use it or lose it-- study and practice the languages I know, and pick up a couple of new ones along the way

This goal is getting shelved in favor of having space to focus entirely on Spanish for a little while. When I feel like I have more free time to be a polyglot, I love the idea of this, and will definitely pick it up again.

(feel free to let me know about any mistakes… I know they’re in there! Also—does anyone have a suitably coloquial translation for “little bitch”?)

Ciao!

Dico che la sua email precedente era difficile a (per?) me! ..e perchè i festivi, ero in ritardo in molte cose—includere quest’email!

Come il suo viaggio era? E tua famiglia… bene?

Ho andata a Michigan videre la mia famiglia, ma per una settimana solo. Mia sorella (ha 20 anni) è una “little bitch” e era molta fastidosa ma il viaggio era bene.

E io ho conosciuto uno ragazzo (una storia lunga!) e lui era qua per una tempa ma adesso è in Texas.

Sono al lavoro adesso e non posso parlare più. Ciao. :)

1.
Before christmas I found a woman on craigslist who wished to exchange english practice with italian practice. She was home over the holidays, but I must make a point to email her again soon, and see if I can’t incorporate that into my life in a more active way.

2.
There is a not yet in action hypothetical maybe sort of plan that would involve it being very useful for me to be working on my Spanish skills. Considering half of adventuring is the work of getting oneself the right skillset to be the appropriate person at the appropriate place in time to not be working at my spanish would therefore be inconsistant with my goal to choose adventures.

This is a fantastic goal. I don’t have quite the repertoire of the other folks with this goal, but that won’t make me enjoy it any less :)

• Italian.(5 semesters college, 1 summer abroad) Italian is such a fascinating, beautiful language, and Italy is such an amazing country to visit! I love reading Italian literature, but haven’t done so recently. At one time I would have rated myself at a basic level of conversational fluency. Now that I’m out of college, it’s fading fast…
• Spanish.(3 years high school) Spanish and Italian are so closely related, sometimes I mix them together when I speak! I’d like to regain my knowledge of this lovely language, especially since I’m considering a move to Southern California sometime in the future. My basic network TV offers Univision, so I should start watching and learning.

• Latin. The mother of so many beautiful tongues. I’ve always wanted to learn Latin because it fascinates me from a linguistic perspective. Can’t believe I got a minor in linguistics without ever taking Latin. Laziness? Or lame course requirements?

• Mandarin. For a completely new and challenging experience. Also so that I won’t be totally lost when I finally travel to China someday.

• Russian. The Cyrillic alphabet is beautiful, and the language shares haunting similarities to many English roots.

(smashing goal, btw, smartstuff)

languages to learn:

spanish – i am after all in the usa!
arabic – more & more importante
italian – beautiful language
hindi
turkish – since i am always mistaken for turkish, why the hell not

languages to polish or relearn:

chinese – 3rd year in high school. most people would call me something near fluent (i’m taking the AP in a few weeks and i got 790 on my SAT2s), but that is completely a product of my first year of chinese where i was super super intense and lived ate breathed chinese for two months so that i could pass by in chinese 3, which i had mistakenly signed up for instead of chinese 1. that was fun, and i’m not actually being sarcastic here. anyway, since then i’ve slacked off major and i’m actually falling behind in my class right now. (OH YEAH, just to vent, but dear native speakers of chinese who decided to sign up for my class despite the fact that you have perfect chinese and should be at least one level up: FUCK YOU.)

french: lived in france and went to public school for a year, gained rudimentary french skills (ie could survive), i would like to at least be able to converse in french again.

japanese: took three years in middle school and bummed off. now i’m out of whack, i’d like to pick it back up again.

ancient greek: 2nd year in high school. i can translate with a dictionary but my vocabulary is seriously lacking.

latin: learned equivalent of one year high school latin, then turned around and forgot it…

will write full, more coherent entry later

Needs a lot of work to get back to:

Latin—(4 years in high school) I’d like to refresh my knowledge and be better at sight reading, which I was never very good at.

Italian—(1.5 years college) I’d like to be at least at an intermediate level of conversational italian, and then be able to start to read some of my favorite authors (Calvino, Vittorini) in the original.

French—(1 year college: into class plus independent study) I don’t really have the time to put into the pronunciation, but I’d like to be able to read in it.

Chinese—(1 year college: very rusty) I feel awful about how much of this I’ve lost. I really want to be back to a beginner’s level spoken, and maybe a low intermediate writing and reading. One of the things I need to accomplish is learn how to type chinese characters on my computer.

New to pick up:

Japanese—it’s been on my “someday” list for far too long. I went to a Japanese import bookstore, and looking around, all I could think of was “it’s time”

Spanish—at least enough to get by in multi-lingual New York. I often feel bad to be the ignorant english speaker in my neighborhood, which has a lot of spanish and french. Some reading skills would be nice, too, as there are a lot of spanish books I would be interested in, and they’re also the easiest to get at the bookstore