Languages on My Blog

During the late 1970s, there was an interesting small magazine called Quinto Lingo, which was devoted to languages. Not linguistics per se, but the actual study of foreign languages and publication of foreign language material that various contributors sent in. In any particular issue, there would be several articles about different languages, some in the languages themselves, along with some elementary material from time to time about a particular language’s grammar and vocabulary. There was also a readers’ letter section, which was pretty illuminating. Hardly an issue went by when at least one letter didn’t point out mistakes in an article from a previous issue. It got to the point where I would just presume that any article from Quinto Lingo that I read would not be "perfect". Which was all right with me! I was just happy to be able to peruse a publication that celebrated languages. And in that spirit, I intend to write, from time to time on this blog, material about foreign languages, material in foreign languages, and a record of my studies learning certain foreign languages.

To be able to do this in the way that I intend, I will need to familiarize myself with other fonts. Russian uses the Cyrillic script, which I’ve been adept with since 1976, but not on a computer keyboard. For Chinese and Japanese, I may need to confine my writings in those languages to their Romanized versions, at least until I can figure out how to put characters and syllabaries on the computer screen. Even with the Romanized Chinese pinyin script, though, I’ll need to delineate tones in an effective way. Languages such as French, German, Spanish, Polish, and Vietnamese have special diacritic marks. I am hopeful that eventually I’ll be able to write on this blog material in these languages that is in their full scripts as they would be read by their own native speakers.

I already have a lot of study material in these aforementioned languages in my possession at home. I plan to dig them up and create an organized study plan using them and a few more items that I plan to purchase. Also, I plan to make use of material, both printed and audio, off the Internet.

My piano teacher just recently told me that learning to play the piano is just like learning to speak a foreign language. And that hit me hard, since I believe I’m making a pretty good amount of progress with piano, but over the years have allowed my foreign language study to slide. But no more! There’s nothing quite like learning how to do something and practicing to the point when, suddenly it seems, a threshold is reached beyond which a much greater level of understanding and ability is attained in that endeavor. As Bilbo Baggins said in Lord of the Rings as he was about to board the elfin boat, “I think I’m quite ready for a new adventure!”

So, at some time in the future, you may see a blog entry apparently written by me in another language. If you happen to know that language well, you’re welcome to submit any constructive comments about my bedraggled attempts at it (or just laugh a lot, if that’s your preference). Oh, by the way, there seems to be a project to resurrect Quinto Lingo, but this time it would be on the Internet. I’m looking forward to seeing how that turns out!