Italian, Mandarin Chinese, and more or How Polyglots are Born
Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:05 am
Since everyone seems to be doing language logs, whatever that may mean (hope I've grasped the basics of the genre)...
I've been learning English since the age of 9 (if one can call it learning what we were doing at school), and enough is enough really, though the realisation that it was no longer a real challenge only came to me a year ago. I still learn a few new words now and again - life itself insists on that - but I just had to get my teeth into something fresh, and so, precisely a year ago, I started attending an A1 Italian course.
In fact, it was not my first contact with the language - the first one happened about 20 years earlier and lasted just a few months. I remembered little of that, needless to say, but something stayed in my memory, and more came back as I was attending school.
The upsetting thing about those schools is that people start but don't finish: of the eight people on the list only six turned up for the first trial lesson and only three saw the checkered flag. When it was time to start on A2, I found myself alone - even the teacher refused to continue citing "being busy", and so I had a new one. Who gave them the idea that hurting the student's self-esteem is the best way to achieve results, I'll never know, but that's a different story; the outcome of it all is, I'm now on my own with Italian, and in a silent period. Still bracing myself to try a Skype lesson... still feeling mortally shy about it. It's not easy to be a passionate language learner and an introvert at the same time.
The idea to turn myself into a polyglot came a little later, but it came finally. It might sound crazy at my age, but people have been known to start later in life, and I have some natural abilities, so I said to myself, "why not?". I was going to start German next, but life decided differently. The company I work for was bought by the Chinese, and our bosses went there and experienced all the joys of language barriers (English is gorgeous, but it doesn't open all the doors). An email followed, which I could only read as a direct instruction to learn Chinese urgently. My colleagues read it differently - at least ten of them asked me the next day when I was going to start learning Chinese. Fortunately, I had already phoned the language school and had my answer ready.
I started a few days later with a native speaker, but that course was destined to last only two months and mainly succeeded at overwhelming me. Now I'm attending a different school, and the second time around it seems so much easier. I've even mastered dictations... in Chinese characters, I mean, without looking at anything.
My Italian, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is now going through the extensive reading stage (which, as life has proven to me, actually never ends). But with Chinese it won't work - not yet at any rate. I'll need a teacher for some time.
Current plans are as follows:
German - this December or January 2018
French - June or July 2018.
Japanese - September 2019
Spanish - either before or after Japanese depending on how it goes and whether my tired brain tells me to go hang.
And that's just the first "wish list". Considering the impressive lists some of you guys have, I'm more than ever tempted to add a second.
I've been learning English since the age of 9 (if one can call it learning what we were doing at school), and enough is enough really, though the realisation that it was no longer a real challenge only came to me a year ago. I still learn a few new words now and again - life itself insists on that - but I just had to get my teeth into something fresh, and so, precisely a year ago, I started attending an A1 Italian course.
In fact, it was not my first contact with the language - the first one happened about 20 years earlier and lasted just a few months. I remembered little of that, needless to say, but something stayed in my memory, and more came back as I was attending school.
The upsetting thing about those schools is that people start but don't finish: of the eight people on the list only six turned up for the first trial lesson and only three saw the checkered flag. When it was time to start on A2, I found myself alone - even the teacher refused to continue citing "being busy", and so I had a new one. Who gave them the idea that hurting the student's self-esteem is the best way to achieve results, I'll never know, but that's a different story; the outcome of it all is, I'm now on my own with Italian, and in a silent period. Still bracing myself to try a Skype lesson... still feeling mortally shy about it. It's not easy to be a passionate language learner and an introvert at the same time.
The idea to turn myself into a polyglot came a little later, but it came finally. It might sound crazy at my age, but people have been known to start later in life, and I have some natural abilities, so I said to myself, "why not?". I was going to start German next, but life decided differently. The company I work for was bought by the Chinese, and our bosses went there and experienced all the joys of language barriers (English is gorgeous, but it doesn't open all the doors). An email followed, which I could only read as a direct instruction to learn Chinese urgently. My colleagues read it differently - at least ten of them asked me the next day when I was going to start learning Chinese. Fortunately, I had already phoned the language school and had my answer ready.
I started a few days later with a native speaker, but that course was destined to last only two months and mainly succeeded at overwhelming me. Now I'm attending a different school, and the second time around it seems so much easier. I've even mastered dictations... in Chinese characters, I mean, without looking at anything.
My Italian, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is now going through the extensive reading stage (which, as life has proven to me, actually never ends). But with Chinese it won't work - not yet at any rate. I'll need a teacher for some time.
Current plans are as follows:
German - this December or January 2018
French - June or July 2018.
Japanese - September 2019
Spanish - either before or after Japanese depending on how it goes and whether my tired brain tells me to go hang.
And that's just the first "wish list". Considering the impressive lists some of you guys have, I'm more than ever tempted to add a second.