First things first, for those of you who don’t have me on FB and/or didn’t hear the news, I passed my first year with a 2.1 average. Huzzah!
Secondly, I have decided to start a micro-blog – not for pictures or sharing quotes (though that might come into it at some point) but rather to practice my Chinese. I might even do it with the other languages I speak so I don’t let my skills rust while I’m focusing on my work-related work. It’s going to be massively dificult with Chinese, though, because as much as I managed to learn this year it still feels like….well, not “like me.”
Let me explain – with every other language I speak, I bring out a different facet of my personality. That is not to say that, MPD-like, I have a different person for 8 distinct languages – more that, with every language I speak, my world view shifts through the prism of that language. It might sound odd, but to me, learning a language isn’t so much a matter of putting a set of words together in a grammatically correct structure, but more getting into the mindset of the native speaker, and seeing the world from their perspective.
With the latin and slavic languages, this comes much more naturally – I was born into one of those cultures, and grew up in the other. But Chinese? Well, that’s not so easy. So, I have decided to start writing a little bit, every day – just a couple sentences, nothing fancy – to get me in the mindset. And hopefully, if I get into this summerschool programme this summer, I will be able to do much more by the time October comes around. Fingers crossed!!
I got this micro-blog idea off this particular post on Karolinka’s blog. I’d have to say that her blog is not only entertaining and inspiring, but also very informative – so if you want to learn about Sofia, Bulgaria and the life of an American in Eastern Europe, head over there and give her blog a read.
