Why Am I Studying Languages?

Hello, hola, bonjour, ciao! I'll keep it real here and will say now that this is a word-heavy post because in the midst of my midterm projects, I forgot all about this post and didn't have time to take quality pictures. Rather than post some rushed photos that don't look half as good as the rest, I'd rather just write everything out for this one and stick to my promise of two posts a week. The next post will be my February photography update, so lots of high-quality images are coming up!

Anyways, for about seven months now, I've been studying different languages as a hobby. My high school required two years of Spanish, so I completed those classes but was not invested in it at all. Around that time, I do remember trying to teach myself German as well, but that did not last long and I never was very consistent. So now, two years later, what changed for me to invest so much time into studying three languages at once?

I think the kick-off was me getting back into the studyblr community in July 2018. "Studyblr" refers to the community of bloggers on Tumblr that basically blog about school life and learning. Nerdy, I know, but that community has everyone from high school students applying to college to people aiming for their PhD's. There are people studying medicine, literature, science, or pretty much any other topic, including language-learning! Among the photos of adorable stationery or gorgeously handwritten notes, I found a plethora of resources for language learning as well as a community of people who were actually doing it. Whether these people are studying to become translators or doing it for fun, they are gracious enough to post advice, tips, and resources for the rest of us so I started adding language resources to my blog, quiet-studyingg. I reminisced about my high school Spanish days and thought, "Hm, I probably have a decent memory of Spanish, so I'll give it a shot."

This all happened during the summer, so I had plenty of time to commit. I figured, why not challenge myself and choose a second language to learn? I chose French because it's another romance language, which means that it is one of the easier ones to learn for English speakers. I have a notebook that I split in half and have one side dedicated to Spanish and the other to French, and I use it to take notes on self-imposed grammar lessons, do writing exercises, and make vocabulary lists. I have found Duolingo to be extremely helpful, it's a free app for language learning that has dozens of languages to choose from. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's more than enough for basic vocabulary and practicing grammar for each language.

During that summer, I would start by doing a few Duolingo lessons, do a daily writing exercise, and then look up songs in whatever language I was working on and translate them, noting any new words. I started Spotify playlists and searched up the top songs on the charts in each country. I spent a solid few hours every day for the rest of that summer studying, and it did help me progress quickly. Now, since school is in session, I don't have anywhere near that amount of time, but I still do a few lessons every day because slow progress is better than no progress.

It's so cool to look back on all that time and know that now, I know more Spanish and French than I did seven months ago. When the new year rolled around, I decided to add another language to my list! Taking up Italian means I'm learning 3 of the 5 romance languages, and they all have similarities. I have the easiest time with Spanish, the hardest time with French, and I think that I'm having an easier time with Italian because there are influences of both languages in it. For example, I knew Spanish has words that are masculine or feminine. French really pushed awareness of that into my head, and now I'm better at guessing the gender of new Italian words, based on how the word is spelled or which article precedes it. I've only been learning Italian for a couple of months, but I'm proud of my progress with both learning new words and understanding the gramatical structure.

I think that the general consensus is that language learning is too hard, unless you fully immerse yourself in it or learned it from childhood. I disagree. Sure, those things make it easier to learn, but if you dedicate the time to it, it's absolutely possible to learn even several different languages. I was also inspired by a pair called Damon and Jo, they're YouTubers who make travel and lifestyle content. Between the two, they speak six languages and are learning more while traveling the world and motivating other young people to do the same through their platform Shut Up and Go. Travel is a big motivator for me to learn these languages, I would love to travel to other countries and be able to actually communicate and make friends worldwide. I haven't quite gotten around to the "going" part of "shut up and go", but I know for sure that I'd like to go abroad again as soon as possible!

I also think that as far as hobbies go, learning a language is a great one! It's a great brain workout, and studying languages also helped me figure out how to teach my own language better when I worked as an English tutor! On one of Duolingo's loading screens, it says "15 minutes a day can teach you a language. What can 15 minutes of social media do?" and it gets me every time I see it because it is so true. Not for just this topic either, we waste so much of our time on idle activity when we could be utilizing it for better things. If you take just five minutes of your day to learn a few things about a different language, congratulations, you know more than you did five minutes ago. Now, imagine what you'll know in a year!

I'm starting with three, but I have a list of at least seven languages that I would like to learn. Even now, that sounds like a crazy dream but I think that as I go along and learn new structures of languages, that it will become easier as I go. hope that sharing this hobby of mine has maybe inspired someone to pick up another language as well. If I have and it's one of the languages I'm working on, let's study together!

Thanks for reading (and sorry about the lack of pictures!),

xx, Hannah