Thursday, September 9, 2010

Sprechen Sie deutsch ?


For my language credits in college, I decided to go with German. Why? I have always found it an interesting-sounding language, not to forget I always found it funny when I heard people speaking it because they always sounded like they were yelling or angry, even if they had a big smile on their face.

Now I am no expert in linguistics, but I have come to learn how hard it is to learn a new language, specially as an adult.

For those who don't know me that well, I grew up in Mexico City (I have said that before in this blog I am sure), but I grew up in a multicultural home, meaning with a Mexican Dad and an American Mom, so both english and spanish were spoken when I was growing up, this caused me to be fluent in both at a young age. I think my parents made a good call when they decided how to handle the language learning situation at home.

Anyhow...I went to a Mexican school, which was bilingual and English was a pretty big part of learning, many of my classmates were Mexicans who had little or no knowledge of English, so I remember growing up seeing how frustrated some of them would get when they couldn't get it right. I always found it easy and got the best grades of all my school life in English, it was always easy for me, but now that I am 24 (actually 25 in a few days) and learning a different language, I have come to understand how hard it is to grasp different concepts and rules from what I am familiar.

For example: sentence structure and verbs are what I have the hardest time with, putting a sentence together and conjugating a verb is so different than in English or in Spanish! I am currently in the 3rd semester of German classes and I can say I have learned...maybe what a 5 or 6 year old German kid knows.

It is fun though and a break from other tedious and not so fun college classes I've had to take though.

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