Learn as many languages as possible

so my hubby and i are learning arabic together. it’s tons of fun!!!!

i don’t remember most of the verbs i learned, but i kept the nouns, i think. we’re using the rosetta stone program. we only used it for an hour, though, and i’m surprised with how much i retained! great program!

since my husband is from Jordan, i want to be able to raise the baby with some arabic. but i speak spanish from my puerto rican roots, so i’d also like to bring the baby up with some spanish. and i learned japanese for fun a long time ago, so i’ll also raise the baby with japanese. multilingual child indeed. what i like about the variety of languages, though, is that they all sort of come from scattered parts of the world, meaning that the brain receptors that would generally stop functioning in a unilingual child will remain alive and fluid in my children- making it easier for them to learn almost any language they want without suffering the loss of these receptors which would make it difficult for them to hear certain sounds that don’t exist in english. like the bh sound in hindi… lots of americans can’t hear the diff between a b and bh sound. my babies will!!!

i’ve found it pretty easy to pick up languages since i was young. my dad never taught me spanish while growing up but i did pick up a lot of stuff. my comprehension is pretty good. i can listen to spanish and read it and get by. i’m shy about speaking it though… cept with little kids cuz they don’t judge my spanish :P

i used to be pretty conversational in japanese when i was 14. i taught myself and it was a lot of fun. but i haven’t really used it since then so a lot of it has seeped out of my brain. i think if i were ever in japan for a while, i’d pick it all back up again with no problem.

i know a little indonesian, korean, esperanto, taino and just cuz of my understanding of languages, italian and german aren’t bad. all of these languages are pretty easy, my only thing is, i get pretty good at the language and then i don’t use it so it goes away. especially with college and everything, it’s hard to keep up with pen pals and stuff in like 7 different countries all helping each other with language. although lately i started picking up esperanto again because of this woman who i only know very little about via 43things: http://www.43things.com/person/saara but she seems really cool and i’m glad i’ve picked back up with the esperanto thing. i’ve also dabbled with hindi which isn’t really hard, its a little more complicated but i’m definitely having a tough time learning the script. i found korean, russian and japanese letters are a lot easier for me to learn (cept kanji… yack! i only know about 150… in comparison to… 937438409374 billion! hahahah!)but i never got far with russian… all the funny mixes of sounds and letters makes it hard for me to remember it just cuz i’m more used to flowy simple syllables like in japanese and spanish. hawaiian is fun too… i love the syllables and when the words just flow out of my mouth i feel… enlightened… hahaha! maybe thats weird.

i’ve attempted a few other languages. chinese is easy and SO HARD at the same time. structure and the small sizes of the words is easy. the problem is that “zhe” means 6 different things if you only say the E a little bit differently. i don’t have the language skills and the ear for that.

I would LOVE to learn arabic but again, i’m having such a hard time with naskh and raq’a (sp?) and my pronounciation sucks and arabic has been around for such a long time that… its pretty complex. after i marry james and move in with his dad, i’ll be hearing it a lot more often and maybe even pick up a few things that will help me learn the language. i think i have better chances learning arabic than chinese. hah!

i know that if i just spend time in places with these languages, i’ll have such an easier time retaining it. i pick it up fast, its just a matter of keeping it in. the great thing is that by spending the time to understand grammar in different cultures, it makes it a lot easier in learning languages period and also helps understand the culture a little bit too. it’s too much fun… i get addicted to learning languages sometimes!!!