May 9, 2014

Feeling fullfilled in language learning...what?

Hello people!

Today I am writing from a school library, because my life took unexpectable turn, and I completely forgot about the fact that my first lesson will star earlier plus that it will take place somewhere else.
It's cool though because I can reflect upon my life, finish some papers (if I have any) and in addition to that I can write a post that I have been planing on writing a very long time.

Sometimes I feel like a cheater when it comes to language learning. All of my languages are very similar to the languages I already know, so when I say to some people "I am learning Norwegian" they just look at me weirdly like "Learning Norwegian is easy when you know Swedish you loser" and then I am starting to think that I don't feel like I accomplished anything "nice".  I am not thinking about suprising other people, but I would like to surpise myself. Prove to myself that I can learn Xhosa, Arabic or Monolian and I think that I will have to learn some very "foreign" language to really satisfy my "linguistic needs"

But wait...

In this post I will try to prove to myself (and you too, if you need that encouragement) that no matter what language you are studying - it still takes time and hard work

Norwegian isn't easy. It isn't easy for me because my Swedish completely interferes with it. I still have to learn new words, listen and struggle to get to the point when I can really say that I speak Norwegian. Right now, I speak Swedish with many Norwegian words (Not other way around) and it will take time untill I will acquire a good pronunciation so people won't think that I speak Swedish (It has taken place when I spoke with one person on Skype. She thought that I was speaking Swedish, when it actually was my broken Norwegian drowned in overly melodic Swedish accent). Maybe I shouldn't be so self-conscious and just notice that I am definitely working hard and I don't need to study Latin to prove it. Easy language, hard language - bullshit! EVERY LANGUAGE takes time to learn and I finally understood it.

If you ever feel like a cheater or somebody who doesn't work as hard as others because you learn the "easy" languages, think about those who never learn a language...

I hope that this post will give you something to think about. I don't care that my languages are all similar. Even better...I will learn all of the Germanic languages and then Slavic too, so take that you dumb and incompetent brain of mines!



May 3, 2014

1 Week and 3 Days Into My Challenge – Results...

The sun is shining brightly, birds are singing and welcoming summer into the cold and windy Sweden. You could guess that I am enjoying myself outside with my friends and a cold Coca-Cola that is burning my stomach, but in reality I also studied languages, and I am pretty happy with the results.

Since Add1Challenge has ended, I realized that I am currently not studying any language in particular, so I decided to start a new challenge, that I wrote about in the previous post. After 1 week and 3 days of some work I am ready to give you some insight into the process.

What I have done so far with my target languages – German and Swedish – is quite satisfying, and even though I didn't do my best, I am pretty content with the development of my language skills.

Since my challenge has started, I have read two BIG books in Swedish, namely „Korpens Sang” by Per Nilsson and „Kattoga” by Margaret Atwood (English title is „Cat's Eye”) and I have done some pretty intensive listening by sitting through a two hour long audition broadcasted on Swedish radio and then doing it again, but only for ¼ of the time. When it comes to German, I have done significantly less, because I only watched some videos in the language and wrote a short text.

Results?

I noticed small changes in my vocabulary and maybe even pronunciation when I speak Swedish – success. Now it's time for German, in which I haven't noticed any significant change...

That's all there is to it. I am currently preparing myself for the inevitable, namely, recording of a video completely in Swedish and I am really not happy with the idea, but I know that I have to do it already, so I will have to plan it out or something. It will appear on my YT channel soon.

Thanks for reading and keep following my journey.  I will maybe post something less babbly and more informative soon. Stay tuned!