French : my mother tongue
I'm happy to say this one is not much of a problem to me, so feel free to ask for help with it!
German : a waste of study time
I began studying German in school when I was 11, and studied it for 7 years... Wow, 7 years, for such a horrible level, that's a lot... yeah... ich kann nicht Deutsch gut :( aber ich möchte lernen :)
Arabic : a calligraphy confusion
At this time of my youth, I was very interested in calligraphy (French one, indeed), and a teacher from my school proposed to teach arabic calligraphy. I thought it would be very nice, but had forgetten that to learn arabic calligraphy, you need to learn arabic first lol So I began learning, at least the alphabet... I stopped after a few time, as I didn't like the way it was taught : the teacher would have us recognize the letters in the Kuran, when I think there are so many texts written in Arabic... (Now try to to understand why Arabs are considered a non-developped nation when they used to be the most advanced scientist one once :S).
Latin : a definitely dead language to me
Then I went on with Latin, 2 years later. I stopped Latin after two years, cause my grades in it were going lower and lower, and it was the critical point where I had to stop before it began to be too bad lol Still, it's a very useful basis to learn other languages, esp. romance languages, and to understand ethymology better.
English : hey that's better
I started learning English at the same time than Latin. I wouldn't say it is taught any better than German or Latin indeed, but I was lucky enough to get some help with it lately. I spent 6 years learning nothing in school about it (just what everybody does), till the day I got to chat on the internet and really improved it. Now some people tell me I'm fluent, though I know I miss a lot of vocabulary and slang. I would be glad to keep improving!
Russian : trip to Moskva
After my fail with Latin, I still wanted to study a third language in High School, and I wanted to go to a specific High School, so choosing Russian as a third living language was a way to get there, and at the same time I was interested in this language, too. I learned it for 3 years, and had the opportunity to go to Moscow on an exchange trip. That was great :) Now I really need to practice again, though it's not very easy on the internet, because of the typing stuff :(...
Polish : who needs a reason to learn?
Well, back in time a bit... Just before learning Russian, I got to meet some girl I liked and that had the only fault of speaking Polish only... that might have helped with my choice of learning Russian, as I couldn't choose Polish lol Anyway, my Russian teacher also loved Polish and helped me learning it for a while... I have the basis, but I can't really put 5 words together to get a correct sentence. Still, I like this language very much :)
Swedish
Well the year after I began, I got a reason to study Swedish... You always find reasons to study languages with the people you meet and want to communicate with, even though they do speak English very well :p So I began to study it alone, as I had no teacher for it. I might say that I was able to say a few things and understand basic texts quite well at a certain point. It might not be the case anymore, but I can still understand written Swedish pretty well.
Hebrew : family and religion
This might begin with the fact that I have Jewish roots, and got to search for my genealogy, and it has been useful to read signatures in hebraic alphabet and some yiddish stuff. I can't remember how I got to begin though... Anyway, this has also to do with the fact that I am a Christian and began to study the Bible more at this time, and thought that it would be very useful to be able to go back to the original text... That was without considering that Hebrew is not as easy as Swedish to me, and learning it alone with a book is quite difficult. I gave up, for now... but I really wish to go back to it as soon as possible, and to begin ancient Greek too.
Esperanto and Ido : how about Utopia?
At a certain point, I thought that it was nice to study a lot of languages, but that many people couldn't do it, and that having a common language to communicate would be great, and that would have to be different from English for some reason. I learned the basis of Esperanto in a few days, and then discovered Ido, and learned the basis in a few hours (that is, I was able to write a whole message to introduce me after 2 days). I programmed personal sites about Ido, such as my idolinguo page (in French), The international French-speaking Ido community site (in French) or a page of online translation dictionaries between Ido and a few other languages... That was really a passion at a time lol. I used to be a bit active in some mailing lists about choosing a common language (but not a unique one) for Europe, but that was some years ago...
Italian : journey to Venice
We got once to form the project to go to Venice together with some friends of mine. I thought it was nice, but one of my principles about travelling had become to learn the language of the country first... So I studied Italian a bit, just enough to be able to talk and understand. I might say it was pretty useful when we were lost in the country sometimes. I didn't study much, and I might improve it later on, though it's not one of my priorities.
Papiamento : wazza?
Papiamento is the creole language spoken in the Netherland Antilles, close to Venezuela, that is to say in Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire and St. Martin. It has around 200.000 speakers. I had the opportunity to begin studying, for personal reasons, though finding speakers on the internet was a bit difficult I might confess. Papiamento is a very interesting language, based on Spanish, French, Dutch, English, african languages and Arawak Indian. It has thus a very simple grammar, and very "international" (in the European way) vocabulary. At a point, I found it was somehow very close to Ido and Esperanto... and came to think that it would definitely be a good common language for the European Union, for a lot of reasons...
Spanish : that had to be...
I have always thought that Spanish was easy enough when you know French, and that I would learn it when I would need it. So as lately I had this need, I just began learning it 2 years ago, and now take courses of it in uni. This is very useful, when you consider the huge number of speakers in the world.
Dutch : a plan of studies
I have formed the project of going to study in the Netherlands pretty soon for some personal reason, and thus it is very logical to me to study Dutch, although most Dutch people are fluent in English, if not in French and German... So I'm just beginning, don't put a lot of time in it, but I can understand it basically...
Now I think you know quite all about this subject! Feel free to contact me!!
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