Fluency before the Army | My language mission and my log | Forum

Howdy folks!

I'm a quite new member of this little community (having come across it quite by accident) seeking to join in on the fun. I don't generally follow blogs and such but after stumbling across this one just four days ago I found myself quite intrigued.

I've long had a near obsession with language but have never been able to properly learn a new one. Tidbits and trivia, sure, but after many attempts at many different languages I've always failed. I've studied grammar extensively, done hours of passive listening, but never thought to actually try conversing! I've been severely missing the point, it seems!

Well, although originally it was not in my sights at all I have decided to start with a clean slate… learning Esperanto. I've been studying it for five days in total so far, having already had a few IM conversations in it that went reasonably well. It's quite exciting!

Beyond Esperanto, however, I would very much like to keep this pace going and after a few months or so start learning a natural language as well. Esperanto is mostly a stepping stone for me. The goal: to reach basic fluency in both languages by the time I join the army. Nothing fancy, just being able to carry on a conversation with a random (over the internet or in person, if possible), both understanding them and making myself understood for a good 10-15 minutes.

My preferences for the other language are constantly changing, but at the moment I'm thinking Turkish. German and Japanese are still right up there, however, and I'm definitely open to suggestions! I'm interested in many!

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To clarify my situation… I've applied to join the army and did well in my initial interview. I'm good to go, basically. Unfortunately, the position I'm going for (Rifleman) is highly sought after and I'm in a que that could see me waiting anywhere from a year to 18 months from now. Disappointing at first, but it's given me a lot of inspiration to pursue a lot of life goals I had been procrastinating over for a long time… such as this!

I was around 11 or 12 when I first started becoming interested in language and decided to look for language learning material at the local bookstore. All I could find there were phrasebooks, so I picked German and Turkish.

At that stage I knew nearly nothing about either language, what they sounded like, who speaks them, or even how to find the respective countries on a map. I chose them completely on a whim. Over the years my interest in German continued but I decided to drop the idea of Turkish since it's not exactly a major world language… and it looked hard.

Well, screw that! I like the sound of Turkish, the grammar, and love the principles behind the massive language reform in the 20s. I've been told that I may even have some Turkish ancestry (though that's hard to verify). So yeah, it's in my sights again!

That's not to say I'm not still really keen on German, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic though! I still may end up favouring one of those over Turkish. Especially if I have friends to learn them with!

That could work out. It would certainly be a more logicial step after Esperanto due to it being from western Europe, and I do like a lot of German film and music (woot Rammstein!). I know for sure I have German ancestry through my paternal grandmother, too!

Turkish is appealing because of its very different but very systematic sentence structure. It's so alien yet logical. It also (due to the language reform I mentioned) has far less rule exceptions than typical natural languages. So for these reasons it might even be easier than German in some ways. I hate gender and cases!!

But anyway, there's plenty of time to focus on Esperanto and make up my mind. Can I ask, why do you like German so much?

Kevinpost said
That could be debated. With Turkish you can get by in most Central Asian countries and Turkey's economy is growing at a faster rate than most European nations making it a very strategic for European, Eurasian and Middle Eastern economies. Turkish has far more native speakers than Italian does for example.

That's true and it's definitely on the world stage, but not quite as exalted as say English, Arabic, or Mandarin. The same could be said for some of my other language choices though so it really isn't an issue for me anymore… but it used to be.

Can I ask how you're finding it? Easy, hard, enjoyable…?

Veronica226 said
There's a lot of reasons, some kind of silly! lol I actually like Japanese more than German, but I've set a goal of getting to an intermediate level of German and Russian before I leave for Canada (hopefully) in the fall of 2013. Once I'm finished with this 6 week challenge of Esperanto I will start studying Japanese WITH Esperanto. But I digress (A LOT).

I like German because I'm at least 50% German 50% mutt. Several of my great grandma's were immigrants from Germany. I knew one of them, but she refused to speak German to anyone. I'm also very interested in WWII. One of the silly reasons is because one of the characters in Call of Duty:Black Ops in the zombies mode is German. The final reason is my little sister found this band called Silbermond that is AMAZING. Hearing them pretty much cemented it for me. (You should check them out on YouTube.) I think my mom also wants to learn it and I would love to be able to help her and motivate her.
Sorry for the long answer! XD

Well whether I choose Turkish, German, or whatever for my next target, I'm hopeful I'll be working on a third one well before the time of your trip. What I don't focus on now I definitely will then!

I'm also quite into WWII history. On that note, the movie Downfall (Der Untergang) is one of my all-time favourites. I've loved it since I was 14-15. If you haven't seen it I recommend you check it out… but I should warn you that it can be quite confronting as it focuses on the end days of Hitler up to and after his death and has a few very shocking moments.

Anyway, I had a listen to a few Silbermond songs and they seem quite good, but not generally my kind of music! I take it you're not a Rammstein fan?

Update.

I've had a busy couple of weeks but I've managed to make up my mind; I'll be learning Turkish. I discovered the website PolyglotClub.com and found a few Turks there that seemed friendly enough and were willing to help me.

My Esperanto is still far from perfect but I'm finding myself using the dictionary less and less during my conversations, and handling the grammatical constructs a lot better. I'm definitely not at a huge disadvantage anymore when jumping into conversations with randoms. I can hold my own and carry on a meaningful conversation for up to an hour sometimes, even spotting when other people make mistakes

However… this has all been using IM. I'm still set on having at least one voice conversation by the 11th to really appraise my impromptu conversational skill.

As for waiting until the 11th to actually start learning Turkish… well, I've already been reading my little phrasebook a little bit each day so I suppose that means I've technically already started. I've got a good grasp on reading comprehension and the phonology. I haven't jumped into any major stuff yet but I'm thinking I'll try something more intensive tomorrow, so I'll call the official start date for Turkish the 1st of June. June 11 will be when I start focusing on it more than Esperanto. I'll still be conversing in Esperanto every day and improving my skills, but I'll be devoting more of my study time to Turkish from that point on.

PS. Pardonu min, Veronika! Mi iutago lernos Germanan!

Thanks for the videos Kevin, I'm sure they'll come in handy once I'm a little bit further along.

… and howdy, Emre! I'd definitely like to hit you up for a chat sometime after the 11th. Thanks for the offer of help!