Languages, Bahasa-bahasa, 语言

Ola! It’s a new semester and I am taking Spanish class as my co-curriculum subject. Yes, before this I had taken French for beginners BUT as my Spanish lecturer always puts, “our lovely university” doesn’t allow us to take the same language for the 2^nd time. Seriously, 1 semester (around 3 months) is not enough to learn a language, not to the extent of speaking it fluently! Since the last time I took French, which was about 2 semesters ago, I can only roughly read those basic basic basic sentences. I am yet to speak it correctly, let alone fluently. When I heard that I could take language for my co-co subject, I was delighted to the hope that I can further my studies in Français but unfortunately, there are no advance classes. They are gonna teach the same thing again. Aww shucks! So, I was left to take Spanish solo while my other friends are either taking Korean or not taking anything at all.

It was quite adventurous of me to go to a class alone. But then again, I do a lot of things alone, so I should get used to it. It kinda sucks to sit by myself and seeing that I was the only local in the class. I take it that Spanish is not a popular choice among people eh? Good thing the lecturer was funny but it was akward to laugh by myself too O_O” In my first class, there were only 4 students, luckily in the following week, the numbers increased to 8. Yes, and in the official name list, there were only 5 names. Gosh…. Oh well, there is always something good about small classes, we can learn things more quickly and better coz the lecturer can focus on us individually, since it’s a small group.

So today was my first class, we were learning El Alfabeto Español. My goodness, there are so many conditions! If a certain letter was with a different vowel, it would be pronounced different. Each alphabet has a way to spell them, like ‘v’ is uve, ‘j’ is jota, ‘h’ is ‘hache’. Some alphabets are pronounced in a completely different way as we know in English, like ‘y’ would sound like ‘j’ in English while the ‘h’ is always silent. Fuh! @@

It may be a ‘mouthful’ but I’ll try my best to learn this language. In my first week, the lecturer asked us why we wanted to learn Spanish. Other than the reason that I have no choice coz I wanted to take French initially, I quite like learning languages. I think it’s cool to be able to speak more than 1 language. A long time ago, when I first entered university and made friends with international students; they always praised us locals for knowing more than 1 language. I took tremendous pride in that fact. As a Malaysian, I’m glad that we learn at least 2 languages and can speak them fluently. I can speak English, Bahasa and Mandarin. That may not sound like something impressive to the average Malaysian, but it is to other people! X)

We can proudly add the languages we speak into our Facebook profile. My friend told me that ‘languages I know’ means the languages we KNOW, it didn’t specify our fluency in the language so add away with whatever language you know, even if your knowledge of it is minimal (like if you're only a good listener or you know a few phrases). If that’s the case, I know British English, Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin, a bowlful of Teow Cheow mixed with Hokkien, a teaspoon of Arabic, a menu of Japanese, a tablespoon of French and soon hopefully, a handful of Spanish. Translator for hire with minimum wage, anyone? ;)