About Me and my story with learning language:
This is going to be a LONG post.
Hello and welcome to my lovely blog! I’m on tumblr mobile and I don’t know how to format my posts to make them look good, so if you’re reading this I am sorry you’re having to suffer through my inability to make a nice looking post. I’m not very tech savvy in the slightest bit and am only somewhat better at using the Internet than my 89 year old grandmother who will be 90 this year. I can work old technology just fine, but forget any of this new stuff.
Anyway, my name on here is Katya! Katya isn’t my actual name, however, it is essentially the Russian equivalent to my name. My given name is Kaitlyn, but I’ve never felt connected to it. I don’t feel connected to Katya either, per-se, but given that my blog is *mostly* dedicated to my Russian learning, I figured it was appropriate to use it. When I took Russian in college, we all had to adopt a Russian name and both of the Russian equivalents to my name were taken- the other being Yekaterina/Katerina. I ended up never settling on a name and it kind of upset me. I dropped out of college that year to focus on my mental health, so I never completed the course.
I wanted to talk about my story a little bit, my interest in learning foreign language. Growing up as a kid, I loved and watched Dora and the spin-off show with her Cousin Diego. Is this where my love for foreign language came from? Probably not, but I felt it was worth mentioning. I still do remember some of the stuff those shows taught me, however, haunting my brain with their silly yet catchy songs.
Where it really started was in Elementary school or middle school. I am not sure which to be specific, but it was within the 2010-2013 year period at least. I used to be really, really obsessed with the show NCIS and while Abby was my favorite at time, I know I loved Ziva. Ziva, being a Jew from Israel, spoke Hebrew. So it is possible my interest started there, but I honestly think it was slightly later than that. It was around this time, however, in 2011 specifically, when I started to take an interest in Judaism and Israel. Why, I’m not sure. Im not sure if it’s because of Ziva or if it was because of the inner calling I’ve had toward it ever since then. I found out it is possible I could be of Jewish descent, but I don’t know for sure.
In 2012 is when I was in the 7th grade (12 years old) and I had this science teacher that introduced me to Chernobyl in class. I don’t remember the lesson or why we were discussion Chernobyl in the first place, other than it being such a major disaster for people and the environment, but I know I was hooked and just had to learn more. I started to consume whatever media I could find concerning Chernobyl. This included documentaries, pictures, video games, movies, articles, books, and fiction.
This interest has sense never left me and I still watch and read media concerning Chernobyl, whether it’s real or fiction, as I come across it and as new content is published. For someone who has hyper-focused on Chernobyl for so long, I don’t really remember a lot of what I consumed or learned. I don’t really know or remember as much as I probably should.
But being exposed to so much content surrounding Chernobyl, I was thus also exposed to Ukrainian. Nothing looks cooler to me than the Cyrillic alphabet. Being especially dumb and naive at the time, I thought it was Russian and then realized there was a difference. I didn’t know what the difference was at the time (now I do have a better understanding of the differences) and thus focused on Ukrainian.
I don’t remember how long that lasted, but it most certainty wasn’t very long. I do remember learning what a few letter sounded like and how to pronounce a few words, but that became the extent of it.
Come high school when I was 14, I had to take a foreign language in order to graduate. My school was rather poor and only offered the two most very basic language courses you will find in America: Spanish and French. Why we offer French is beyond me, but I also intended on graduating with honors, so I picked Spanish and planned on taking it all four years. That didn’t happen and I ended up only taking it for two.
Spanish was fun, I was decent at it my first year but my grades, ability to learn and focus, and everything else really started to decline in my second year of high school. I was disappointed in my performance and gave up on learning Spanish. A part of me regrets giving up on it, as it is the second most commonly spoken language here in America, not to mention it’s a language I wish I did know, but I just never continued on with it after that. I’m not sure if I ever will.
My second and third years of high school, I had a peaked interest in a couple of other European languages: Polish and German. I am of both Polish and German descent. My interest in Polish was very short lived as well as my interest in German, but my interest in German did last a little bit longer as I had more German influence in my life from family friends (who are very German and love German culture as well as Germany) and had online friends in Germany.
Around this time I also was digging my hands deeper into the calling I had to Judaism. Judaism is such an old religion and while a lot of it is now in English, so much of it is still in Hebrew to the point where Jews probably should know Hebrew. A lot of temples still preach in Hebrew and read from Hebrew script. It’s a fascinating language. To my knowledge, it is the only language to essentially go extinct and then be revived later on solely because people wanted to speak it again. Ancient Hebrew is different from modern Hebrew.
