The languages that I speak and how I learnt them
German is my mothertongue.
English - I learnt it in school since the age of 11.
French - I completed my studies in Paris. What I did was not an exchange like Erasmus or something, I was fully inscribed there since the beginning.
Russian - I studied Russian, and have the equivalent of a Bachelor's degree in it. I was allowed to jump three years of a four years course, receiving my diploma after one single year.
Dutch - I lived five years in the Netherlands.
Turkish - I have been going to Turkey yearly for about eight years, and I have become pretty fluent in it.
Spanish - I had four years of Spanish in school. After I dropped out of high school, I visited Spain several times and I also chose Spanish for one additional year when I went to evening school in France getting the equivalent of a high school diploma. So that's five years of formal studies.
Persian - I went to Iran three times, and I also spent about a year and a half studying Persian in university. On my visits to Iran, knowledge of this language has greatly enhanced my experience, and I learnt a lot more things about the places I visited than if I had I not studied Persian. When not in Iran, I keep up my Persian by skyping.
Esperanto - I learnt the Esperanto grammar necessary for speaking in two days. I started by chatting on the internet and very rapidly my Esperanto became as good, or better, as the average Esperanto speaker's. Once I learnt it, it was like I had instant groups of new friends in many places around the world.
A short word on this language: For a long time I didn't want to learn this artificial language, but now I think Esperanto rocks. It is fascinating to see how an artificially created language is made to come alive by its speakers and how it evolves over time, it has a pretty cool grammar, and even sounds really pretty. I also really like the spirit of hospitality and open-mindedness of Esperanto-speakers, a language that was purposefully invented to transcend nations and nationalisms.
I am learning also Kurmanji Kurdish and Indonesian and in both of these I can hold always more complicated conversations, surprising myself often.
I have also started some Amharic which has been greatly rewarding. The reactions of East African migrants in Europe are effusive once you actually start throwing more than a few words around and begin making sentences.
In the future I will hopefully get around to start speaking a little Urdu. I also feel very attracted by Somali.
Afterwards I am planning to stop learning languages. It is, indeed, possible to learn to speak something like 30, or even more, languages, but the more of them you learn, the less time you have to improve your skills in any of them. Polyglottery becomes a full time job, and I simply have other interests in life, too. No matter how big my nerdy love for grammar is, for me, language remains a tool for deepening my understanding of a culture, and to create relationships with people, and I would like to keep it that way.
By the way, I experience a lot of disbelief from people I meet, and what feels like unfair judgement and other types of shitty behaviour towards me. These people seem to think that someone who dresses and acts like me, maybe someone with my sort of face, or my gender, cannot really be speaking so many languages. Hereby I would like to tellv all those people to fuck off. I am not in fact deluded, I just worked really really hard.
If you meet a polyglot, and you don't fully believe the person their abilities, don't ask to speak a few sentences in their languages, because, a) anyone can learn something by heart, and b), as someone else said before me, polyglots are not "circus ponies".
What I recommend you do is start a conversation and ask them their techniques for language learning. Often, there is going to be a story behind each language someone speaks. In this blog post I could have gone into much greater detail here about the long road of acquiring fluency in each specific case of the languages I listed, but I refrained because of space constraints.
Back to my blogs :
The Middle Eastern Tales
Compared With Me You Are All Tourists
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| This is the Esperanto flag |
German is my mothertongue.
English - I learnt it in school since the age of 11.
French - I completed my studies in Paris. What I did was not an exchange like Erasmus or something, I was fully inscribed there since the beginning.
Russian - I studied Russian, and have the equivalent of a Bachelor's degree in it. I was allowed to jump three years of a four years course, receiving my diploma after one single year.
Dutch - I lived five years in the Netherlands.
Turkish - I have been going to Turkey yearly for about eight years, and I have become pretty fluent in it.
Spanish - I had four years of Spanish in school. After I dropped out of high school, I visited Spain several times and I also chose Spanish for one additional year when I went to evening school in France getting the equivalent of a high school diploma. So that's five years of formal studies.
Persian - I went to Iran three times, and I also spent about a year and a half studying Persian in university. On my visits to Iran, knowledge of this language has greatly enhanced my experience, and I learnt a lot more things about the places I visited than if I had I not studied Persian. When not in Iran, I keep up my Persian by skyping.
Esperanto - I learnt the Esperanto grammar necessary for speaking in two days. I started by chatting on the internet and very rapidly my Esperanto became as good, or better, as the average Esperanto speaker's. Once I learnt it, it was like I had instant groups of new friends in many places around the world.
A short word on this language: For a long time I didn't want to learn this artificial language, but now I think Esperanto rocks. It is fascinating to see how an artificially created language is made to come alive by its speakers and how it evolves over time, it has a pretty cool grammar, and even sounds really pretty. I also really like the spirit of hospitality and open-mindedness of Esperanto-speakers, a language that was purposefully invented to transcend nations and nationalisms.
I am learning also Kurmanji Kurdish and Indonesian and in both of these I can hold always more complicated conversations, surprising myself often.
I have also started some Amharic which has been greatly rewarding. The reactions of East African migrants in Europe are effusive once you actually start throwing more than a few words around and begin making sentences.
In the future I will hopefully get around to start speaking a little Urdu. I also feel very attracted by Somali.
Afterwards I am planning to stop learning languages. It is, indeed, possible to learn to speak something like 30, or even more, languages, but the more of them you learn, the less time you have to improve your skills in any of them. Polyglottery becomes a full time job, and I simply have other interests in life, too. No matter how big my nerdy love for grammar is, for me, language remains a tool for deepening my understanding of a culture, and to create relationships with people, and I would like to keep it that way.
By the way, I experience a lot of disbelief from people I meet, and what feels like unfair judgement and other types of shitty behaviour towards me. These people seem to think that someone who dresses and acts like me, maybe someone with my sort of face, or my gender, cannot really be speaking so many languages. Hereby I would like to tellv all those people to fuck off. I am not in fact deluded, I just worked really really hard.
If you meet a polyglot, and you don't fully believe the person their abilities, don't ask to speak a few sentences in their languages, because, a) anyone can learn something by heart, and b), as someone else said before me, polyglots are not "circus ponies".
What I recommend you do is start a conversation and ask them their techniques for language learning. Often, there is going to be a story behind each language someone speaks. In this blog post I could have gone into much greater detail here about the long road of acquiring fluency in each specific case of the languages I listed, but I refrained because of space constraints.
Back to my blogs :
The Middle Eastern Tales
Compared With Me You Are All Tourists
