Language learning! The most beautiful activity where, through constant public embarrassment, we learn to see the world through a different scope!
I started learning English at the tender age of 4 through nursery rhymes and games. It's not like they were going to go straight into hard grammar from the first day of class. It would have made this situation particularly awkward for each of my classmates and the teacher as we would have stared at her, scared to dead. However, my parents decided that my school didn't have a good ESL program and started to look for other options. When I was 5 years old I was enrolled in another school that my parents thought was good enough. Unsurprisingly, I studied there for 13 years until the day I graduated. We constantly had classes other than language and grammar taught in English. Science, Literature, Entrepeneurship, amongst others, were the courses placed on us from the time we were somewhere near 9 or 10 years old. Taking into consideration we were all learning at the same time and, still kind of bad at it, none of us had to face a lot of public embarrassment in class when we pronounced something wrong or we couldn't remember a specific word.
By the time I was almost 13, I decided I wanted to learn Italian. As my mom can testify, I was consistently insisting my parents to let me join the Societa Dante Alighieri's Italian learning program. After a year of dealing with my brilliant persuasion skills, which were basically me asking constantly "can I do it?", I got in. I managed to enroll myself in the intensive summer program. And thus, that's how I got acquainted with the awkwardness of learning a language outside of a safe space, such as my classroom in school. Between mispronouncing words, having to endlessly introduce myself during awkward private speaking lessons and translating a solid 80% of the words on the textbook, I got through the first level and, as time passed by, things got better. It took me 5 years to finish the program, and I felt completely energized and ready to start learning a new language.
Afterwards, things took somewhat of a turn. I had been insisting for so long to learn Italian that I didn't consider what other languages I would want to learn. So, in the midst of such confusion, I chose to study at the same time Arabic and German. It was not the best trying to juggle two languages, college and life on the overall. Since I didn't deep dive enough, I am still in the awkward phase of learning both languages. On one hand, I can read the Arabic alphabet and recognize some words. But can I read anything besides a children story? Nope. On the other hand, I can speak and write on a very basic German level. I can tell you what I did last summer. But can I give a formal speech on a specific topic? Nope.
Three levels of German, one level of Arabic, and one level of Latin (which also left me on an awkward learning stage) I am still roaming the world of language learning. Have I found a language that managed to capture my soul as Italian did initially? Nope. Will I keep trying? Absolutely, because even if you stay in the awkward phases of learning a language, the world will seem more colorful, alive and wonderful once you start to understand your surroundings with different words and contexts.
