1000 hours!!!
I hit 1000 hours today. I started in 2017! (First five hundred hours I tracked on a spreadsheet, the second five hundred hours I used the Dreaming Spanish website, and just recently carried my time over to the Dreaming French app.) Needless to say it’s very exciting. My last hour was the audiobook *Les Routes de la Soie* by Peter Frankopan, he was discussing economic effects of the medical Persian/Byzantine wars on the Arabian peninsula, we’ve come a long way since “Où est le métro Saint-Michel?” in my first Assimil lesson.
So what took so long? Couple things. In 2017 I didn’t know 1500 was a target number. I didn’t know about Dreaming Spanish at all. Pablo was literally just getting started. I wanted to learn French, I finished Assimil and decided to just keep going. There were a few French learner podcasts back then, but way less than we have now. I dove into dubbed television instead. It was rough! I knew from language learning forums that dubbed shows with lots of episodes, familiar characters and not a lot of plot were the most accessible. I chose ER and watched all 15 seasons, about 250 hours. I had huge jumps in comprehension every 50 hours or so. If I missed an important detail about a patient, well there were always new patients in the next episode. Plus young George Clooney! It definitely worked but I think starting with such difficult material slowed my acquisition of hours.
Another thing that slowed my listening was that I was reading French simultaneously. I do wish I had waited a bit longer, but I didn’t have Pablo’s advice at the time. My first book was a native YA fantasy set in Brittany with lots of witches. There were pages where I didn’t understand whole paragraphs! But I kept going and also switched to translated beach-read romances that were easier to follow. 2M words later and I’ve read classics (Le rouge et le noir) and Goncourt prize winners (La plus secrète mémoire des hommes.) My comprehension is solid, my speed is slow. More reading would help that.
I also took breaks. An entire year after the start of the pandemic where I didn’t touch language learning at all. Then I discovered KDrama in 2022 and fell down that rabbit hole big time. Side quests into Korean, Japanese and Chinese that altogether took about 18 months. (I now know about 1000 words in each language which makes watching with subtitles more fun.) Summer of 2024 I dabbled with Spanish, then decided to get back to French. (At the time I had 500 hours of French, took me about two years to get the next 500 hours.) I regret nothing, I don’t feel like I lost any ground with French during my breaks.
What’s next? I’m back to studying Spanish, which feels right now that I’ve hit 1000 hours in French. I’ve taken trips to Quebec and Paris and my French level makes me an excellent tourist. I understand all the announcements, I can read all the signs, and I speak well enough for tourist transactions. (I guess I’m B2+ for listening and reading and A2 for speaking.) My current target is 60 min a day of French to slowly keep building, while I put more effort into getting my Spanish to the same level. So I should hit 1500 in fall of 2027! I’ll definitely hit you all with an update then!
(Language background: Two years of middle school Spanish, three years of high school Latin. Honestly I think having a post-grad level of English was a bigger help with French vocabulary… I was a German major in college, that definitely helped me understand the language learning process and gave me a lot of practice tolerating ambiguity.)