Thursday, March 5, 2009

Bademöglichkeit!

Today was my weekly French class. I really enjoy learning new languages. In university, I took classes in French, Spanish, German, Old English and Cree and really enjoyed myself. I find that learning new languages helps you learn more about your own language because you have to think about language in a new way. I am not really fluent in any language other than English but have a very basic understanding of the construction of other languages. It may also help that I was a Linguistics major so language construction was pretty much what I studied in university, even without the language specific classes. The language that I have the best grasp of (aside from English) is French but that is because I took classes in it from early elementary school through Grade 12 in high school, plus two classes in university, plus living with some French speaking people for a few months. I am no where near bilingual but have a fairly good grasp of it. The class I am taking is pretty basic but it's good because it has a big focus on the pronunciation aspect of it which is my weak point.
I would like to study more of Spanish or German, maybe even Cree but I need to actually get a job first so that I can pay for classes. Other languages would be cool to learn too. I find that when I start to learn new languages, words get stuck in my heard completely out of context. When I first started studying German, the word "Bademöglichkeit" got stuck in my head. I will never forget that that word means 'swimming facility'. Now, if I am ever in a German speaking place and absolutely NEED to go swimming, I will know how to make my desire known as long as that is the only information they need. I could do well on the Amazing Race all of the challenges were at German swimming facilities. No problem getting to the location at all. Though there are probably a limited number of swimming facilities in German speaking countries, and even more limits to the number of activities you could do there. Here they are: swim, dive...that's about it. Maybe learning more German words would be useful after all and, you know, more than one word in other languages as well.

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