After a long long period of motivating myself enough, convincing myself enough that investing in Memory Techniques would help me get more organized and would help me keep all my languages well and alive - I bought a pack of cards!
Yup! That's how it's supposed to begin - a pack of cards. I mean the entire thing is based on imagining things and organizing them in a particular way. I believe that I do the imagining part quite naturally, I am perhaps the most naughty person you'll ever meet. Seriously, my mind is just so full of "wouldn't it be funny if such and such happens " !
One thing reminds me of the other and I already link the words that I have learned in a language to the ones which I have learned before. And to be honest, I am a little worried about keeping up with my languages 'cos it gets frustrating when I know that my vocabulary isn't good enough in any one really! Sure, I can read through a book without a problem without any guess work involved but if say I need the word "Stomach", then I don't have a clue what's the word for it in many languages. Germanic ones are easy enough in this regard, so are the Romance Languages but what's the word for "stomach" in Polish (or Russian), in Chinese ( or Japanese) ??
I won't lie - I have no idea. Yes, I would be able to guess it once I have read it in context but my on-the-fly vocabulary is quite weak in most languages.
And I am slowly but surely moving towards activating them all, as in using them all in actual conversations with real people on a full time basis.
I think, my decision to stick to the Written and the Spoken word was based on two factors, a passive approach towards learning languages - there being no external motivation for me and the amount of work it takes to really bring up one's knowledge to a conversational level. I was being Lazy, when it came to putting in the work to activate a language. Sure, I used a few languages with people around the world and have met awesome people through my passion for languages but eventually, we end up communicating more in English. Not Good, I should put in more effort to really use the language. Will do;P
The time for Language Learning as a goal in itself has come to pass, as I wish to use them more actively now. In fact, after Graduation I don't really plan to learn any new language at all! Rather, I would just like to improve my knowledge and to be able to express myself in the languages I already know. That's all I intend to do till age of 30 or so!!
Yeah, I plan a lot for the Future. Nope, I can't predict the wonderful twists and surprises that Life brings along and in hindsight, I have failedmiserably ( HAPPILY) in my initial goal of Mastering 5 languages - German, Esperanto, French, Russian, Japanese.
But on the bright side ( insanely bright side) -
* I can read Alcoholics Anonymous in Icelandic ( it's free;P )
* I can read Henrik Ibsen in Norwegian,
* The Girl who Played with fire in the Original Swedish version.
* The Diary of a Young Girl in the Original Dutch.
* The wonderful literature of Poland.
And that's not even including Music, Movies, People and so so many other wonderful things - the worlds that languages open up for you!
This year I shall have included Finnish, Japanese, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew in the list as well. Not to mention the passive knowledge of Chinese language;P
So, yeah I might have lost a battle here and there - I am gonna win the War!
Yup! That's how it's supposed to begin - a pack of cards. I mean the entire thing is based on imagining things and organizing them in a particular way. I believe that I do the imagining part quite naturally, I am perhaps the most naughty person you'll ever meet. Seriously, my mind is just so full of "wouldn't it be funny if such and such happens " !
One thing reminds me of the other and I already link the words that I have learned in a language to the ones which I have learned before. And to be honest, I am a little worried about keeping up with my languages 'cos it gets frustrating when I know that my vocabulary isn't good enough in any one really! Sure, I can read through a book without a problem without any guess work involved but if say I need the word "Stomach", then I don't have a clue what's the word for it in many languages. Germanic ones are easy enough in this regard, so are the Romance Languages but what's the word for "stomach" in Polish (or Russian), in Chinese ( or Japanese) ??
I won't lie - I have no idea. Yes, I would be able to guess it once I have read it in context but my on-the-fly vocabulary is quite weak in most languages.
And I am slowly but surely moving towards activating them all, as in using them all in actual conversations with real people on a full time basis.
I think, my decision to stick to the Written and the Spoken word was based on two factors, a passive approach towards learning languages - there being no external motivation for me and the amount of work it takes to really bring up one's knowledge to a conversational level. I was being Lazy, when it came to putting in the work to activate a language. Sure, I used a few languages with people around the world and have met awesome people through my passion for languages but eventually, we end up communicating more in English. Not Good, I should put in more effort to really use the language. Will do;P
The time for Language Learning as a goal in itself has come to pass, as I wish to use them more actively now. In fact, after Graduation I don't really plan to learn any new language at all! Rather, I would just like to improve my knowledge and to be able to express myself in the languages I already know. That's all I intend to do till age of 30 or so!!
Yeah, I plan a lot for the Future. Nope, I can't predict the wonderful twists and surprises that Life brings along and in hindsight, I have failed
But on the bright side ( insanely bright side) -
* I can read Alcoholics Anonymous in Icelandic ( it's free;P )
* I can read Henrik Ibsen in Norwegian,
* The Girl who Played with fire in the Original Swedish version.
* The Diary of a Young Girl in the Original Dutch.
* The wonderful literature of Poland.
And that's not even including Music, Movies, People and so so many other wonderful things - the worlds that languages open up for you!
This year I shall have included Finnish, Japanese, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew in the list as well. Not to mention the passive knowledge of Chinese language;P
So, yeah I might have lost a battle here and there - I am gonna win the War!
No comments:
Post a Comment