EPISODE 4
Find this episode on Spotify at: Episode 4: What Do I Know About Languages?
Find this episode on YouTube at: Episode 4: What Do I Know About Languages?
Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process, in real time, and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the ALLT Podcast, which stands for A Language Learning Tale. Today I’m talking about…
What Do I Know About Languages? Or, My Language-Learning Journey, So Far
I’ve referred a little, in previous podcasts, to the languages I’ve learnt throughout my life, but I haven’t outlined the journey specifically. It’s possible you might be thinking, what does she really know about this subject?
So, let’s start at the beginning.
Before the age of 11, I had no specific exposure to foreign languages. Then, I moved on to Secondary School.
There, everyone was expected to learn French from the start, at least for three years, when exam subjects were decided. I think this is different now. For the first three years you did a little of every subject. Well, I say every subject, but the girls did Home Economics and the boys did Woodwork and there was no playing football for girls, it was all hockey and netball. At the end of the third year, you had to choose the subjects you would do for exams. You couldn’t give up English and Maths, but you could give up pretty much anything else, as long as you filled your timetable. So, that’s the background.
I don’t know if learning French was a curriculum requirement from the Government, or specific to the school, but, as I said, we all learnt it.
In the second year we had to choose a second language to learn. Well, kind of. German was considered to be the best language to learn, for future work opportunities, but everyone put that down as their choice, including me. I didn’t get my first choice. I got my second choice, which was Spanish. I was disappointed at the time, but I don’t regret that now.
Languages turned out to be a thing I was reasonably good at, although I was never confident in my abilities, so I decided I would take them as part of my final exam subjects and I passed those exams at the end of the fifth year and went on to Sixth Form College to do ‘A’ Levels. My ‘A’ Levels were Spanish and French.
‘A’ Levels were another two years of study with exams at the end, with the introduction of reading Literature in the language. I’ll probably do a separate podcast on my feelings on that topic.
As I neared the end of the second year I had to think about what I was going to do next. I knew I wanted to continue my language studies, but I didn’t want to do something that was based around more literary topics, which a lot of language courses seemed to be, so I plumped for the Diploma in Foreign Languages for Business at Birmingham Polytechnic, which was a degree level course, but couldn’t be called a degree because of certain technicalities, to do with studying typing and shorthand. You know, useful things for work.
Polytechnics were places that provided more practical further education courses than universities tended to do, but they were disbanded as a type of institution a few years after I finished my course and many became universities.
So once I’d passed my ‘A’ Levels, I moved into the student accommodation in Birmingham and began that journey. I continued to study Spanish and French, and also started learning German. The German didn’t go well. We didn’t have a good teacher. Let’s not mention it anymore.
By this point, Spanish was the language that I much preferred. I don’t remember why, particularly, but our class for Spanish was very small on this course and, for that reason, more enjoyable.
At the end of the second year, we had a term abroad in Spain — no, not a year, the summer term, going into the summer holidays. It was organised that we lived with Spanish families and we attended a college for foreign language students in Madrid. That was where I began to learn Spanish shorthand. Yes, two languages of shorthand and very different! Unfortunately, my time in Madrid was cut short as I became ill, but I won’t go into the details of that here. I was there for more than half the time.
Exams passed again, I entered the world of work, trying to find a job that would use my languages. After various false starts and temping, where I did once use my Spanish shorthand — oh, my god, was that nerve-wracking — I ended up at an American management consultant company in London. There, I was specifically assigned as a bi-lingual secretary, exclusively for Spanish. There were only two of us.
I worked on projects that were mainly based in South America, at first. Later, the focus turned more to Eastern Europe. But during those first few years I travelled to Mexico, Colombia and Spain, multiple times, to type up presentations, and occasionally, I got to see some of the sights. This wouldn’t happen now, I’m sure, with Internet connectivity.
Eventually, though, after some 8 or 9 years, I left the company. It was a very stressful place to work, with long hours, often late into the evening, and I just didn’t want to do that anymore, and I never used my languages in work again. Or anywhere else.
Decades passed and this global health crisis happened. You may remember it. Anyway, in December of 2020, when we were all locked in our houses again, or were about to be, I don’t remember exactly, I decided not to fritter away anymore time and thought, you know, I used to be quite good at languages. Maybe, I should learn one of those.
I didn’t particularly want to go over old ground, but I didn’t want it to be too difficult, so I decided it would have to be another romance language. It was a toss-up between Italian and Portuguese. I preferred the sound of Italian, so I went with it and opened an account on Duolingo.
The Italian course was quite short, although I didn’t particularly realise that when I started. There were parts of it where I felt completely bombarded with new information, with huge vocabulary lists and new tenses one after the other, but it worked for me. I’d finished the course within 6 months and I’d already read one book by then. Of course, I hadn’t only been using Duolingo. I started listening to Italian radio as early as that first January. I watched increasingly more difficult language videos on YouTube, mainly ones with talking, or stories, rather than instruction, and, as I’ve already said, I read.
And, I started a YouTube channel to document my journey. I daren’t look at some of those old videos now. I think they would be painful to watch.
By the end of that first year, I’d read four more books in Italian, three of those part of a well-known Italian fantasy trilogy and things were going well. So, I thought, why not learn another language? Wales is just over the border. That might be fun. Ha! Little did I know.
Welsh has been a much harder journey. You might be fooled into thinking it would be very similar to English. No, it’s not. You might wonder if it were close to the romance languages. Oh, no, no, no. Don’t be silly. Now, nearly a year and a half in, I’m not able to read in the language and I’m just beginning to think I might be getting a handle on some of it. I’ve kind of pulled back on it a little and I only study it at weekends, because doing it every day wasn’t working and, strange as it may seem, I think that helps. It gives what I’ve learnt time to sink in.
I continue to read and study Italian, and, if you’ve followed all these podcasts so far, you’ll know that very recently I started to refresh my French, which gives me more of a feeling of achievement than the Welsh. I think I need that.
I have experienced what it was like to learn languages many years ago and what it’s like to learn them now, and the two experiences are very different, but that’s, perhaps, another topic to expand upon in the future.
I believe I know a thing or two about language learning and that I have some interesting stories to tell. I want to share all of that with you. That’s why this podcast exists.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.