I've learnt dribs and drabs of a few languages over the years.
I learnt Japanese for a year or so in primary school, and again for six months in college (I quit in primary school because I didn't like the teacher - guess who the teacher was in college?), and did six months of French in year seven. Every time I meet someone who speaks a language that's new to me I get them to teach me a few things - most of which slip my mind almost immediately, of course - and I try to add to my list of languages that I can say 'I don't speak [language here]' in.
There's only two languages that I've ever really stuck with.
I took Indonesian for six months in year seven - part of my school's compulsory language program - and thoroughly enjoyed it. At the end of that six months, my class was sent off for the other part of the compulsory language program, six months of French, which I found to be a drag - mostly because it was full of grammar.
Come year eight, we were allowed to choose our own subjects and it was an easy decision to take Indonesian, although deciding between taking six months of Indo and six months of textiles, or just twelve months of Indo took awhile longer. Twelve months of Indo won out in the end. My best friend E. was taking the same classes, so while we took the class seriously we also had some fun times messing around with the language. Translated versions of the theme song to 'Friends', which make no linguistic sense but maintain the flow of the original, for example.
We kept studying it through to the end of year ten, but the college we then went to didn't offer Indonesian (hence that ill-fated adventure in Japanese). I went for awhile to a TAFE course, but when that folded (due to lack of interest), I pretty much put down the books and focussed on other things.
Since then, I've barely had occasion to speak, much less write, Indonesian, and I've been concerned that I'm forgetting all of it - like my mum, who spoke fluent French in her twenties but can no longer remember more than a few words. It was all quite depressing, but over the last couple of weeks E. and I have been exchanging letters in Indonesian (because the lucky cow is going to Indonesia on her honeymoon in January), and I'm astonished by how quickly it's been coming back to me.
When I wrote the first one I had to look up almost every word, remembering only very random terms that had lodged in my memory either through songs that I'd learnt in year seven, or through their similarity to other words. Tonight I sat down and wrote the seventh letter - the fourth I'd written - and just typed out a page, only stopping to look up one word that E. had used (library). It was really an exciting moment.
It seems to me that I really need an Arabic-speaking pen-pal, since I've not picked up an Arabic book since my final exam in Arabic last November. I have invested slightly less time (but significantly more money) in learning Arabic than Indonesian, and it seems like a waste to let it all slip away.
I learnt Japanese for a year or so in primary school, and again for six months in college (I quit in primary school because I didn't like the teacher - guess who the teacher was in college?), and did six months of French in year seven. Every time I meet someone who speaks a language that's new to me I get them to teach me a few things - most of which slip my mind almost immediately, of course - and I try to add to my list of languages that I can say 'I don't speak [language here]' in.
There's only two languages that I've ever really stuck with.
I took Indonesian for six months in year seven - part of my school's compulsory language program - and thoroughly enjoyed it. At the end of that six months, my class was sent off for the other part of the compulsory language program, six months of French, which I found to be a drag - mostly because it was full of grammar.
Come year eight, we were allowed to choose our own subjects and it was an easy decision to take Indonesian, although deciding between taking six months of Indo and six months of textiles, or just twelve months of Indo took awhile longer. Twelve months of Indo won out in the end. My best friend E. was taking the same classes, so while we took the class seriously we also had some fun times messing around with the language. Translated versions of the theme song to 'Friends', which make no linguistic sense but maintain the flow of the original, for example.
We kept studying it through to the end of year ten, but the college we then went to didn't offer Indonesian (hence that ill-fated adventure in Japanese). I went for awhile to a TAFE course, but when that folded (due to lack of interest), I pretty much put down the books and focussed on other things.
Since then, I've barely had occasion to speak, much less write, Indonesian, and I've been concerned that I'm forgetting all of it - like my mum, who spoke fluent French in her twenties but can no longer remember more than a few words. It was all quite depressing, but over the last couple of weeks E. and I have been exchanging letters in Indonesian (because the lucky cow is going to Indonesia on her honeymoon in January), and I'm astonished by how quickly it's been coming back to me.
When I wrote the first one I had to look up almost every word, remembering only very random terms that had lodged in my memory either through songs that I'd learnt in year seven, or through their similarity to other words. Tonight I sat down and wrote the seventh letter - the fourth I'd written - and just typed out a page, only stopping to look up one word that E. had used (library). It was really an exciting moment.
It seems to me that I really need an Arabic-speaking pen-pal, since I've not picked up an Arabic book since my final exam in Arabic last November. I have invested slightly less time (but significantly more money) in learning Arabic than Indonesian, and it seems like a waste to let it all slip away.
posted by beck at 11:08 pm
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