Learn a Language

I’ve decided I’m going to learn another language. I’ve wanted to learn to speak another language for as long as I can remember. At school we studied Italian and I was quite good at it at one point, but then the distractions of high school took over and now, like every other Victorian student I can pretty much only remember how to say one or two things, most of them related to the fictional characters from our text books.

My first choice was German. It’s a bit similar to English and I like
the way that everyone always sounds angry when they speak in German. I thought it would be a good language to know because I could express my thoughts aloud in an angry sounding way as a sort of stress release – and people wouldn’t bug me about it, because an angry person speaking the same language as you is just an angry person – a person cursing in German is angry and possibly dangerous, and people don’t mess with that.

Sadly, I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to learn german with me, so that kind of killed that idea. There’s no point learning another language if you have no one to speak to.

After German, I didn’t really have a preference. I debated learning Italian again because it would be a lot easier to learn having some idea about it already. Then my sister expressed an interest in learning Greek - so I think that’s what it will have to be.

My mum’s side of the family is mostly of a Greek background, so pretty much all of my relatives on her side speak Greek in some form or another. Sadly, Mum never thought to teach us the language while we were little, so none of us speak it. It kinda makes us the odd ones out at family events. We’re like the family that went wrong. In fact, if you’ve ever seen the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” you’ll know what outcasts we are – my mum basically went through the whole secretly dating an Aussie thing with her Dad with very similar results – although not as comedy-movie weird. That pretty much sums us up – we love our family, but we do things a little differently.

So later in the year when the courses start again, we’ll be heading along to ‘Greek level 1’. And if I’m lucky, soon I’ll be able to say something in Greek other than “Nice Flowers” or “Say hi to your Mum for me”.