WHY you all chose Russian?
Why I learnt Russian= The dark art and emotion.I been brought up in a smiley country(Australia), and I like to find expression that's under-pursued.(This darkness is why I love the Nordic culture too).My fave art is mysteriously always Russian.Tchaikovsky and co. in the classical music.The Eastern European native music, and gypsy.Kandinsky is my fave artist.Russian literature is bluntly cynical, therefore offsetting my upbringing suggesting "we must smile all the time".WE must live through the negative emotions too.
Zhenya, yes there are people learning good old Nordic languages anymore.Mig, for en! Finnish is what I feel to be the most aesthetically pleasing language in the world.J.R Tolkien also said as much. 'Suomi'(Finnish) being the inspiration of his 'Elvish' in Lord Of The Rings.My Swedish, Danish and Finnish interest came through my perception of Scandinavia being successful at Western Society.And their respect of nature.I love wolves and wilderness.There's one Norwegian here on the forum.I ask you, is it neccessary that I buy any dictionary or grammar book for Norsk, or will my substantial Svenska och Dansk items get me by in Norge?
I'm closing in on fluency in French.My concentration is often poor, but when I ease up, I feel I'm almost fluent.I'm learning all the basic phrases in as many languages as I can.3-CPO from Star Wars is my idol.Though, 3000 languages is unlikely.But who says we must restrict ourselves to the possible? Not me! 3-CPO, watch your back, I'm comin'! (pphht, yeah right!)
I'd like to take care of all the major languages in my community- Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi etc.But my pet favourites always get me going to them instead.And due to concentration issues, I tend to go for the easier ones first, like Swedish.For an English speaker, that's baby stuff.Vice-versa.That'd be why many Swedes don't have obvious accents.Only if they say a 'long' sentence, can one tell they're not native English speakers.
What think you all of Esperanto? (Incase you're unaware, its an attempted 'global language', but hasn't taken off).Does the world benefit from a universal language? My view= Never should mother-tongues be replaced.But, in schools and government, a global language would help break down some barriers.The UN shoulod push for a neutral (hence not English) global language for future generations of officials, and students.Though, it is exciting not knowing each other's languages, it makes travelling that much more exotic and mysterious.So, if there weren't so much political troubles in the world, I'd scratch that idea of a global language.
I'm 28 years old.My reason for learning languages is an expression of me trying to make the place friendlier.So the local immigrants don't feel that we locals don't care about their culture.It's helped me realize that ethnic people who seem rude and cut off, are only that way because they think 'we' don't care about them.So, it's helped my relationship with the community, and I think it make them feel that much more included.If I smile at them, they usual smile back.All it takes is for one person to havre the courage to initiate first contact.That's my reason for linguistics.