After learning all the basics of Portuguese, I'm starting to want to venture onto another language. Don't yet me wrong, I still have a strong desire to continue with Portuguese and do not plan to stop studying it anytime soon but I feel as though I could be doing more with another language. Last night I had the desire to start learning Spanish after reading an article on wikipedia on the differences and similarities between Portuguese and Spanish and I think that Spanish would be extraordinarily easy to pick up with my knowledge of basic Portuguese. However I don't want to speak Portuñol and I think that studying Spanish may lead me to become confused with the two.
This morning I had a desire to start with my French again which has been long neglected for the last two years. To be honest, I wish there was a way to completely forget a language and start afresh but there isn't, unless you are willing to complete neglect the language for years. I have technically been 'studying' French 8 years through a utterly rubbish education system which teaches you how to memorize a language rather than learning it. Sure I can produce the phrases 'Je ne sais pas', 'Je m'appelle Erin', 'je voudrais aller à la université' [noting that I had to look up université in the dictionary to make sure I had spelt it correctly] without thinking about it but apart from those phrases that I've memorized I can't properly construct a sentence with ease. I asked one of my friends last year who has no interest in learning language but had studied French for 6 years, the question ' Comment t'appelles tu?' and he had no idea what I had asked him. After learning Portuguese for 1 year, my Portuguese far exceeds that of my French and it makes me feel really ashamed and embarrassed. The only good thing about my French is my listening skills and my pronunciation. So I'm hoping that Hugo's French is three months is very similar to its Portuguese equivalent because I need to start learning French rather than memorizing it.
I've been wanting to continue with my Japanese again too. I don't think I have ever been as interested in a language as much as Japanese. I love the country, culture and language but I need to find a different approach to learning it. It's a unique language with me in that I can understand every word in a Japanese sentence yet I still don't know what it means. So until I can find a method that works for me, I think I'll be postponing it for a little bit longer.
Now finally Mandarin. Mandarin is another language that I love and if were to only visit one other country in the world, it would be China. However, tones completely intimidate me. Then there's a question of the sentence structure which seems to get surprisingly difficult as you proceed with the language. But if I want to do Mandarin at university then I would like to enter the classroom with a little but of knowledge under me belt rather than have it all hit me at once. So I think that I'll start experimenting with it. The FSI course looks quite good for Mandarin [although I don't want to talk too soon after what happened with FSI Spanish] so I might give it a wee try.
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