Learning Languages
09/02/14
I want to learn a lot languages.
- C++
- Javascript
- Haskell
- wait wait wait
I mean the other kind of languages. I mean, I want to learn programming languages, too, but I've always regretted being monolingual. There are also three particular languages I want to learn, specifically.
- Spanish
- Ukrainian
- Japanese
Spanish because my girlfriend is native-fluent in Spanish. Ukrainian because it's my grandmother's mother tongue. I was, in fact, quite angry with my father for not teaching me Ukrainian as I grew up.
"I didn't know enough to teach you."
You knew enough to keep up a conversation with Babuska!
I'm sorry, I shouldn't have an argument with my dad in front of you, Stephan.
Anyways... where was I?
Languages and why I want to learn them. That's right. Japanese is the second language class I took in high school, and I took an additional year in college. I was really into anime in my teenage years, and that was basically the only reason I wanted to learn Japanese.
I want to continue learning Japanese for two reasons:
- I am a completionist (sometimes)
- Japanese is a freaking cool language
So, this want has been there for a while. For all three languages. But two days ago I started doing something about it. I resolved to devote at least 10 minutes to Spanish and 10 minutes to Japanese each day for the forseeable future. Today I add Ukrainian.
Resources for Study
For about two years now, I've sporadically ruminated over using Duolingo to learn Spanish. I first heard about it from this TED talk from a mind behind reCAPTCHA. At the time, I believe they only offered three languages (Spanish and two others [maybe German and French?]).
Rosse mentioned it the other day and so my bilingual journey began again. I noticed it offered Ukrainian and after a couple days thought, I decided to go for that as well as Spanish.
Unfortunately, they do not yet offer Japanese for English speakers. So, I will build my own study tools for that language. I already have some textbooks and audio CDs I remember being pretty good, and some light research (only 10 minutes per day, remember) has revealed that Mnemosyne may be a good digital flashcard system to build Japanese vocabulary and kanji (one of the Japanese alphabets) knowledge.
I'm excited to finally start studying languages again.