Forget Pre-Med, Try Learning Three Languages At Once
A true insight from a college student into what it is like to be learning three languages at once.
As a journalism major at KU, we are required to take two years of a foreign language.
Most people choose Spanish or French. Well, not me.
During high school, I was absolutely horrible at Spanish. Never got A's on tests and could barely pronounce the words correctly. Two very good reasons why I knew I shouldn't take Spanish in college.
However, I decided to take not only one language but three.
Yep, three languages. I am learning Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian.
Currently, we are learning Croatian with bits and pieces of the other languages but starting with the easiest one with the easiest alphabet.
Whenever I tell someone that I am currently learning Croatian and will soon be learning Bosnian and Serbian their jaws always drop. They tend to think that it is a super difficult language to learn.
Well, they are only partly correct. Yes, it's difficult, but if you practice daily and study the vocabulary it makes it a little easier. Plus having an amazing professor and a class of only five students really helps.
The most difficult part of the language is having to know all of the different cases that can be used. For example, there's the locative case, normative case, accusative case, and instrumental case.
Those are the only cases we have learned so far, but our teacher warned us that there is a lot of them and that we need to be careful not to mix them up, which is very easy to do.
Now, back to the comment about having an amazing professor.
She is one of the most supportive teachers I have ever had. She is also very understanding and accommodating to her students. On the day that marked us being her students for one month, she brought us Croatian cookies called, Napolitanke.
Napolitanke are these wafer-like cookies that come in different flavors She brought us some that tasted like chocolate and Nutella.
So, in other words. Pure heaven.
Besides the amazing teacher and the delicious cookies, there are two other perks to taking a language that seems out there and with a small class.
Having a class with only five people is really helpful. You are able to get more one on one time with the teacher and you are also able to practice your pronunciation a lot easier.
Another perk is the fact that not only does it sound impressive, but it also makes it possible to be able to visit new countries and cities around the world.
After only three months of taking the language, I already want to travel to Croatia and visit all of the cities and islands we have been learning about in class.
For anyone that is considering taking a different language than Spanish or French. I highly recommend Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian!
