[My profile page on Duolingo showing the languages I am learning]
Being Bilingual
If you had to learn another language, what language would that be? Tell us why that particular one and what it would mean to you.
This prompt by the hive learners moderators is one that I am very eager to write about. I hope I am able to do this the appropriate justice it deserves.
Being a polyglot has long been a dream of mine. A long-term dream. Why, you ask? Well, I've always had a dream of travelling around the world and exploring the planet. And I figured if I am going to be visiting multiple cultures and necessarily having conversations with them, then I need to learn more languages than I currently know.
To decide which languages to learn, I browsed, searching for which languages are most popular and spoken by most people. I eventually decided on French, Spanish, and Chinese. Spanish also sounds quite sexy for some reason I do not know. Or maybe it's just my perception of it. I later added Korean to the mix for one particular reason. Their songs sound so good! Damn! Just to prove my point, you might want to listen to this song.
What's crazy is the fact that I don't even till now, I haven't learned the language enough to understand more than a few words in the songs, but I am blown away by the musicality and technicality of these songs all the freaking time.
I also experimented with Italian for a while. But I told myself that since Italian and Portuguese have the same mother language as Spanish, which is Latin, then it'll be way easier to comprehend those once I have a good grasp of the Spanish language.
The lingua franca in my country is the English language, which I would say I have some mastery of. My local tongue is the Yorùbá language and I have good mastery of that too. So, these are all the languages I am currently working with/on.
So I surfed the net for tools to help me achieve this goal of being a polyglot. That's when I discovered the application 'Duolingo." This app has helped me tremendously since I downloaded it. Although my schedule as a medical student has often impaired this learning process a lot of times, I am quite content with the little extra knowledge I've acquired in this area. I am not even trying to force myself too much. I recognize the fact that this is a long-term goal of mine and as long as I keep taking small steady steps towards this goal, it will be achieved someday.
This is my journey as regards language learning. I hope it inspires someone out there to learn an extra language. It is a very useful tool to have in your arsenal that could give you the edge when you least expect it. For example, since I started freelancing, I have found out that you could get more jobs from clients from other countries who are native speakers.
I hope you enjoyed my little story.