I’m going to Portugal for a month! YES!
I will be staying in the co-living space coworksurf.com, amongst ‘digital nomads’. I’m excited to start my 30 day language challenge where I will learn Portuguese in a month from the first of June to July first. Future posts will be shorter and more about you. I thought it’s fun to tell you a little bit about myself before we start.
At the moment I’m having a coffee in beautiful Amsterdam. I moved back here to study after spending two amazing years in Asia. While living in Singapore and Jakarta, I have learned both English and Indonesian through self study.
You might relate to this story: I have had French and German classes in high school for years with almost no result. I have also spent 500 dollars on a Rosetta Stone course to learn Spanish before spending a month+ on Duolingo with little result.
After having learned English and Indonesian, I was surprised how quick and effective my own ‘language hacking techniques’ were. That’s why we have started building our startup Wordeys.com; an online tool to create your own language course. The idea is maximum result with minimum effort by only learning the words, sentences and grammar that are relevant to you.
Our mission is to help you — and everyone else — get to the language level you need to reach the people, knowledge and opportunities you dream of. But that’s another story.
Wordeys is an aesthetically appealing and simple tool. However, after moving back to the Netherlands, I personally wasn’t as immersed in a foreign language anymore as back then. I had grown out of my own target audience. I didn’t need to learn languages because my life is mostly in English and Dutch, which I both know. Same for the team.
We will reach 1000 users soon and are ready to take it to the next level.
That’s the main reason why I’ll be doing this challenge. I want to get myself back into the environment to become a power user of my own app and put it to the test by learning Portuguese in 30 days. That is: to become conversationally fluent and to connect with the Portuguese locals professionally on a basic level.
Languages, to me, are the means to the goal of connecting to people and their cultures and feel at home anywhere, which is why I want to make the actual learning of them as fast and effective as possible.
Since I’ve been researching a lot in the language learning space, I’ve gotten to learn about quite some good techniques to self-educate.
From making word webs to carrying a notebook everywhere you go, and from speaking from day one to watching vloggers or listening to podcasts in your target language, I will put all the techniques to the test to see which ones are most effective to learn Portuguese in 30 days.
I will also Skype with Fredrik on the 29th of May to receive his advice. He is a Swedish student who used Wordeys to successfully learn almost 1000 Spanish terms, which allowed him to do an internship in Bogota, Colombia. Wow!
I’ll be blogging and sharing the newest tips, tricks and content I use during my journey and thereby hopefully help you get faster to the language level you desire. I’ll also be putting out some short videos to show my progress and share thoughts. I’d love it if you would join!
I’m slowly starting today.
I have ten more days before leaving to Portugal. Today I have watched Connor Grooms’ awesome short documentary on how he learned Spanish in a month to get some more inspiration on how he tackled his challenge.
I’m impressed by his plan of learning for five hours a day and by his budget. I plan to actively learn one hour per day at minimum costs to make it doable and accessible for everyone.
To be completely honest; I don’t really know what I’ll be doing and how it will go. I might ‘fail’. A month is short. I’m worried that I might lose motivation, which is why I’ll be very focused on keeping that.
Motivation was also the core message from Benny Lewis’s TedTalk. I will have to ‘fall in love’ with the Portuguese people and their language by immersing myself into their world and trick my brain into thinking it needs Portuguese to survive.
Tomorrow I will start writing my personal script, as advised in an email from Benny Lewis.
Furthermore, I super warmly welcome you to join me learn Portuguese, and I receive your feedback and ideas with open arms!
If you’re keen on joining this journey or to receive the Portuguese content I use in your mailbox, take one minute to fill out these few questions!
Really wonder how far one can get in a month. Can’t wait to start this journey together! :)
Pier
