少少廣東話

As you will find out, my passion for languages is such that I often spring from one to the other. Inspired by something I have come across on the internet, radio or on TV, my entire being becomes fixated on learning that language. I become obsessed and intent on spending the rest of my days focussing on that language in particular in hope that I might develop fluency. Then a few days passes by and I suddenly find myself faced with something in another language. My focus becomes completely shifted away from the initial language and toward the new one.

This has been happening non-stop since I became interested in learning languages. I had started my language studies with French, achieving a good grade in high school which subsequently inspired me to take up French at university. As I was selecting my units, I thought that taking up German and Japanese would be a good idea. It was!

Although it was difficult to study three languages at the same time, I had a passion for each one. I achieved good grades in each subject all throughout university. That was, of course, until I discovered Dutch. When I discovered Dutch, I was intrigued at the similarities between Dutch, French and German. The grammar was simpler and the language had a wonderfully gutteral sound to it. I found some great Dutch music, and even one of the characters from my favourite TV show was Dutch, so I developed quite a strong passion for the language. This passion caused me to neglect French, German and Japanese.

This was the beginning. From then on, everytime I came across a language, I wanted to know about its grammar and vocabulary. I became obsessed with learning a little of each language. I had lists of languages, organised in order of their importance.

Over the years, my lists, which were once rather long, became shorter. I grouped the languages into categories, outlining which aspects I loved and which I disliked. When reality had finally struck me, I realised I couldn’t learn all the languages. I crossed many off the list and today, I am left with French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish and ‘Chinese’.

My priority is to master French more than I have. I would like to achieve C2 this year or next (providing I knuckle down and study harder!). Japanese is important to me as I don’t want to forget everything I learned while I was living in Japan. Dutch is one I can leave and come back to without having to work too hard to get back to a good level. German is a language that is so important to me for family reasons, and which I really want to improve in. That leaves me with Swedish and ‘Chinese’. I would love to become fluent in Swedish, but my passion comes and goes, so I never really make any improvement.

That brings us to ‘Chinese’. I am torn. I want to learn Mandarin and I want to learn Cantonese. For me, I find Cantonese more appealing in terms of the sound of the language. I also love the traditional characters, and of course, Hong Kong is one of my most favourite cities of the world. Mandarin, on the other hand, interests me in terms of employment opportunities in the future. I don’t like the sound of Mandarin so much, but I would really like to be able to speak it.

So, today, I focussed on my Cantonese language study and learning vocabulary to talk about body parts.

我嘅頭好痛 etc.

I wonder how long I will be studying Cantonese and if I will be as inspired this time next week…