Just saying Hi

Hi everyone,

I joined a couple of days ago and am loving the flash cards. i just thought it would be nice to say hello and be a part of the community as well as trying to work through every flash card ;)

Cheers

Aalia

Hi Aalia! Welcome to eduFire! Glad you are making full use of the flashcards :)

Merhaba (Hello) Aalia! Glad you joined here and hope it is the right place for you to help in achieving your goals. I am sure that the resources here that amazing and you will like them soon. cya!!

WooHoo Aalia – 12 Languages in a year? (I peaked at your profile!) You are difinitely in the right place, not only to learn but we’re great cheerleaders!

Go Aalia Go!!!!

I just looked at your profile too! 12 languages! Way to go Aalia! :)

Welcome to eduFire. :)

Hi Aalia,
Welcome to eduFire! It’s great to have you here!

Hello Aalia
Good luck with your quest.

I’m learning Italian and have enjoyed the flash card feature of this site, too! This site has many cool features and from what I hear, even more will be added for our learning (and teaching) enjoyment. Welcome!

Thanks for such a warm welcome and such encouragement.

You’re welcome Aalia, thank you for joining us. :)

Welcome Aalia. Great to have you here. Keep rocking the flashcards!!! :)

Hi Aalia, and welcome to eduFire! I am curious to know what inspired you to take on this 12 languages in a year challenge?

Hi Tina,

I’ve always been fascinated by language and studied it from a neuro-psychological perspective when I was at University but what really sparked my interest was a serious illness where for a short time I was almost incapable of expressing myself in English. It was a very frightening experience as I couldn’t think in English either. I found it very hard to say the simplest things. It was both frustrating and disconcerting. For 36 hours or so I was completely lost until I discovered that I could still use my schoolboy French and German to think with. Words cannot express the sense of relief that I felt when I realized my entire brain hadn’t turned to mush and that I still had some linguistic ability available to me.

Thankfully the whole thing was relatively short and I eventually made a full recovery within 18 months but I was left with a strong sense of how valuable additional language skills can be and how important developing a strong memory is. Coming from a psychological background I am left feeling that I observed something very intriguing about the nature of language as for a short while I seemed to lose my earliest layer of language.

What really helped me was that I spent part of my time recovering in Germany where I found that I felt more easily able to communicate and feel relaxed than in English, even with my very poor grammar and limited vocabulary. People’s expectations of my language skills as a foreigner were much lower so my poor communication ability usually went unremarked. It was great to be able to not feel embarrassed about groping for words to express myself as people expected it and even appreciated my apparent effort instead of seeing me as some bumbling buffoon. I think I was lucky to have that experience in Germany as I’m sure it helped get my native language skills back into gear.

Ever since that incident I’ve been interested in acquiring more language skills and really find that learning languages helps me keep mentally sharp. Another contributing factor is that I spend my working hours programming, translating logic into code and to me there’s little that I find more relaxing and refreshing than listening to the organic sound of foreign languages.

So there’s the background, but why learn 12 languages? Basically learning 10 didn’t seem impossible enough to be worth attempting and 12 seemed just impossible enough. The reason I want to try to do something impossible is that it’s a much better motivator for me than a more mediocre goal. If all that happens over the next year is that I improve my French and German then I will be very happy but I am approaching this task very seriously as I hope that trying to do this will give me insights that a more conventional approach wouldn’t.
So here’s the list : Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish
I’ve deliberately included some pretty tough writing systems to make this a seriously difficult challenge.

Hi Aalia, What a fascinating explanation of the difficulty you experienced and how grateful you were to have other languages to rely upon. You are so correct about staying mentally acute with language at a more senior age. You are a miracle of the mind with all that you must have gone through! You also sound brilliant and enjoy challenges that are rewarding, it seems. If you have any insights that you would love to share with us on language learning from a psychological perspective, please do! I, myself am interested in brain study, learning with music. Music helps students learn. Language learning does clear out those cobwebs! I am learning Mandarin, and I find that it is actually easier than Spanish with its many rules. The writing of characters will be more of a challenge, but an artistic pursuit.
Enjoy your time here!

Welcome Aalia!

Aalia,
Thank you for the background. I think it’s interesting how languages seem to engage so much of our brains. Like cross-training for the brain as opposed to the body!

Wow Aalia, that truly was fascinating. Thanks so much for taking the time to tell us about yourself. I am happy that you have joined us here and will enjoy seeing your achievements.

Wow Aalia, I am already impressed. I love psychology but I am more interested in animal behavior. However, I would like to invite you to my Arabic group session on Friday with Jon and Raquel so that I can give you some hints to start with in studying Arabic. I am ready to help if u have any questions in Arabic!

I wish I could help with the other 11 languages, lol but I am not genius like you. Good luck!

Hi Aalia, from my perspective as a speech & language therapist I can somehow imagine how you felt when you were not able to use your language skills. I once had a patient who – after a stroke – completely ’’forgot’’ his mother language but was still able to communicate in his second language that he learned years later… This was really an interesting experience, also from a linguistics point of view…

Wow, how inspiring. Lemons to lemonade! I cannot imagine not recalling my native tongue. How frustrating that must have been for you. So glad you made a full recovery, and also very glad you joined us here. So when did your challeng begin? How are you doing so far? Keep us posted on your progress.