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At the age of 7, I started learning Spanish at school as well as French on after-school lessons. This meant that I was practically learning 4 languages at once. Unfortunately, I moved to Poland at the age of 9 and a half, which is when my Spanish and French terminated (for the time being). After that, I had 3 years of intense Polish learning as well as increasing my English fluency. It's ironic because I learnt most of my English while I was in Poland. Don't get confused though! I didn't learn it at school; I can mostly thank YouTube, books and communicating with my many internet friends for practising my language while I wasn't in the country.
When I went to middle school at the age of 13, I had a choice of what language I wanted to learn. Me, being a French-obsessed teenager, decided I wanted to return to French again after all those years without it. Unfortunately something didn't work out and I ended up having to choose between German and Spanish, so considering I had also delved into Spanish in the past, I decided to give it another shot.
And on that note my three years of Spanish can commenced!
Two and a half years later - middle school is about to end. For no apparent reason I decided to start learning French and Japanese. It was a sloooow and pointless process. While I was at it though, I was also increasing my fluency in Spanish - which didn't actually end up being so pointless. In terms of Spanish, the pronunciation is tough and rigged like in Polish and some of the words had similarities with many of the English words I knew, making the Spanish a good choice for me.
The end of middle school was nigh. I spent the holidays studying French, Spanish and Japanese. Then I moved to England and continued learning Spanish as it seemed to be the most important language to me as well as the one that I knew best. Soon after starting school, I realised that my school had organised weekly Korean and Japanese lessons. My initial plan, I'm not going to lie, was to join Japanese, but the Japanese lessons were at the same time as another part of my timetable, so I knew that wasn't going to happen. Thankfully, Korean was also a language I had planned to learn, so I decided to give it a shot.
It has been half a year now and I am still learning Korean. Again, by knowing two and a half languages, I am capable of making more connections between them all, resulting in making the learning experience easier. The pronunciation, for example, is rough like in Spanish, which is a quality I learned from Polish. IT IS ALL CONNECTED!!
So... what's next?
Well, I plan to move to a Spanish-speaking country sometime in the future to really test my Spanish level. I try to learn it alongside learning Korean now. It will most probably be my third language, so I should take care of it. Korean might take me a while to learn, as my teacher said "England is slow, which is why lessons are only once a week and learning a language is impossible if you only limit yourself to your lessons." This is the exact reason behind why I put so much effort into learning Korean alongside my lessons, however, once again, fitting Spanish in somewhere between it all can be challenging.
In 2020, when I move out somewhere for my apprenticeship, I'm going to secondarily focus on the languages. After I feel completely comfortable in Spanish, I will most probably take up French. After reaching a particular level in French and Korean, I will try and grasp onto Japanese. And then, either alongside or afterwards, I will try and go for Norwegian. My dreams are big, I'm aware, but for me it's always worked this way. Watch out, shitty gisdom coming along. As humans, we are prone to procrastination. This means that if we set a goal, we are brought to only complete it around 50% of the way. This is why I make my goals unrealistically high, making the 50% of that, somebody else's 100%. Not only that, but quite frequently I get inspired by hitting a mark on my goal, making me reach even higher and past what one would think is a normal level. The key is to dream big but only focus on the positives. If someone looks at their goal and thinks "ah, crap. it's been so long and i barely know how to say this this and this... shit", they're not going to be very motivated to carry on. I on the other hand look at my Korean and think "okay, I'm learning things, it's coming along! I can now say this and this and this! Soon I'm going to learn to say a lot more blahhhhh". It's about dreaming and focusing on the progress, not on what is left to learn. People are so focused on blaming everything and everyone for their negativity and procrastination, when in reality a lot of it sits in our own brains. Similarly, one of my goals for the new year was to appreciate myself more. That means both physically and mentally. I try not to feel bad telling someone that I look good today. Again, when modelling, I appreciate the way I look and say I'm proud of how I've grown up and/or how I picked my outfit haha. It's all about your brain. You control it to such an extent that you tend not to realise anymore. It's all in your head. Help yourself and stop doubting yourself just one step at a time.
keep on kissing
and keep on conversing
love, 가비
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