Languages

I have studied a number of different languages in my life. I have the utmost respect for people who can achieve fluency in multiple languages. For myself, I always seem to get stuck at an intermediate level. Right now (8/23/26) I feel kind of mixed. Part of me would like to get back to studying some languages, but part of me feels like I have made the requisite efforts in all sincerity and they haven't panned out like I hoped so maybe it is just time to enjoy English.

French is the first language I studied. I started learning French in fourth grade and kept it up pretty consistently until the first year of college. Despite all that I just never really broke through to fluency. I did have some ability to speak fluently with a friend who I knew didn't care at all about grammar and we would just speak it for fun. And I have had some ability to read at a tolerable level. But overall I guess my French is in pretty bad shape these days and it was never great because I never really put in the effort to truly learn the grammar. I guess the main motivation is that I would still like to read French poetry in French. I feel prose can be translated much more easily so it is the poetry where the native language is essential.

Russian is a language I had a brief fling with. In fifth and sixth grade I had a good friend who was Russian. I learned some of the alphabet and some words from him. My first year in college I thought I might like to study it formally. I was terrible student at that time in my life and flunked out. So my Russian education didn't amount to much. I have had some thought of learning it in order to read chess books, (as well as some literature), but overall I don't really seem myself going back to it.

German is the language that I studied in my third (and much more succesful) attempt at college. I studied it for 2.5 years at IU and then did a semester abroad at Freiburg im Breisgau. That semester was a pretty big disaster. I had intended to go to grad school to study German philosophy but that ended up not working out. So in some ways I do still have an affection for German and part of me would like to rehabilitate my German, but I feel a bit mixed about what the actual rewards of doing so would be. And I admit I still have some negative feelings lingering about it from that semester, even though I did meet some cool people while there. I had much the same problem here as with other languages. I got to an intermediate level but just couldn't really get fluent.

Chinese is my ex-wife's native language but she was fluent in English so we just spoke English. I lived in Taiwan for 14 years and I really did study the language in a variety of different schools and tutoring arrangements. And you would think that immersion would make a huge difference. But I never really broke through to fluency. I mean I could carry on a conversation with someone if it didn't get too complicated and I could kind of understand what people around me were talking about to some extent, but there was a lot that eluded me and my ability to express myself was pretty poor overall. I do have some Mandarin go books that I would like to be able to read. But part of me did heave a sigh of relief at the thought of being able to leave Chinese behind when I got divorced and moved back to the US.

Japanese is a language that I haven't really studied other than just some absolute basics. However, having learned to write Chinese a little bit would help at least with the kanji. My main motivation here would be to read go books. However, it just seems that I lack the dedication to really try to master a new language when I am all too aware of what the barriers to fluency are really like.

I messed around with Ancient Greek some on my own. I joined a website called Textkit that was supposed to help you arrange mutual support groups to get through studying some of these ancient languages. At that time I was trying to learn Homeric Greek. But self-study is very difficult to stay motivated with, especially for me, and I didn't get very far with it. I also tried to work through the Athenaze books for Attic Greek and again, I got through some chapters at the beginning but never stuck with it. I took a class in my last semsester at IU but the teacher was really strict and demanding and I wasn't enjoying it so I dropped it. Right now the main motivation would be to read Plato but I guess I have enough faith in the translations that learning the language doesn't seem needed and my experience has clearly shown that self-study doesn't work most of the time for something that really needs a structured approach.

I also studied Latin some on my own. But ditto the above. I did take and complete a semester of Latin at IU (again my last semester) but overall I didn't accomplish that much although I did ok in the class. I have never really followed up. Part of me would like to be able to read some poetry like the Aeneid but it seems unlikely at this point