Where to begin? Oh yeah this is about my entire history (up to this point) experimenting, flirting, etc. with languages. Fortunately for me, I was raised in an enviroment from which both English and Spanish was spoken daily. I can tell you now though that as a kid I never saw this as something special or to feel proud of, in fact the contrary. Growing up I was friends with kids who only knew English and to know something other than that and being tease for whatever reason (about knowing Spanish) made me feel embarrassed to even say I spoke something other than English. At times I would pretend I didn’t understand it. How silly right? If only I had that mentality I have now as a kid, I’d be speaking +20 languages fluently (okay maybe not but you get my point). My mother and father would tell me that I should feel good about myself that I know two languages because in the future there would be many opportunities for me. As a kid though, how much of an importance is that?
Obviously this is a language blog and I have shared with you my secret of my childhood, so what happened? Interestingly enough I grew up! I started to develop a different view on the world. I began to make friends from all over the world. I found all these cultures and different lifestyles interesting. I began to notice the benefits of knowing Spanish, especially in a city where Spanish could be heard just about anywhere you may find a human being. At this stage of my life I was already starting to understand everything my parents had told me growing up, all the advice (Yes I was a bit of a rebellious individual, different story now :p). This knowing of more than one language was no different. I did indeed see the opportunities.
I was always interested in history, even as a kid but at the age of 17 I began to become more aware of the world. That’s a whole different story for later. Through out high school I still only knew English and Spanish so I hadn’t yet developed an interest for languages. Actually for my foreign language requirement to graduate high school I took, well….Spanish. I know right? Way to challenge myself!
It was not until my 2nd semester of college that I even though about the idea of flirting with another language. On a sunny July afternoon of 2007. I was sitting down at a table near the registration office looking through the school catalog and seeing what looked interesting. At this point of my life I still wasn’t %100 sure what I wanted to do with my life. I remember thinking to myself while browsing though Ricardo you enjoy cultures and you have an interest in the world, why not give a language a try?. I never studied a language I wasn’t familiar with so this indeed was a challenge, a challenge I was indeed ready to take on. The story began like that and through out my French adventures I started to realize how easy it was for me to learn this new language. Was it that I was learning something that was related to something I already knew? Who know. I just know that I found patterns to learning. That experience alone triggered an obsession or how about a hobby? For learning languages. I started to study Russian 2 months into my French studies and I fell in love with it. Russian history was always a bigger interest for me and I had a slight interest of the Cold War but learning it somehow sparked another thing for me. I am now a huge Cold War history buff. Interesting how things work right? Anyways back to languages. After Russian came a little bit of Ukrainian for me, followed by; German, Italian, Mandarin, Latin, and Portuguese (the most notable ones). In no way am I fluent in all of those but I have kept records of the amount of time I spent studying each language.
German: 265 Hours 25 min
Russian: 208 Hours 25 min
French: 160 Hours 40 min
Italian: 33 Hours 00 min
Portuguese: 8 Hours
Dutch: 6 Hours
Ukrainian: 5 Hours
Mandarin: 3 Hours
Croatian: 1 Hour
Latin: 1 Hour
Some of these languages, mainly the lower half I did out of interest and wanting to try something new or see how similar they are to others.
This is what this blog will be all about and I hope and will try my best to keep the records updated.
Over Kiev 