- Joined
- Feb 21, 2017
- Messages
- 357
Full disclosure: I'm a language and linguistics nerd. I have multiple degrees in English lit, taught it for years, and currently have an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) book on my shelf. I. Love. Language.
I've taken Spanish since I was 11, earned a Spanish minor in college (writing a 15-page paper--in Spanish--on medieval Iberian poetry stands out as a particular memory ), and taught it when a past coworker went on emergency medical leave for a semester. I suffer from a bit of performance anxiety nowadays since I'm a tad rusty and no one expects me to speak Spanish, but I wish I had more opportunities to use it.
I tried to take French in high school my senior year alongside AP Spanish but had to rearrange my schedule, and French got the ax (or the guillotine, rather? ).
I bought myself a teach-yourself Irish Gaelic kit years ago because my grandpa spoke it, but I need a human teacher for Irish; the letters don't signify the same sounds as they do in Romance or Germanic languages. I live near a community college and am dying to take French or Italian once the kiddos are old enough to free up an occasional evening.
I took a year of ASL when I was a freshman in high school, but I've forgotten most signs. The ones that stick with me are dinosaur, French, "make out," and coffee (the latter two are comically similar, which is why I remember them: my teacher used to joke that we needed to be very precise when asking a barista for coffee, lest we appear to throw ourselves at him).
How about you? Do you speak a bit (or a lot) of a second language? What language(s) do you wish you could speak?
I've taken Spanish since I was 11, earned a Spanish minor in college (writing a 15-page paper--in Spanish--on medieval Iberian poetry stands out as a particular memory ), and taught it when a past coworker went on emergency medical leave for a semester. I suffer from a bit of performance anxiety nowadays since I'm a tad rusty and no one expects me to speak Spanish, but I wish I had more opportunities to use it.
I tried to take French in high school my senior year alongside AP Spanish but had to rearrange my schedule, and French got the ax (or the guillotine, rather? ).
I bought myself a teach-yourself Irish Gaelic kit years ago because my grandpa spoke it, but I need a human teacher for Irish; the letters don't signify the same sounds as they do in Romance or Germanic languages. I live near a community college and am dying to take French or Italian once the kiddos are old enough to free up an occasional evening.
I took a year of ASL when I was a freshman in high school, but I've forgotten most signs. The ones that stick with me are dinosaur, French, "make out," and coffee (the latter two are comically similar, which is why I remember them: my teacher used to joke that we needed to be very precise when asking a barista for coffee, lest we appear to throw ourselves at him).
How about you? Do you speak a bit (or a lot) of a second language? What language(s) do you wish you could speak?