My languages and I

Hello! I really enjoyed Lou’s post on how she acquired the languages she speaks. Nudged by her, I decided to share my winding path and show how language is acquired not just through hard work, but through luck and circumstances! So here’s my life in languages.👇

🪆 Russian. I was born into a Russophone family in Lithuania, and my mother tongue growing up was Russian. To this day, it’s the language I count in (more on that here). I also went to a Russian-medium school, which means that, in addition to being what scholars might call a “heritage speaker”, I’m literate in the language and have endured many a grammar class (hatred is not the best word I associate with those classes, but it’s pretty close).

Interestingly enough, Russian is not my strongest language today. I use it mostly in familial settings, and with a couple of friends, both offline and online. And as I don’t follow Russian media that closely, my slang is a) stuck in the 2000s and b) heavily influenced by the version of Russian spoken by Russophones in Lithuania. And it’s easier to speak to them, because I can easily insert a Lithuanian word if I forget the Russian one.

I find it a useful language to know, mostly because of the many fun moments I had with other exchange students and expats from Ukraine/Belarus/Moldova/Russia, Southern Caucasus, and Central Asia when studying or traveling abroad. I don't know what the future holds for it in terms of being a lingua franca, but I do hope it gets uncoupled from Putin and Kremlin and someday is perceived as something neutral.

Knowing Russian is useful in being able to understand other Slavonic languages. Although it’s not a given. I found that Russian speakers from Russia have more difficulty understanding speakers of Ukrainian/Belarusian/Polish, whereas people who grew up hearing many Slavonic languages have it easier (both Polish and Belarusian, as well as a dialect people simply call local-ish are spoken in the part of Lithuania I’m from).

🇱🇹 Lithuanian. While I didn’t grow up speaking Lithuanian, I adopted it as my main tongue as a teenager. It’s my strongest language, and I am still amazed by how flexible it is when it comes to generating new words, meanings, and connections. People in Lithuania (well, some people, especially those promoting the country abroad) like to liken Lithuanian to Sanskrit, touting it as THE OLDEST INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE, but that is rather unscientific. I’ll definitely dedicate a post to this topic someday. Lithuanian is, however, a language that no more than 4 million people around the world speak.

It is a rather hard language for expats here to acquire (conjugation, pitch-accent, declensions, grammatical gender, it has it all). To make it easier for folk, I even volunteered as a Lithuanian language teacher at one migrant centre about a decade ago. Well, technically it was my internship and I don’t think I really knew what I was doing back then. But that’s a story for another time.

🇬🇧 English. English was the language I fell in love with as a kid. And even though I had great teachers, I acquired most of it through hours upon hours of watching Cartoon Network series — back when they were really fire, like Dexter’s Lab, Cow and Chicken, and Johny Bravo. In hindsight, I probably did spend too much time glued to the tube but at least I got a good grasp of the language in return.

And, in a way, knowing English well opened a bunch of doors for me. I taught it in several language schools in Istanbul. I was able to read my favourite authors without relying on rather shoddy translations. All of my “proper” jobs I landed mostly because I was a good writer.

I still love English very much, and I enjoy learning new regional slang and hearing it spoken in all of its hundreds of accents (my favourite is that of Belfast, don’t know why). Speaking of accents, I fluctuate between a few, using a lot of British slang with a more “international”/US pronunciation. No surprises there, as I have never really lived in an Anglophone country.

Fun fact: to participate in various exchange programs as a student I had to have a valid IELTS score. And the thing about IELTS is it expires in two years. So I had to take the bloody test THREE SEPARATE TIMES.

🇹🇷 Turkish. Merhaba! Turkish is the first language I acquired as an adult, and it was a lot of fun! It was actually my major in university, so I have a pretty good formal understanding of grammar, as well as good conversational skills. They might be a bit rusty now, since I rarely have an opportunity to speak it, but I’d only need a week or so to get it back to the C1-C2 limbo.

I liked the language because of how different it seemed from the other languages I had been exposed to. I was fascinated by how you could just keep adding suffixes seemingly ad infinitum to create new word forms. And what I appreciated most is… drum roll… THERE ARE VIRTUALLY NO IRREGULARITIES. No irregular verbs. No “i before e, except after c”. Well, okay, some exceptions apply but generally speaking, there’s very little in terms of things that you have to learn by heart.

After I finished my studies, I freelanced as a translator and interpreter for 4-5 years. The job took me to court hearings and police stations, conferences, and B2B sessions. I also translated 500+ episodes of Turkish soap operas for Lithuanian TV. And while I don’t work as a translator any longer, I do enjoy watching Turkish movies and reading books in that language.

In university, I had a naive hope that Turkish would automatically unlock a dozen or so other Turkic languages, but I have to concede that the only one I can understand well is Azerbaijani.

🇪🇸 Spanish. I don’t remember how or when I got the idea of learning Spanish. I must have been pretty bored and looking for something to do. And it turned out pretty well!

This time, I had a proper plan in mind. I wanted to achieve a basic level (somewhere between A1 and A2) and only then enroll in a language class, as I knew from previous experiences that language classes “from zero” can be a waste of time. And so I went through Michel Thomas tapes (old-school but still good), Assimil lessons, and dozens if not hundreds of Notes in Spanish episodes. I still remember the joy of joining an A2 course and starting my intro with “this is the first time I’m actually speaking in Spanish”, which I could deliver in Spanish.

The language school I went to was amazing, and I went back for more advanced classes there once I progressed. I also had individual classes, language exchange partners, Italki tutors, you name it. I still make a tonne of mistakes (especially when it comes to conjugating verbs, there are just too many forms!), but I have no trouble watching movies and shows. Reading is a bit more challenging but I’ve read novels in it without much struggle.

To keep it from rusting I’m actually going to get a tutor next month, so wish me luck!

🇸🇪 Swedish. I decided to start learning Swedish a few months ago, and officially started a few weeks ago. You can learn a bit about my reasoning here:

So I've decided to learn a new language from scratch

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October 21, 2023

Hi all! So, I’ve decided to learn a new language — Swedish. There’s no special reason behind the choice. I’m not moving to Sweden. I’ll probably never use it for work. I was looking for a new language for a while, and I had a couple of criteria in mind:

So far, Swedish looks very logical and deceptively “easy”. But I remember thinking the same about Spanish, and boy was I wrong!

SO WHAT LANGUAGES ARE YOU FLUENT IN OLEGGG? Probably zero. Fluency is overrated. You find yourself making mistakes in all languages, including your own. No one promising to “make you fluent in X months” is fluent in the language themselves. Why bother?

What are my other language dreams/plans? I find Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Maltese) incredibly beautiful, and I’d love to learn Arabic. I actually had it as a subject in university but it didn’t stick. I’d also love to properly learn another Slavonic language. I can easily follow a movie in Polish and I can speak an extremely bastardized and basic version of it for a bit but I’d love to know it better. And then I have Italian and Japanese in my crosshairs… But all in good times.

And what are your language acquisition stories? What languages would you love to learn? And hey, I’d also love to do more language exchanges online, so if you speak a language I’m learning and learning a language I speak… JUST SLIDE INTO MY DMS!

Till next time :)