Languages and progress, or something like that
How do you practise the languages you are learning? Plus, the Music Highlight
Today is all about languages. I know a lot of you out there are learning languages, either for your PhD, or because you have relocated to another country where the language is new to you, or simply out of interest.
Good on you!
I LOVE languages. This is something I’ve inherited from my dad, who is super talented in languages - in the various restaurants he worked in Toronto, he learned basic Portuguese, Italian and even Hungarian from his coworkers.
For those who don’t know me, I was born and raised in Canada, so English is my first language. I also speak and write in Greek, because both my parents are of Greek origin and I finished school in Greece.
When I was an undergrad, we had the opportunity to choose among Italian, German and French free of charge in our university - and I wanted to learn Italian, which I did. I still speak pretty much okay - not perfect, but I can get around. I have lost most of my spoken Italian 25 years later, but I am glad that I understand almost 80-90% of what I read.
I never thought I would be able to learn any other language - but I did!
As soon as I moved to Switzerland in 2009, I immediately started learning German - it was sooooooooooooooo hard but I love it! And yes, I did learn Swiss German too - the dialect in my region - and I really love it!
And then…
The Bosphorus/Bogazici at night, in beautiful Istanbul (Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash)
I first visited Turkey for a conference in 2012. And if there is love at first sound (I like that : ), it happened to me with Turkish. What. A. Language. I LOVE IT. I did lessons for two years only and I had to stop because of my Masters which was pretty demanding. I speak only very very basic Turkish, but I can order my favourite food if I need to : ) Currently, I am watching a Turkish series called Bahar (which means spring and is the name of the central character) every evening after work and I recommend you watch the series, it is so great. The heroine decides to study medicine again after a long time raising her kids and helping everyone in her family and she is my inspiration! (If you know of any other series with university life or studying, let me know in the comments - also watch The Chair! It only ran for one season but I really loved it.)
I have also started doing something which might sound silly, not really leading to much progress and I might end up more confused in the end, but I do it mostly for fun and with no stress: every evening, I learn 8 words of Turkish, and of three Scandinavian languages - Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. I remember only a few words but that’s okay! I also realised that because I am studying mostly the Canadian Arctic, and I find really old articles about it in the above-mentioned Scandinavian languages, it is hard to put them into translation tools as some of them are really bad scans of typewritten pages. I do understand quite a few things in these articles because of English and German - and when I have difficulties, I type passages in translation tools.
Which languages do you speak?
Which ones are you learning?
Which ones are you planning on learning?
Let me know in the comments.
The Music Highlight
Today’s music highlight is pretty different from what I usually share. We have Turkish pop for today!
Buray is my favourite Turkish singer and I hope to hear him live some day!