I want to be a polyglot!
First there was Portuguese, of course, being born in Brazil that is the first language a person learns. Shortly after that came English.
Learning English for me was quite interesting since at first no one actually taught me. Huh?! I traveled to the US and did lots of observation and a gradual amount of interaction, eventually I learned my way through.
Hand gestures, pictures, and creativity to describe things for me unknown with the vocabulary I knew, these were key. Reading… many thin books at first but afterwards Stephen King was the one who taught me a lot, his books are amazing. All of this, language immersion was pretty challenging but in the long run it worked quite well.
After that it was French but within a few months I dropped that because couldn’t find suitable time on normal business hours. Then came Mandarin and Japanese, but that wasn’t as fun. It was convenient but without any interaction… 
But I still want to be a polyglot, one day I’ll get there. What about you dear readers, what languages do you want to learn and why haven’t you done so yet??
Explore posts in the same categories: Language Learning
July 12th, 2007 at 3:18 am
I have a special passion for languages, one that makes me dig deep into the words and their meanings, then go out and listen to people using them - all the different ways a word can sound, all those things it can mean and all those times it is misused.
Words have history and various feelings, some of which very personal.. They have contexts as well, and only one of these contexts is language. You must have come upon words that look and sound the same in different languages, or same language - different cultures, but the meanings are totally different. I find this so fascinating, that even if it weren’t for the inspiring concert of Dulce Pontes last night, when I would give my soul to know Portuguese and understand the words, I would still be dreaming to know all the languages in the world. And then just sit back and enjoy digging ever deeper..
July 12th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Hi Denitsa! How interesting that you went to see her concert!
I completely agree with you, its very interesting how the culture is reflected well on languages. Some words without translation since its a cultural description and also some words have their meanings changed with countries of the same language (Brazil/Portugal, England/US). Its quite interesting to notice indeed!
I have a feeling sooner rather then later we’ll be able to reach a bit further our linguistic needs.