As a child, I would often hear my mom and my grandmother speaking
in Bicolano. I wanted to join their conversation, so I decided
that I would learn that dialect. Nobody had time to teach me,
and there were no Bicolano dictionaries at the book stores, so I made
my own. It was just a tiny notebook (the size of a credit card)
made out of a few sheets of graphing paper that I cut up and stapled
together. I added words to it every time my grandmother visited
us. That project lasted a few weeks, and then I completely
forgot about it.
When I was seventeen, I tried to learn German. I had no
pressing reason for learning the language. I just thought it was
cool because Jose Rizal spoke German. I also loved the Grimms'
fairy tales and wanted to read them in their original form.
I enrolled in a language course at the local Goethe-Institut,
joined their library, and bought several workbooks. German
wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I had a lot of fun
with it. Sadly, life got in the way and my interest waned.
My cousin Edgar tried to convince me to study Japanese instead, so
I bought a book, watched a few videos, and ended up remembering just
one line --
Kore wa hon desu ka (Is this a book?). As a joke, I
repeat that line every now and then. I'm lucky that no one has
thrown a book at me yet, though I suspect many have wanted to.
Last year, I decided that Spanish would be much easier to learn. I
signed up on Duolingo. Learning the language through a game made
the task easier, but that was not enough to keep me hooked. It
wasn't that I was no longer interested. I was just too busy.
Esperanto also got my attention. I read that it was very
simple and easy to master, and that with two weeks of studying, I
would already be capable of having a conversation in
Esperanto. Unfortunately, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't
muster enough interest to keep going.
Have I finally given up? I haven't, and I won't. I'm
going to work on German again. This time, I'm giving myself a
concrete but easy-to-reach goal -- A1 level in three months, then A2
before the end of the year. I will also set up a blog where I
will write exclusively in German. If you would like to check on
my progress, you can
click here
to visit my German blog. Wish me luck!
Danke schön! Guten Tag!
