So far I have learned numbers one through fifteen, joy, peace, yes, no, and, or, the months of the year, days of the week, yesterday, today, tomorrow and I am starting on my first verb – to be. This first verb has really slowed me down.
I can now say, for example, “Yesterday was Saturday, May 12th,” or my favorite, “Peace and joy, yes or no?”
Here’s the big deal:
1 – I have noticed that I am picking up the alphabets as I go, and that is easier than trying to memorize all the alphabets up front.
2 – Learning one word across nine languages is faster than learning nine words across one language.
3 – Memorization is faster when I can see connections between the different languages for a single word. (for example, the Chinese word for YES looks like a cake sitting on a table and the Modern Standard Arabic word for YES sounds like “naam”, as if you are eating the cake)
4 – Cultural realities are everywhere in these languages. (see below)
Please forgive me if I offend, but here are my first impressions of how these languages may reflect the underlying cultures (they are of course colored by my past learning about these cultures but here we go)….
Spanish is passionate and makes me want to dance.
Portuguese has more differences from Spanish than most people think.
German first appears rather strict but turns out to be very kind.
Russian is hard working and pragmatic. It gets to the point.
Arabic is very ornate in just about every way and seems obsessed with gender.
Mandarin Chinese is beautifully logical in its structure but challenging in its logographs – it’s a dichotomy.
Vietnamese is also beautifully logical in its structure and seems obsessed with age.
Hindi is all about today and has an ancient feeling.
I wonder if I might also be able to pick up the grammar as I go, like a child would? I am going to try that, by working on specific phrases and sentences and gathering the grammar, sentence structure, etc as I go. This might be less overwhelming than trying to pick up full conjugations of each verb in all 8 new languages.
Overall, I am determined to just keep going, one word or phrase at a time. Eventually, I will reach my goals of being able to travel and give a speech in each language!
