Language & Education Update

Well, the doctor put me on new medicine and I feel less lethargic than I have in the past. I don't know if it's because I'm off the old medicine or I'm just looking forward to doing something since I've had class for the first time in a couple of weeks. Anyway, I feel like studying languages again for the first time in a long time (well, not that long, just for about a month, but it feels really long for me).

I think I've finally found the list of languages I want to learn.

Spanish
French
Italian
German
Esperanto
Japanese
Swahili

For a total of seven, and I have material for 6 of them. Right now all I have for Swahili is a phrasebook and 10 lessons of Pimsleur. Someone bought the last TYS Swahili in the bookstore before I could get to it.

To go through them quickly:

Spanish: my main language right now, and one that I want to study everyday. I took 2 classes in summer school in 2009 and that's about as far as I've gotten with the language, since I don't think I've progressed very far since then. I have tons of books for Spanish, since I went beserk back when I got materials for it. I've studied off and on for the past 2 years, and I'm still a mid-level beginner! I should be ashamed of myself . . .

French: another language I had in high school, although that was 7 years ago. I don't think I'll study French that much this year, since I really don't feel like doing so. Maybe later.

Italian: my most recent fixation. I bought a TYS yesterday and have enjoyed going through the book since then. I don't think I'll confuse it with my Spanish, like I was concerned, since it doesn't really sound anything like Spanish in my mind's eye, it sounds distinctively Italian. I'll see if the pleasure lasts long enough for me to learn a considerable amount of Italian.

German: I think I'll only go with one Germanic language, actually. I might go for Afrikaans later, since there's a great Website for it, and I like some of the songs on there, although knowing Afrikaans doesn't really serve any practical purpose for me at the moment. I had a lot of fun going through Deutsche Welle's online course and Pimsleur and Michel Thomas CDs, although I stopped shortly after the middle of January. I want to start again, although I'm a little hesitant about studying more than one languages at a time.

Esperanto: the most well-known IAL, and a great gateway into the world of IALs. I went through some of lernu's courses in the beginning of February, and would like to continue. My activity on lernu has dwindled for the past few weeks, so I'll have to start again soon.

Japanese: I have the first 4 CDs of Pimsleur, a TYS book, and a phrasebook, so nothing major. I should have bought the Japanese instead of the Mandarin Michel Thomas, but I guess my library will like it when I donate it, which I guess is what I'll do with my Mandarin MT. I've always wanted to learn a language that uses characters, and I guess Japanese has beaten out Mandarin since I'm more interested in Japan than China, there aren't really any tones (but it does have a slight pitch accent), and Japanese has a syllabary system, so you can always write out what you need to get across to native speakers using the syllabaries instead of using kanji, although that might look childish to native Japanese speakers and might actually be more difficult on the learner. This will be the first time I learned a language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet.

Swahili: I like how it sounds, it's non-Indo-European, it's grammar isn't supposed to be too hard, I would like to learn a little of an African language, and I like the movie King's Solomon's Mines and safari movies. Enough said.

The best part is I can learn any of these languages, with the exception of Swahili, whenever I want to since I have TYS books for all of them, with the exception of Swahili. I guess I should try to find a book for Swahili, but I'll just watch some YouTube videos on Swahili such I have far too much on my language learning plate as it is.

Other languages I might be interested in:

Indonesian
Afrikaans
Occidental Interlingue (an IAL)
Sambahsa-Mundialect (another IAL)
other IALs, although I have no intention of being the Moses McCormick of IALs
a Slavic language - Russian or Polish
Persian/Farsi

I want to learn a Slavic language because I have Slavic ancestry, Polish on my mom's side and Slovenian on my dad's side.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'll never learn that many languages!

Languages I have no intention of learning, unless I'm forced to:

Portuguese (can't stand how it sounds)
Mandarin Chinese (don't like the tones, too confusing)
Arabic (don't like how it sounds)
Dutch (really ugly, rather learn Afrikaans, most speak English)
Scandinavian languages (don't like the sound, doesn't seem too phonetic)
Anything too weird or obscure - people think I'm weird enough as it is



*****



Now for what I'm doing to improve my education.

I have an appointment with my adviser at school to schedule courses for next semester, since it's mandatory. I'm taking a Medical Assisting course, which is the only thing for certain now, plus I'd like to know a little bit about medical billing, since it might help me get a better job, like a management position or even a sales position later on. I'm also thinking about getting a Gerontology certificate, which would mean two or three additional classes beyond my Intro to Gerontology class, since aging is pretty interesting and a lot of jobs are going to open up in the future dealing with older people.

I always love to borrow books from the library, and it's one of my favorite things to do. Right now I'm reading through The Personal MBA, which claims to have all the content of an MBA program (highly doubtful, but my professor DID give me a link to a Website that really DOES have all the content of an MBA program). At the site (the personal MBA site, not the other one) it has a list of books on business, so I'll have to see which ones are at the library and get them on interlibrary loan.

Oh well, that is all.