Curious Incidents of a Flailing Mermaid

Day two: Learn a language

I actually feel I got slightly carried away on my first blog yesterday. I really wanted to make a huge effort for this new contest… I still do to be fair… but if I keep trying to do blogs like yesterday, I simply wont finish the 30 days because I just do not have the time! As if to illustrate my point, I am currently typing this in an empty classroom at a college… random? Yes, yes it is.

Prompt for day two: Do you know a second (or third, or forth, etc ...) language? Would you like to learn a new language? Why or why not? If yes, which would you like to learn?


Ahh languages! Different languages fascinate me: even English. Sometimes I catch myself watching people speak – not because they’re speaking weirdly, just because the words are so well formed and defined. Where did these languages come from? Who spoke that word for the very first time?

On this basis, I would absolutely love to be able to speak all languages under the sun. Alas, I only speak one and my fluency in that one is, apparently, questionable. I should explain: I do have a speech impairment.
The other day, one of the students I was working with for the day asked me what language I spoke. Ummm… I reckon that’d be English, the same as you! You have to laugh at these things; otherwise you’d be immeasurably insulted.

I studied languages at school. I say studied; I don’t believe I truly studied anything at school. Nevertheless, I took German and French. I lasted two weeks of the German classes before moving on to pastures new – bunking off. French though, I stuck that out for the entirety of my high school career. A great effort I thought, until I left with a big fat F! This superbly underwhelmed me!

Now that I am older, it embarrasses me when I hear myself speak whilst on holiday. I always try and use the language of the country I am in as I think it is rude not to. However, my efforts are laughable!

Recently, I have been considering learning French properly. I spend a lot of time in my car so I was thinking of investing in some of those ‘learn a language’ CDs. This blog prompt has inspired me to add this to my “to do” list.