

But …

… I have reached a B1 level in spoken French according to the unfortunate individual who was giving me regular lessons.

Although, I’ve reached this level, I don’t feel particulary comfortable speaking French, and I sound terrible but  I’ve scratched that particular itch, conquered my fear of speaking, and now don’t feel any urge to continue.

This is mainly because my plans for a longish trip through France have been shelved, and I need a reason to learn a language.

And so, I must say a la prochaine  to the French language, and Guten Morgen or Bună dimineaţa to either German or Romanian.

In my goals for 2017, I decided that I would complete Assimil German and Romanian. This was a stupid thing to say, as my past experience of Assimil courses is that they are good but require a lot of time to complete, and far more than I have available. Bear that in mind if you purchase an Assimil course. The thirty minutes a day needed to complete each lesson according to the blurb at the beginning of each course is laughable – unless you are some mega genius.

Message to self. SMART objectives. The A stands for achievable, and I know that with the time available, it will be difficult for me to complete all 100 lessons. Fifty would have been more sensible.

So which will it be? Romanian or German.

Romanian speaks to my heart, and German to my head. I have a reason to learn German, and potential victims to practise on, and yet I am loathe to abandon Romanian entirely.

My compromise up until now has been to play with both, and I have now completed ten lessons of Assimil in each language, which for those who are interested explains both the Guten Morgen and Bună dimineaţa.

I know this state of affairs can’t continue, as learning a language requires time (and effort) but above all time, and much as I’d like to learn both …

… I can’t.

I have a job, family, friends, language exchanges, this website, and so on and so forth.  In short, I lack time, and am slowly leaning towards German …

Besos, baci and so on.

MF