aledda wrote:I've been studying foreign languages since I was 6, when my parents made me study English because it will be useful for me in the future.
I must confess that at the time, I didn't enjoy it. I didn't like the language, not even a bit. In my house, we barely had interaction with things in English (since both my parents can't speak the language, and on TV, all the shows were in Spanish or dubbed in Spanish). Music was the exception, but most of the songs we listened to were in Spanish or Portuguese (which I've always loved). On top of that, my teacher wanted me to do things like conjugate verbs when I had no idea what a "verb" was in the first place. I didn't understand most of the lessons since I was way younger than my classmates. The English pronunciation was difficult for me, I kept asking myself: why does each 'u' in "Uruguay" sound so different from one another, and at the same time they sound different from the 'u' in "run"? Why does the 'i' in "life" it's not the same as the 'i' in "lift"? Why do the 'e's in "here" sound like that, and then there's the 'e' in "left"? (I can keep writing examples, but I think you understand what I mean). All those things summed up made me very reluctant to study the language. Of course it didn't help at all that I wanted to learn beautiful languages like Portuguese and Italian, to me they sounded so musical, so rich, that they made English sound very dull. But despite all that, I studied it for years, because I "had to".
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that I hated studying in general (because I was a very good student back then), it was more like a frustration because I had to study THAT language instead of the ones that I really wanted to learn. To put it simple, I loved the idea of LEARNING languages, but I didn't want to have the obligation to STUDY English, since there was no "chemistry" between us.
Those were my feelings towards it, until one night watching a movie (in English, with subs in Spanish) with my family, I laughed at a joke that involved some word play, while the rest of my family stared at me like "..." due to a poor/simplified translation of that joke. It wasn't a big deal but it made me change the way I felt about English. I didn't like studying it, but at that moment I realized that I wanted to learn it, I wanted to be able to catch those little things, I wanted to understand everything, not only about movies, TV series, books and songs, but also during a conversation with someone (even though at that time, traveling was just a distant dream and since I didn't have internet at home, doing things like writing here, or chatting with people on the internet didn't cross my mind).
So one of my greatest allies, when I decided to approach English that way, was reading (you have no idea how much I love reading!). At first, I chose books I have already read in Spanish or books on which films that I had already watched were based (I didn't like this too much, because I prefer to read the book before the movie, but hey... I needed help!), so even if I didn't understand every word, I could still get what was going on. You can't imagine the joy I felt after "discovering" things in those books, that were lost in the Spanish translations I had read (well, maybe YOU, all the people here, can understand how that felt). With each book I felt closer and closer to the language, to the point of not being able to differentiate if a text I read was in Spanish or English.
A teacher also helped me a lot, when she advised me that since I watched many American shows on cable, I should try to "watch" them while doing other things, so I could learn not to depend on subtitles (neither in Spanish nor in English). By doing that, day after day, year after year, I gained a lot of vocabulary and a more "everyday" usage of the language. I improved both my reading and listening comprehension.
And eventually, I was ready to take the ECPE (Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English). It took me a long time, but I did it! And there have been several instances throughout my life, in which I have realized how much everything has changed since that moment when my 6-year-old self declared that she hated English.
I'm a computer engineer, so more than 80% of the study material (books, program documentation, help forums, blogs related to technology, etc) I used was in English. Thanks to being able to read and write in English (ask questions in forums, search exactly what I wanted to ask, etc), I was able to graduate without too much trouble.
In 2008, I discovered k-pop thanks to a friend. At that point I started consuming different kinds of media (not only music but also TV shows, doramas and movies) in Korean. Of course I did not know anything in Korean, so I had to depend on subtitles or translations. The problem is that the Spanish translations were horrible since they were mostly the translation from Korean to English and then to Spanish (sometimes it was even worse: Korean -> Mandarin Chinese -> English -> Spanish). Many dialogues were lost or too simplified, sometimes they didn't even make sense or were terribly wrong. And I am not judging that, I mean there were no "official" translations, so the fans had to make them, so people like me could understand at least something. But since I knew English, after a few days, I decided to use only the English translations. And I added to my bucket list "to learn Korean" at some point.
When I decided to learn Japanese (I will write about it later), I realized how scarce were the options to learn a language so different from mine only using Spanish, while with English the options were almost unlimited.
And of course, my "online" life would not be the same without being able to communicate with others in English. Well, my life in general wouldn't be the same without English. I just can't imagine what it would be like if I had continued with the anti-English thoughts I had had since I was a child.
Please, feel free to correct any mistakes.