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Polyglots, when did you start? | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6318 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 25 of 29 18 January 2010 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting story, Katie. I'm curious though, what do you plan to do with Hungarian to get to advanced fluency? Are you thinking of moving to Hungary anytime in the near future? It is a really interesting language, and I can't decided between learning it or Finnish (assuming I ever get around to one of them).
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| Sungchul Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 5430 days ago 8 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Korean Studies: German, English*, French, Spanish Studies: Haitian Creole | Message 26 of 29 21 January 2010 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I grew up in a Korean family in the U.S. I probably didn't speak until very late because of the whole bilingual environment, but it freaked my grand/parents out that at two years I still wasn't speaking more than a word or two at once whereas my older brother was conveying full thoughts before the age of one. :( So thus they hired a speech teacher and I learned to speak only mostly English with broken Korean on the side.
My first foreign language came in middle school (age 12, 7th grade). We had the choice between Spanish, French, and Italian, and because my older brother took it and because it was most practical, I chose Spanish. In high school (age 14, 9th grade), I got to pick my first elective. I picked American Sign Language. Later in 11th grade (age 16), I gave up my lunch period to take Japanese. By the end of high school, I had taken 6 years of Spanish, 3 years of ASL, and 2 years of Japanese. During this time, I also took it upon myself to try and learn Korean better (with my mom's help). After high school, I asked my parents for the money to take French 101 and 102 at community college over the summer as a graduation gift. When I got to college (where I am in the middle of my 2nd/sophomore year), I also started Haitian Creole. By the end of this school year, I will have taken a semester of Spanish, 3 semesters of French, and 2/3 semesters of Haitian Creole. I'm a linguistics major picking between French and Spanish as a double. Outside of school, I have taken stabs at learning Esperanto (age 16, I want to say) and Mandarin Chinese (age 18). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6720 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 27 of 29 21 January 2010 at 6:18am | IP Logged | ||
Well.. my current goal is to live in Hungary for one year, from December 2010. The reason I really want to do this (other than for the experience and to immerse myself in the culture), is because I feel that I'm at a point where immersion will be the only way to advance any further. This year will be spent doing as much 'at home' immersion as I can, but I think I'll make most progress when I'm over there. But other than that, I really just love the language. It's beautiful and it's interesting. It has a depth that I feel English just doesn't (you can explain things in such an in-depth way in Hungarian, that almost feels vague in English to me now). I have good friends who are Hungarian, so I have the opportunity to speak it quite frequently with them. I also have a Hungarian Godson. I felt it was important to understand not only his language, but his culture etc also... I guess those are my main reasons! :) But I would encourage anyone to study it - it truly is a beautiful language, and even if you don't pursue it to a high level, it's an incredible experience to learn even a little! Edited by Katie on 21 January 2010 at 6:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 28 of 29 21 January 2010 at 9:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm still no polyglot, but maybe by the end of the year?
With 8 years I took voluntary French classes and picked up a little bit of Spanish from my mom, in grade 5 (10 years old) I took mandatory English, grade 7 Latin, grade 11 Russian, and then dabbled around in a lot of languages without learning much. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tomispev Triglot Newbie YugoslaviaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5911 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, Slovak*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 29 of 29 07 February 2010 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was born in Yugoslavia to a Slovak family and since early childhood I could speak both Slovak and Serbo-Croatian. I went to a Slovak elementary school and high school. (In Serbia ethnic minorities have a full curriculum in their native language from kindergarten to high school and even college in some cases). In kindergarten, when I was 5 or 6 I started learning English and was fluent in it when I started high school. There I also learned Russian (there are two mandatory languages in most high schools) for four years, and a bit of Latin for the first two.
At about the time I finished high school I started going through grammars and dictionaries of all Slavic languages and I can pretty much understand all of them now, but I cannot speak any except Slovak and Serbo-Croatian. Two years I got into college and I studied Russian as major, but I left after first semester. Now I have sent application forms to Slovakia to study Latin and Ancient Greek. On my own I'm currently learning Japanese and I'll soon start German and French. Most of my family from my mother's side speaks German since they lived and worked in Germany for almost 15 years, my mother even finished college there, but they never taught me. I'll try to take German as a foreign language in college. Despite all of this I don't feel like a polyglot. I have plans to learn dozen more languages but I feel more like a philosopher than a language enthusiast. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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