Showing posts with label languages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label languages. Show all posts

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Thinking about 2019...

Well 2018 came and went without a whole lot of documentation here as I had planned. And I only got about half the sewing done, and... yahda yahda. I guess about the only things I got done were in the music category: got a new guitar, got an amp to use in the folk guitar group when we play at the senior center, and started taking guitar lessons at Kline's.


So the other day my cousin asked me what my word for 2019 was going to be and I realized I had barely thought of that (all year even). This year was "follow-through" which I sorta didn't do much of...  so not sure where I stand for a word for next year.

And the last couple weeks I have had a cold, which meant a lot of even more down time than normal. I spent a lot of it in bed watching You Tube videos, at first about Japan then I found myself leaning towards to the community of polyglots that has made videos. I was watching one of them being interviewed and when she was asked what her hobbies were she said without hesitation, "learning new languages"... and BAM! I had a realization!

MY hobby is also learning languages! I always thought of languages to be a means to an end (travel) but today I realized I just like learning languages for learning sake too!

Over the years I have dabbled in French (marginally passable), Japanese (ok for daily conversation and travel), Italian (mostly forgotten but was ok when in Italy 9 years ago), German (way too long ago and all I remember is ich habe meine Uhr vergessen - I forgot my watch, which is a strange thing to remember I know!),  Spanish (mostly forgotten even though this city would give me a lot of opportunity if I want to relearn it), Russian (mostly in college years ago but now and then I try to relearn it here in Sac.), and when I travel I tend to easily pick up some basics (please, thank you, where's the bathroom, etc.). I don't consider myself a polyglot as I am not still conversational in all those languages but it could happen... and Sacramento has so many other languages that if I really wanted to I could add more... got me thinking...

I wonder if there is some way to incorporate my word for the year with my desire to learn languages and keep learning things? I guess I could make it just "learning" but I wonder if there is another way to express it? Thinking about it with more purpose now, stay tuned!

Off to my guitar lesson now!