Full list of languages you know or speak? Including dead languages!
English (C2), Italian (C2), French (C1), Spanish (B2), Russian (A1) + Ancient Greek, Latin
The long story is this: my mother tongue is Italian, that’s what I grew up speaking and hearing around me and until I was 16 that was my entire reality. While I still love literary works written in Italian, I always found the spoken language harsh and coarse. Then, I fell in love with the English language and everything changed.
It was a imperceptible process – at the moment I was just doing things I enjoyed, not motivated by a desire to learn the language, yet thinking about it in retrospective, I can see the hours and the hard work I put in. I would come back home and read aloud a book about British literature until I had perfected vocabulary and pronunciation; I went through a comprehensive grammar book and revised those rules often; I watched hours upon hours of TV shows in English; I read copious amounts of fanfiction. Eventually, I gained near-native fluency (though I am not truly a one and it shows when you make me talk about everyday things like… food or utensils, because I acquired most of my vocabulary via books and common everyday items are not featured often) and I ached to be surrounded by it.
Meanwhile, I accrued 9+ years of studying Spanish in school, even though I desperately wanted to learn French instead. Eventually, I went to university (studying in my beloved English), had to study Spanish again, got fed up and studied French for a month out of spite before casting it aside for more urgent matters. I had to choose then also a third language, and I went for German, but I hated the teacher so much that I stopped attending the classes and eventually dropped out. I was in my last semester and I was yet to fulfil the third language requirement, so I decided to seriously start learning French. Every morning for five months I woke up at 5AM to study French for an hour, which allowed me to acquire enough fluency to pass with top marks both at the exam at my university (B1) and then at the entrance exam (B2) for a Bachelor taught entirely in French, after four and six months respectively. Because, somewhat overconfidently and driven by a deep fascination for Christianism, I applied to a Swiss university for a program entirely taught in French.
Studying in English was not enough, so after finishing the required coursework, I was exhausted and decided to move to England. Six months in Bath was enough for disillusionment to grow. So, I decided to travel - while studying via distance learning - for a while. Having to write essays and having to speak up during occasional lectures meant that my French improved exponentially.
Spanish remained cast aside– I am sure my passive vocabulary is ample, but I know I lost the ease I had when speaking. While (recently) working at a hostel, I ended up using it rather often because in several cases we got people staying there long-term who didn’t speak nothing but Spanish, but it is seriously rusty.
While I’m stuck in Georgia, I picked up Russian. My knowledge of it is extremely limited, I understand basic conversations but cannot formulate replies beyond a simple thank you. My vocabulary is small - I probably understand more words in German or Portuguese or Romanian - but this still counts because it is hard-earned. I’m having fun. I learned how to read Cyrillic. I overcame the mental block that stopped me from learning more languages out of fear of losing English.
I am excited about all the languages I can learn in the future and can’t wait for it. [Most likely German or Portuguese at first and then whatever will be the language in the country I’ll do my masters’]
Really glad you asked about dead languages because they deserve as much.
I know reasonably well Latin, due to the six years spent studying it and all the neo-Latin languages I know.
I’m also rather well-versed in Ancient Greek (Attic, Koinè, New Testament). I recently refreshed it during a semester of an advanced Ancient Greek course as part of the Bachelor in Theology I’m doing (it’s now that I learned extensively the particularities of the Greek used in the NT), but I had already spent several years studying it previously. I want to focus this summer (…August?) on taking it a step further: I want to be able to read the entirety of the New Testament with ease, so I have to train myself to not think in terms of translation but in terms of meaning.
That’s all (unfortunately) for now. But next semester I have an introductory course of Hebrew and I’m already excited about it.
