Thanks for another peek at your family life. I’m like Eddie in a way in that the internal charm of math attracts while the chaos of language is hard. I acquired Spanish in HS and later learned Japanese. I get by in Japanese barely but my brain often gets it intermixed with Spanish. OTOH I’ve known folk like you with a facility for multiple languages that I’ve never gained. Wonder if we are all capable or if only some of us.
In my case it is hard work. My high school French teacher was a hard taskmaster. I got B's, but by God when I got to Vietnam a decade later I knew the language. Arriving in Germany after Vietnam I resolved that I had to learn my ancestral language. U of Md extension prof Herr Mueller was excellent, and I did. He was so good that upon finishing with German I took Spanish from him. I used it a bit when serving the Navy in Spain. It was my ticket to a five-month stint in Buenos Aires with Renault in 1980, where I got pretty proficient. With Spanish and French under my belt, I taught myself Portuguese via Pimsleur to do Habitat projects in Portugal and Brazil. It served me well during my month with the Kayapo Indians in the Amazon. For Russian I turned again to Pimsleur, then worked as a volunteer in the Russian speaking office of the All-Ukrainian Association of Pensioners. Bottom line - opportunity, dedication, and hard work. I learned to read Ukrainian for the driver's test, as you have recently read, but I still don't speak it much.
Well I admire the ability. Of course living in the language helps. I could get by in Japan after a few years. My use of Spanish is modest seems better after a week in Mexico OTOH Mexican isn’t quite Spanish.
Isn’t Ukrainian quite similar to Russian? Possible like Portuguese is to Spanish. Enough to confuse.
That was my delusion. No, Spanish and Portuguese pronounce things differently but the roots are very similar. Not so Ukrainian and Russian. Both have significant numbers of cognates with western European languages, but different ones.
Thanks for another peek at your family life. I’m like Eddie in a way in that the internal charm of math attracts while the chaos of language is hard. I acquired Spanish in HS and later learned Japanese. I get by in Japanese barely but my brain often gets it intermixed with Spanish. OTOH I’ve known folk like you with a facility for multiple languages that I’ve never gained. Wonder if we are all capable or if only some of us.
In my case it is hard work. My high school French teacher was a hard taskmaster. I got B's, but by God when I got to Vietnam a decade later I knew the language. Arriving in Germany after Vietnam I resolved that I had to learn my ancestral language. U of Md extension prof Herr Mueller was excellent, and I did. He was so good that upon finishing with German I took Spanish from him. I used it a bit when serving the Navy in Spain. It was my ticket to a five-month stint in Buenos Aires with Renault in 1980, where I got pretty proficient. With Spanish and French under my belt, I taught myself Portuguese via Pimsleur to do Habitat projects in Portugal and Brazil. It served me well during my month with the Kayapo Indians in the Amazon. For Russian I turned again to Pimsleur, then worked as a volunteer in the Russian speaking office of the All-Ukrainian Association of Pensioners. Bottom line - opportunity, dedication, and hard work. I learned to read Ukrainian for the driver's test, as you have recently read, but I still don't speak it much.
Well I admire the ability. Of course living in the language helps. I could get by in Japan after a few years. My use of Spanish is modest seems better after a week in Mexico OTOH Mexican isn’t quite Spanish.
Isn’t Ukrainian quite similar to Russian? Possible like Portuguese is to Spanish. Enough to confuse.
That was my delusion. No, Spanish and Portuguese pronounce things differently but the roots are very similar. Not so Ukrainian and Russian. Both have significant numbers of cognates with western European languages, but different ones.