My Languages
Native Language
American English. Sometimes, just to make myself feel better, I tell myself it’s like growing up during Roman times speaking Koine Greek.
Somewhat proficient
Norwegian. I’ve been learning it since January of 2008, basically by reading a lot of books. I do hope to improve my speaking and listening abilities, as well as gaining further proficiency in Nynorsk, the other variant of Norwegian (I’ve learned Bokmål up till now).
Learning now
Finnish. We’ll see.
German I’d like to be able to read about physics in German.
On hold
Polish. I like Polish a lot.
Sort of know the alphabet, and about 5 words
Russian. It’s defeated me 4 times, but the obsession won’t go away.
Languages I’ve tried to learn and failed
Romanian.
Koine Greek. I don’t trust formal language courses. End of story.
Spanish. All through middle school and high school. In other words, I know nothing.
Latin. Fond memories have I of my first attempt to learn a language on my own.
Russian. This makes me so sad. I will not be defeated. I will not.
Languages I don’t want to learn
Spanish
Japanese
Gah, I wish
French
Latvian
Modern Greek
Dutch
Latin
Turkish
Slovak or Czech
New Testament (κοινή) Greek
Hebrew
Esperanto
Italian
Portuguese
Welsh
Gaelic of some variety
Icelandic
Breton (please let’s work together to revive a dying language! Okay, I’m done ranting.)
Cantonese
Rapa Nui/Hawaiian/Maori (Just one of these three, but who knows which)
I’ve got my life’s work cut out for me.
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Carolyn! Got your letter :)
wow. you know a lot! Languages are awesome…I love the IDEA of learning another language but I fail at it. They are just tooo complex! I see that you don’t want to learn French OR Japanese. I take Japanese…I think I’m going to stop though, cause I wanted to learn french. haha.
I’ll write you another letter…eventually!
Heehee, “know” might be something of an overstatement. Actually, I’ve changed my tune towards French a bit, as of late I have been obsessing over all things Romance (French, Italian, Romanian, although not Spanish) and I think it rather cool. But no Japanese or Spanish for me, at least now anyway.
I await your letter with great anticipation!!
Learn Hawaiian! It sounds much better than Māori and Rapa Nui combined. :P
Learn Hebrew & Icelandic. ;)
I quite like your list, nonetheless. Finnish, Welsh, and Portuguese are definitely in my top 10. I don’t want to learn Japanese either. :P
I’m on my first attempt at Russian at the moment, so we’ll see how that goes! Nice blog, btw. :)
Carolyn! I would LOVE to learn Gaelic with you! Maybe if we learn it together, we’ll have someone to practice with? haha. I’m telling you this at dinner too. :P