Joe_82

Polish, Lesson 1

Posted 2007-07-24 15:42:32 | Comments (0)

I started out learning French and English at home, as my dad is French Canadian, and my mom, though also technically French Canadian, speaks more English than French.
Then in high school, I learned Spanish (cause we had to, or so was my reply at the time!) I've also always been fascinated by Ireland, and I had started taking Irish Step dancing, so I undertook Irish too - though I sadly forgot everything now, except Dia duit - Dia's Muire Duit (Hi - Hi).

Then comes university. Major in Art History. Plans to go on to grad school. In Art History, that means fluency (or at least, research fluency) in at least French, English (ok so far), and German (uh-oh). But my husband so happens to have taken 2 years of German in college, so here comes the self-teach books again! This time, however, I'm not completely on my own as with Irish, so some progress is made.
But then, the all important decision to chose an area of interest for grad school application comes, and my choice of predilection is none less than Japanese modern and contemporary art of the 1950s to 1960s. You guessed it - German gets switched with the not so easier Japanese. So, being about to enter my final year, I sign up for JAPA 1200, JAPA 2200 and JAPA 3200 - the equivalent of 3 years of university study - in the intensive version.

Intensive? Ha, underated!!

Summer 2006 totaled up 192 hours of study: 16 hours a week, for 3 months. Good bye beach! Fall 2006 followed closely behind with 8 hours a week - but this time there's other classes to keep up with as well! 3 other 4th year classes, to be exact. Winter 2007 was a little slower - only 6 hours a week. But still, I emphasize for the sake of narration, it WAS intensive, but it wasn't so bad, and hey, now I can actually converse (casually and simply, but converse nonetheless) in Japanese!

But grad school didn't happen. For personal reasons. Oh, I got in, but it just wasn't right for now. But I can still speak Japanese! (and read it!) Yes!

So here I am, having touched, combined with my husband who also took Spanish, German, and Italian, enough language to rival the UN. Though I wouldn't pretend to be fluent in any other than my native French and English, I actually enjoy learning other languages, if only for the sake of seeing how the grammar works, how it sound, and being able to boast that I can say hi and my name in "insert number here, bigger the better" languages. Neat.

I don't want to loose my Japanese - I made sure I bought the next level textbooks for that reason. I would like to re-take German. And I'd love to say I speak Irish, even though no one does, just for the sake of it - and also because it fits with saying "I take Irish Step".

But now I'm also starting Polish! My long time friend is Polish, but moved here when she was only 4, so never fully learned it. But she wants to. But she didn't know where to start. And I love learning languages, any languages (not necessarily for fluency, just for fun - except for Japanese, and German, and Irish, and Spanish, and...). After a quick search, we realised the only university in the area to offer Polish classes was not offering them (at the moment), and anyway, at $600 a course, it's a bit of an expensive hobby. So here comes the self-teach book once more! But again, I'm not alone, and my friend has the advantage of actually knowing how to pronounce all those fancy looking words (even if she doesn't always know what they mean!)

Oh, and here comes this website too.

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