Hi all,

We are proud to have Tetyana on board to spread the gospel of Myngle initially in Russia. This is her introduction in her own words:

Hello Mynglers!Your international map got a new spot, Ukraine, where I come from. My name is Tetyana and I am happy to help venturing into the Eastern Europe market, Ukraine and Russia for a start, spreading the word about this exciting project!We have a saying: “Language will take you to Kiev” (not only to Rome , as you know), and I was lucky enough to fall in love with languages fairly early, so they have taken me well beyond our capital. My native language is Ukrainian, which I should say is quite different from Russian (the similarity between the two is probably akin to Spanish and Italian commonalities). Russian came as a bonus from the Soviet system as this was the main language to get by. When I was young, I spent several years in a Soviet army base in Germany, hearing bits of the “wunderbar sprache” here and there, but largely remained without any German skills. Later I eventually had a chance to catch up on this in my school but never managed to master it.

With a bit of English vocabulary, I flew over the Atlantic to the US and spent a year living with an American family, picking up real “classic” language down South, in Georgia J It was a great experience for a teenager coming from the post-Soviet turbulent environment, offering a chance to see the works of “wild capitalism”.

After a few years back in Ukraine, I ended up in Copenhagen, Denmark . And my adventure with learning the Danish language began. Regtig dejligt… To my amazement, it turned out to be one of those few languages which you start speaking yourself before you start understanding the locals. Danish pronunciation is a skill to master and be envious of. Probably the only simplicity of Ukrainian or Russian is easy reading rules: as long as you know all the 33 letters of the alphabet, you will be able to read fairly well. In Danish, the story is different: you hardly ever pronounce any word the way it’s written. It’s fun, but you have to be patient enough before switching to English which everyone can speak in this small kingdom. I had great time, having an opportunity to travel to quite a few countries all over the world for my work, and language proved to be quite an ice-breaker whether you go to Haiti, Cameroon or Costa Rica.

A couple of years later I ended up in France, although in an English-spoken academic island in the pretty town of Fontainebleau. It was too easy (or too non-French?), so I decided to stay longer in France and learn a bit of its beautiful (and so necessary in daily life!) language. Despite the stereotypes of French people and their “love” for languages other than French, I’ve experienced a great pleasure of practicing my skills here: you always get a smile and “beaucoup de politesse” in return, whatever horrific accent you may be struggling with, as long as you try speaking French. It’s a great motivation to progress further!

I am sure that Myngle will become not only a very useful platform for thousands of people, it will also enable those from different cultures to meet virtually and share their differences and appreciate what they have in common. This is exactly what I’ve enjoyed about learning languages so far and am sure there are many more people who will share this. So, let’s keep the Myngle parrot busy singing in all languages – and he will be welcomed with enthusiasm from many corners of the world!

До зустрічі на Myngle.com !

Tetyana

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 3:34 am and is filed under Team. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.