{"id":4882,"date":"2016-01-21T16:48:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T16:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2016-01-21T16:48:32","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T16:48:32","slug":"why-russian-why-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/why-russian-why-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Russian? Why not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucy was our first ever winner of the Junior Language Challenge and at age 23 has now chosen to take part in the uTalk Challenge learning Russian. Lucy already speaks Spanish, French, Italian, German and Latin and has been learning languages since she was 10 years old.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"20150510_160435<\/a><\/p>\n

Why? Why not?<\/h3>\n

I was talking to some friends at work at the beginning of January, and it came up in conversation that I was learning Russian. \u2018Why Russian!?\u2019 one said. \u2018Why not?\u2019 was my reply. People are often surprised when I say that I love learning languages. I think to them, it seems a little removed from what I normally do (I work in science). And while I may have decided to work in science instead of languages, that doesn\u2019t mean to say that they aren\u2019t useful to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was about 10, a teacher from the local secondary school came to teach us Spanish once a week, and I thought it was brilliant! My teacher entered some of our class into the first ever EuroTalk Junior Language Challenge; being able to learn three different languages was even more exciting. Spanish, Greek (my first experience of a language with a different alphabet), and Saami \u2013 Santa\u2019s language (northern Finland, to be exact). Taking part showed me that language learning was fun, and set me on a course of lifelong linguistics.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d describe myself as a patchwork of languages; I can speak each to a different level, ranging from Italian, my speaking is poor but my translation is decent, to Spanish, where I can happily hold a conversation. My latest is Russian, which I\u2019ve always wanted to learn; I\u2019ve just about got to grips with the Cyrillic alphabet. It\u2019s fun to learn so many languages, it stretches my brain, and I love the feeling of being able to speak to someone in their native tongue, a mixture of pride and respect for their culture. However, that doesn\u2019t mean to say that I don\u2019t have problems! The use of the subjunctive in Spanish will forever escape me (in English we only use it in one specific way, when we say \u2018If I were you\u2026\u2019), and those odd little verbs in every language that don\u2019t follow the rules always hide away in the recesses of my mind when I want to use them.<\/span><\/p>\n

How do I overcome problems? Practice! Practice speaking with others out loud, using odd verbs and new tenses and reading with literature from your chosen language starting with children\u2019s stories and building it up (good for new vocabulary and surprisingly complex!) If you are learning more than one, try to compartmentalise them in your head; have a Spanish head and a French head. My Latin is extremely handy for any new scientific terms, I usually have a guess at what they mean before looking them up. My other languages are great for holidays, trips with work and just keeping my brain active. I certainly don\u2019t intend to stop (I think I may try Basque next): you never know when you might need them!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lucy was our first ever winner of the Junior Language Challenge and at age 23 has now chosen to take part in the uTalk Challenge learning Russian. Lucy already speaks Spanish, French, Italian, German and Latin and has been learning languages since she was 10 years old. Why? Why not? I was talking to some … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[150,49,244,231,3,312,9],"tags":[750,30,1406,48,243,1286,64,144,333,52,227,1407,334,65,405,8,1408,310],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}