Most language apps start you off with "hello," "how are you," and prepositions you'll fumble for years no matter what. This episode breaks down "language contouring," a method for skipping what you'll pick up anyway and starting with the words that actually move the needle, no matter your level.

18 languages might sound like clickbait, and honestly, it kind of is. This episode covers the low-priority languages in the mix, from Maltese unlocking Arabic grammar to Cantonese's addictive tones, and makes the case for why learning a little of everything now pays off big later.

I tried speaking all four of my main languages back-to-back… and one of them completely broke my brain. Here’s an unfiltered look at where my French, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese actually stand right now—and how wildly nonlinear language learning really is.

This month, I’m switching things up. The Language Log is going audio-first less polished, more honest, and hopefully the start of genuine monthly updates on what’s actually working.

Language Log Table of Contents Language Log #000 - What is a Language Log Language Log #001 - Starting points Language Log #002 - 3 month update 3 month update Alright, so this is my first update in this language log series! I planned to do updates monthly, and I’ll try to do so going forward, but quarterly updates should be the minimum. A few things have changed goal wise: Japanese was moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1 Cantonese was moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2 Mandarin was moved from Tier 2 to Tier 3 Croatian I feel like I’m making the most progress in Croatian. You can see at the end of the update where I go through come completely new, completely native cards. Obviously, I didn’t understand them in the beginning, but there’s definitely a lot of progress (vs knowing next to 0 Croatian 3 months ago). I think the best way to describe my progress is that I’m able to understand sentence structure, including what’s a noun, what’s a verb, and what is something else (adjective, adverb, etc). That’s actually huge! Sentences in Croatian no longer sound like a bunch of crazy sounds to me, and not even just strings of crazy words - instead they just sound like sentences in Dutch and French where I just don’t understand the words. I’m also making surprising progress in cases. I’m don’t think I could write down any declension tables from memory, but when inputting words, I probably have a good idea of the case and gender more than half of the time. Turkish Turkish is a very different language from anything I’ve studied. There’s just so much about the sentence structure, agglutination, etc that is so foreign. Despite studying nearly the same amount as Croatian, I definitely have not made the same progress. There’s a lot more words that I don’t know their purpose in a sentence, and people speaking Turkish still sounds like crazy sounds to me. However, what I am strarting to get down is some fo the agglutination. Words like arabuluculuğundan・from mediation, söylemiștim・as I told you, inanılmazdı・was unbelievable, and beğenmiyorsun・you don’t like are no longer overwhelming and I’m recognizing patterns across various words. Video update

What does learning 18 languages at once actually sound like? In this first Language Log, I test my Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese—and painfully attempt 14 more languages that were basically at zero just two months ago.