21.06.2012 - Я и языки
Постила на Блогспоте. Все остальное там - переводы постов, которые уже есть здесь. Этот - эксклюзивный. Оставлю пока на английском, потом как-нибудь переведу.
Me and languages
In case if you want to know something about me.
The list of languages that I have ever started to learn is rather vast. Unfortunately, in most cases the initiative ended in nothing. I think that's because I couldn't find application for this knowledge in real life and so I lost the motivation gradually.
It all started with French which was expected to become my third language, after Russian and English. But it didn't work. I can hardly put two words together, despite having spent about 10 years learning this one.
Then there were several attempts to learn German, but every time I quit in a couple of months, for I didn't just like the sound of it.
After that came two years of Latin at school. That was great, and I still remember some poetry and sayings that we learned there. And we also translated a bit of Cicero speeches, which was a real challenge.
The next step was trying to learn Sindarin and Quenya, the languages created by Tolkien. But I was clever enough not to go deeply into these, because it would definitely have no use in real life.
That was the end of secondary school. Due to my interest in learning different languages, in high school I went into linguistics first. There I had a short course in Old Slavonic and some Latin again, but I dropped out after the first semester, realising that it wasn't what I wanted to dedicate my life to.
But that didn't mean I would stop being interested in languages. As I was very fond of Irish folk music (and I still am, actually), I decided to get acquainted with the Irish language, although it had almost died out. I still remember some frases from an audio course by BBC, where one of the lessons was completely about going to the bar and ordering drinks. But soon I neglected it, because I realised I wouldn't benefit from learning that - even in Ireland number of people using Irish (not just knowing it) is extremely small.
After that I got somehow connected to Japanese culture. There was an actress from Japan in the theatre where I work (up to the present day), some of the performances were after the Japanese plays, accompanied by Japanese music... Even my diploma was the recording of music played on koto. All these preconditions lead to me learning Japanese. That was really interesting, because it differed from all that I had known before, and I was enraptured by the hieroglyphic writings. But little by little Japan vanished from my life, and so did the Japanese language as well.
At last I got married. My husband dreamt of Spain, and actually we planned to go there on vacation, so I decided to spend some time learning Spanish. That was really easy, but the trip didn't take place. So the learning stopped.
And now we're planning to go to Iceland, therefore I've just started to dig into Icelandic. It seems to be rather difficult, the rules of reading are rather confusing (not more than in French, though) and unfortunately it's pretty close to German with which I always had problems... but I hope I can cope with it.
Тут еще надо сказать, что после этого к списку языков, к которым я чуть-чуть приложилась, добавились итальянский, финский, эстонский и хорватский. Похоже, у меня зависимость!
Me and languages
In case if you want to know something about me.
The list of languages that I have ever started to learn is rather vast. Unfortunately, in most cases the initiative ended in nothing. I think that's because I couldn't find application for this knowledge in real life and so I lost the motivation gradually.
It all started with French which was expected to become my third language, after Russian and English. But it didn't work. I can hardly put two words together, despite having spent about 10 years learning this one.
Then there were several attempts to learn German, but every time I quit in a couple of months, for I didn't just like the sound of it.
After that came two years of Latin at school. That was great, and I still remember some poetry and sayings that we learned there. And we also translated a bit of Cicero speeches, which was a real challenge.
The next step was trying to learn Sindarin and Quenya, the languages created by Tolkien. But I was clever enough not to go deeply into these, because it would definitely have no use in real life.
That was the end of secondary school. Due to my interest in learning different languages, in high school I went into linguistics first. There I had a short course in Old Slavonic and some Latin again, but I dropped out after the first semester, realising that it wasn't what I wanted to dedicate my life to.
But that didn't mean I would stop being interested in languages. As I was very fond of Irish folk music (and I still am, actually), I decided to get acquainted with the Irish language, although it had almost died out. I still remember some frases from an audio course by BBC, where one of the lessons was completely about going to the bar and ordering drinks. But soon I neglected it, because I realised I wouldn't benefit from learning that - even in Ireland number of people using Irish (not just knowing it) is extremely small.
After that I got somehow connected to Japanese culture. There was an actress from Japan in the theatre where I work (up to the present day), some of the performances were after the Japanese plays, accompanied by Japanese music... Even my diploma was the recording of music played on koto. All these preconditions lead to me learning Japanese. That was really interesting, because it differed from all that I had known before, and I was enraptured by the hieroglyphic writings. But little by little Japan vanished from my life, and so did the Japanese language as well.
At last I got married. My husband dreamt of Spain, and actually we planned to go there on vacation, so I decided to spend some time learning Spanish. That was really easy, but the trip didn't take place. So the learning stopped.
And now we're planning to go to Iceland, therefore I've just started to dig into Icelandic. It seems to be rather difficult, the rules of reading are rather confusing (not more than in French, though) and unfortunately it's pretty close to German with which I always had problems... but I hope I can cope with it.
Тут еще надо сказать, что после этого к списку языков, к которым я чуть-чуть приложилась, добавились итальянский, финский, эстонский и хорватский. Похоже, у меня зависимость!