Happy Pride Month, day 26, languages

[sonia]

26. I'm proud of being multilingual.
I grew up speaking Spanish because my parents grew up in Chile and insisted on speaking Spanish in the house. It was a pain at the time, but like they always said I would, I appreciate it now.
I took French for five and a half years in school.
I studied some German in summer school and picked it up from my grandparents and other relatives.
I took a year and a half of Hebrew in college and picked it up from visiting relatives. I can only kind of read the print alphabet because we didn't go to synagogue when I was a kid, and we used the script alphabet in the classes.
I have learned bits of Bulgarian and related Slavic languages from singing that music. I am very proud of reading Cyrillic after studying with the Before You Know It (BYKI) program, sadly left behind on a very obsolete version of Windows.
I have a smattering of Georgian vocabulary from singing that music, and can sort of read their curly alphabet. I would totally run through the BYKI program to refresh my knowledge if it still ran on my computer. I bought a beginning Georgian book years ago, but so far haven't had the motivation to sit down and study with it. ETA I wistfully searched on 'learn the Georgian alphabet', and found a website that teaches it! /ETA

When I'm trying to remember a word in one language, sometimes it comes up in other languages instead. I have the image of rummaging through a big trunk, pulling out colorful filmy scarves and tossing them aside while I keep looking. "It's in here somewhere!"

Comments

[batdina]

My favorite part of being bi/tri-lingual is that sometimes I use a word in one language when talking with someone who doesn't know what I'm saying, and then laughing and muttering that there just isn't a word for that in English. Because often, particularly from Hebrew or Yiddish, there just isn't.

[sonia]

I knew that Yiddish in particular is good for very specific and practical words. I didn't realize that Hebrew has that too.

[batdina]

Hebrew definitely has some of those; it also has phrases that are impossible to translate, but are the best at saying certain things? Like some phrases in both French and Spanish that are quite specific conceptually, but not literally.

As a side note, in this house we banter sometimes in seven languages, at least in fragments. I know that we're not normal in that regard, but it's still amusing to me.

[sonia]

Bantering in seven languages is very cool. It's fun to listen and try to understand, too.

[runpunkrun]

Just the other day I was trying to remember a verb in Japanese (currently studying) and my brain spat it out in German (studied more than 25 years ago), instead. And I was like, Thanks...but.... :D

[sonia]

Brains, so cool - when they work! :-)