So it has been about a month since I have last posted anything and I'm sorry! So much has been going on and don't worry, I will catch you up in a later post. Anyway, I thought I would write about a hobby of mine: studying foreign languages!
I have always wanted to be fluent in a language outside of English. I grew up with my Popeye (Pépère), a Frenchman and always wanted him to teach me his native language. My mother on the other hand had planned on me learning Spanish instead and told him he could not teach me French. I was so mad. I wasn't allowed to learn it at home or at school. I knew Spanish would always come in handy when looking for a job, but why couldn't French? My family is French. We take trips to Montreal all of the time. I thought, "What good will Spanish do me up here?". I really wish I could've learned.
But I went on to start studying Spanish in the 7th grade. I studied through the 11th grade. I took the Honors Spanish courses and always passed with an A. I'll tell you what though, I hardly remember a thing! I was never passionate about the language. I was always bitter I never got to choose on my own what I wanted to speak. In my senior year I took off learning a language in school. I had more than the required 2 years to get into a 4 year university afterward and with a very packed senior year schedule, I didn't feel continuing Spanish was necessary for me. The desire to learn a new language had dwindled for me as I entered my final year of high school.
I had been taking an internship course, interning with my former kindergarten teacher and some special needs teachers at the local middle school. When the course had come to an end, my teacher had handed me this flyer for a job at a Montessori School part time and told me I would be a shoe-in candidate for it. I called up and ended up getting the job. I was thrilled! When I was introduced to the students, I had noticed many of them were bilingual, and one or two were actually trilingual! Mind you the students ages ranged from 3 to 6. I was blown away.
One child knew English, Spanish, and was working on Italian. Two brothers spoke English and Korean. One girl spoke English and Russian, and another young girl spoke English, Crotatian, and Russian. There were other kids who spoke a second language but just off of the top of my head, those are the ones I remember the best. I was blown away. If only my mother had let my Popeye teach me French when I was young I would have had it down. But seeing this had rekindled a flame inside of me. A desire to start learning a new language on my own.
I started with Danish. I picked it because it was different. I am a quarter Danish and I thought it would be great if I ever got to visit the country. My grandmother and her family are from there and not many people know it these days. It isn't a language that is taught in American classrooms. What was cool about it was that if you could learn Danish, you could basically speak Norwegian or anything in the surrounding area because the Scandinavian languages are all so similar. I began studying. I gave it a fair shot but I just wasn't seeming to pick it up like I had hoped.
I then tried a little German on my own. I immediately was not interested. I just couldn't see this sticking. So once summer vacation before college had come, I signed up for two summer language courses. Polish and Russian were the languages. I decided I would try both for a class or two and drop one once I figured out which one I was most interested in. Polish was pretty cool (and I may go back to it eventually) but Russian just stuck for me. It came a lot easier. I picked up the cyrillic alphabet a lot quicker. I learned print and script in a day. I could read things and vocabulary work was easier for me. I will admit going into a Russian class was very intimidating for me (especially when the professor speaks 4 languages and her accent is super tough to understand). I thought I could never learn it in a million years, but I enjoy learning more to this day! My fiance, Scott and I took another course together last summer and practice together still. We were expecting our first child at the time and wanted her to be bilingual in something that we could help her learn. So far we are thinking we will teach her this. Unless my hubby takes up German. We will just have to wait and see when she is at that age!
Just wanted to give a little shout out to my awesome Popeye. He is by far the coolest grandparent a girl could ask for! The goofiest man alive and the guy who used to teach me profanity in French so my mother never knew what I was saying if I stubbed my toe or something ridiculous like that. Love you! :)
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