Surprise, I’ve been studying my Spanish this year and watching plenty of telenovelas to aid myself in making progress! I’m now at an upper-intermediate level and tackling the rough tenses and their use in everyday speech. I’m motivated because I'm heading to Mexico in a matter of days to teach and coach for two weeks! Check this out!!!
https://sites.google.com/view/huatulcooperaprogram/bio?authuser=0
In a BIG ADDITION to my pandemic year study curriculum, I’ve been learning Russian too! I admit that it’s like crawling along compared to my usual quick-to-assimilate style. But that’s because Romance languages have much in common! And RUSSIAN, first of all, has Cyrillic, and second of all has a system of grammar and cases that do not exist in the Romance languages in such daunting and challenging ways! So, I’m content to go slow and see where I wind up! At first, my motivation was a planned trip to St. Petersburg with a friend, but—-you guessed it—- the pandemic took care of that. So now it’s just for the linguistic craziness that only language geeks can enjoy! But I have embarked…… well into my second year of study, I’ve now done 100 days in a row on DuoLingo! Whoo-hoo! Очен хорошо!!!!!
Though I've been speaking Italian for 30 years—-WHEW! Really?—— (it was my third OTHER language, but rapidly became my first, since my work pointed me in that direction), I realize I've gone through phases. When I'm IN Italy, most folks don't guess me to be Italian but they don't think I'm American either. Initially it was a point of pride that they couldn't ID my origin..... usually they thought I was some other European resident, like Belgian or British... I tried to perfect my delivery and my idioms, and I pretty much succeeded.
Then after 10 years spending every summer in Rome and in Ischia, I grew to not care, having proved my point to myself, my clients, and the opera community in general. Because, after all, I mostly lived HERE, and so it was, all told, pretty good, considering I wasn't living IN that language most of the time. (No one else could hear the flaws, and I knew my rustiness would fly away after spending a week immersed....)
Now with any other of my four ADDITIONAL languages--none of which have I dedicated so much time to--I recognize that in most of my other languages I will always sound a bit academic, (unless I learn the current jargon, which of course I try to do when in that country). But I know I'm a linguist and am proud of my abilities. These languages will keep my brain fresher and more nimble in the coming years, no? Nico Castel was always a great supporter and mentor for me, and I'd like to think he'd be proud of me! But, most people agree, it's a giant pot of language soup or salad, your choice..... (baroque poetic Italian? PUH-LEASE!)
NONE of this explains how to learn a language from scratch or why some of us are inclined to think it easier than others…… but that’s another post!!!!