Even though Hebrew is so, so different from English, I felt like I had actually been picking up on it rather easily for someone who was 14/15/16 years old, self-taught with zero idea with what she was doing. I had no Jewish friends in real life, no temple to go to. Everything about it I was learning was from books and online and of course, Duolingo. But I didn’t rely so much on that app and was actually mostly relying on books and online sources.
While my interest in Hebrew has come and gone multiple times since then, I’ve been able to maintain some of my knowledge over the years. I’m still able to remember what certain words mean and what sounds certain letters make. I can remember a few pieces of grammar and sentence structure. No, it isn’t much, but given everything considered, I’m quite happy to know that I managed to retain some of my efforts. That it wasn’t all wasted.
My final year in high school and my first year in college, plus most of my third year in high school, I had taken an interest in English. Yes, it is my native tongue and the only language I actually know, but I wanted to dive in further and understand it more than most people. I wanted to be an English teacher for high schoolers one day. This lasted up until college when I was really, really irritated from having to take classes that pretty much were the same things over and over again. I am sorry, but I can only write so many essays about yellow wallpaper before I start to literally cry and rip my hair out. I gave up after once semester in college. I just couldn’t do it anymore
Still interested in Judaism, I also continued to work on my Hebrew here and there. Eventually I also found a new major in college and in order I get my degree, I had to know a second language. Hebrew wasn’t an option at my school. Even if I could speak it as fluently as a native, I would still have to take a language my school offered. It was dumb, but I obliged. My college offered more options than my high school did, a lot more options. I debated between Spanish, Arabic, German, and Russian.
I decided against Spanish as I just didn’t know if I could put myself through that again. German no longer really interested me anymore and the words are sometimes so long and scary sounding and scary looking. There was just no way I felt confident I would remember any of that. Arabic seemed like a good choice, it is also spoken in Israel and in many countries throughout the world. However, it too also scared me and I just didn’t feel like having to learn something totally brand new in every single way imaginable. And so, I settled on Russian. After all, it was my interest in Ukraine that started all of this.
Russian did share a few commonalities with English letters, it had a text that was much simpler to read and didn’t feel as threatening as Arabic did. Not to mention, my interest in Ukraine also led to an interest in Russian history and culture. I also knew very very little about Russia and it gave me a slight sense of thrill to think about learning more about the country. It felt like the right choice. I signed up for class and had fun while it lasted.
That was two years ago. I haven’t been to college since. I dropped out because I had gotten sick and I needed to heal. Now I am just working and contemplating going back. I still have to take a language if I do and I’d like to take Russian again, but I don’t want to be completely blindsided and totally new to it like I was the first time. Otherwise, I probably will just settle on Spanish. I’ve worked on it here and there over the last two years, but now I am living on my own and just working, I needed to get involved in some kind of new hobby.
So, I decided to focus on learning Russian again. I am mostly just using Duolingo for now, looking up any questions I have as I go along. Not the best way to learn, but I am enjoying it and having fun doing so. I’ve also taken time to learn more about the country and it’s culture and its history.
Not to mention, this interest of mine had also sparked a desire to get in touch with my own ethnic roots. I am of mostly Slavic descent on both sides of the family. I wanted to know more, and in doing so, I have found out I am not only just Slovak but also of Rusyn/Ukrainian descent. I’m not going to argue over whether or not Rusyns are different from Ukrainians, I don’t know enough, but regardless. It was really cool to discover and now I wonder… Could that be why I have always taken such a random interest in Ukraine?
Now, I still do want to learn Hebrew and Ukrainian and I will continue to dabble in those here and there. Particularly Hebrew, but the reason why I am sticking with Russian is because I’ve actually already made some progress with the language, it’s offered at my university if I were to ever to decide to go back and retake the course, and because it is a more widely known and spoken language. Russia is a much bigger country with a much larger population, most Ukrainians also know Russian anyway, and so I am much more likely to find other Russian speakers than Ukrainian speakers. It just made sense to me to stick with it. Plus more people are more familiar with Russia as a country as a whole. It is one of the major world powers after all and has been for quite some time.
Since I am still very much interested in Judaism, I’ll continue to work on Hebrew here and there more so than Ukrainian as there really isn’t much reason for me to learn Ukrainian outside of saying I know it and because my ancestors most likely knew it.
I hope you enjoyed reading my very long post concerning my life and interest in language. I wrote this all in one go and I don’t really plan on going back through rereading it to correct anything.
