About

About “Aspiring Polyglot :

Aspiring Polyglot is a blog about languages and language study and is a place for me to practice my writing skills, post links to useful resources, post reviews of language podcasts and books, share my thoughts on the challenges of learning a foreign language, and share language facts with other aspiring polyglots.

I’d like to state that I am not a language teacher or a linguist but a mere enthusiast so my opinions and thoughts are entirely my own and are not necessarily scientific or logical. I will not go into debates on theories of language acquisition or provide in-depth explanations of syntax and grammar, but I hope my practical advice will be of some use.

I’m always interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on language learning and am always on the look-out for new podcasts and websites to review, so please feel free to leave comments or contact me via email (see the Contact link in the menu above for my email address). :)

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Basic Information About the Author :

Name : Kelly

Age : 28

Originally from : Gibraltar

Currently living in : The Netherlands

Hobbies & Interests :

  • Languages and linguistics
  • Archaeology (Egyptian, Classical and Pre-Columbian)
  • East Asian cultures (particularly Chinese and Japanese)
  • Foreign cuisines (especially Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Indian)
  • Mythology
  • Travel (when I can afford it)
  • Astronomy
  • Animals
  • Current affairs
  • Reading (particularly non-fiction and travelogues)
  • Walking
  • Video games
  • Anime and manga
  • Writing/blogging

Languages I’ve Studied :

I’ve studied several languages to varying degrees of fluency, though I will only claim fluency in my native tongue (English). I learnt Spanish from an early age as it’s one of the two languages commonly used in Gibraltar and studied French for four years at secondary school before going on to do a degree in modern Chinese studies at the University of Leeds.

Despite four years of Mandarin study, including one year studying at the Tianjin Normal University in Tianjin, China, I still feel like I have much to learn and I’ve continued to learn and perfect my Mandarin ever since graduation. I was able to put my Mandarin language skills to good use a few years ago when I moved to Taiwan for a year with my partner and took on a freelance translation job with an education consultancy company in Taipei. During that time, I also began learning Japanese in preparation for a short trip to Kyoto. I soon fell in love with the language and culture and have been studying Japanese ever since.

I now live in the Netherlands and have been learning Dutch through self-study and daily interaction with colleagues and strangers. It’s been two years since I moved here and while I’m not a fluent speaker, I can read newspapers with ease and can hold a conversation with anyone who’s patient enough to listen to my imperfect nederlands. I hope to take the NT2 (nederlands als tweede taal) exam in the near future as proof of my Dutch language skills.

Languages I Would Like to Learn :

Being the language geek that I am, I have a list of languages I would like to learn, though finding the time (and energy) to learn them all will be a challenge.

Italian is very high on my list. I’ve learnt some Italian in recent years and have a very good passive understanding of the language (I can read novels and watch TV with little difficulty) but my writing and speaking skills leave a lot to be desired. I’d love to register for an Italian language course at an Italian school or university but I doubt I can take so much time off from work at present.

Modern Greek and Turkish are also quite high on my list of languages I’d like to learn. Turkish is one of the most spoken foreign languages in the Netherlands so finding someone to talk to wouldn’t be too difficult. I don’t think I would have much opportunity to use Greek in my daily life but I’d like to learn basic Greek so that I can chat with locals when I go there on holiday. I’m very interested in Greek mythology and ancient history so it’s only a matter of time before I decide to visit Greece and see its wonders with my own eyes.

Other languages I’d like to learn include Romanian, Basque, Indonesian, Georgian, Korean and Persian but there’s no real urgency for learning any of these. I know a few phrases in each language but it’ll be a while before I delve any deeper. There’s only so much time and energy to devote to language learning and much of it goes into maintaining (and improving) my skills in the languages I have already studied.