I have studied many languages. My facination with foreign languages began when I was a young child. My baby sitter was studying French and practised while taking care of me. I began immitating her and had her teach me several words. It was the first time I learned that there are many languages, not just one.
Ironically, though I accelled at science and other such topics as a child, I did poorly, in terms of grades, in English. Recently, I was shown many of the essays I wrote as a child. The only flaw I could find was that my spelling skills were profoundly behind my age group. However, my vocabulary, sentence structure, composition, style, and organizational skills, with regard to writing, were well beyond my age group. I grew up in a time and place where more emphasis was placed upon spelling than the other factors. Thus it was my fate that my writing skills would be ignored and my English grades would suffer. It took me many years to become a proficient speller. Spelling in English just did not come naturally to me.
In the eighth grade students that planned on going to college were expected to select a foreign language to study in high school. I selected German specifically because it was considered the most difficult and the least popular of the languages offered. My English teacher in the eighth grade - a very mean and ignorant woman - would not let me take German in high school. She suggested Spanish (which is interesting because she was Latina). This was a problem because we needed to have our English teacher sign off on our language choice before we could be enrolled in classes for that language in high school.
It was obvious to me that my English teacher was unqualified to make such a decision, so I forged her name on the document and was allowed to study German. I took to the language quickly and even became president of the German club.
Since that time I have studied many other languages as well. I've studied and become fluent in Spanish. I've also studied Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. Currently I am relearning the Russian I have neglected since the university many years ago and I am teaching myself Euskara (Basque).
