#russianwave

Thanks so much!

2) what languages are you studying and why?

Spanish- it was offered in middle and high school and is rly useful in the US. Once I finish med school, I intend to become a certified medical translator for Spanish

French- I got bored with Spanish in high school so the French teacher let me take home the French 1 book and said if I could pass the national French exam then she'd put me in French 2 next year. I definitely understand more French than I can say lol

Irish- my family is Irish and my granda speaks it so I thought it would be fun

Russian- I have a few friends who speak it and I took a Slavic folklore class in undergrad and became really interested in the culture and how shaped the language has been by it.

Japanese- boyfriend wants to go live in Japan for a year so I'm trying to learn enough to get by

25) what are some language resources that people rave about that you don't like?

For me it depends on your end goal and how you like to learn. Duolingo is really hit or miss imo. I think it's good for practice, and I think if you just want to learn enough to get by for a short vacation then it's fine. But for languages with complicated(ie- very different from your native language) grammar concepts, I don't think it's very good.

26) what are some language resources you feel not enough people talk about?

Descriptive grammars. I love them and find them far more helpful than regular textbooks. BUT they're not very accessible. They look at languages from a linguistic perspective, so they really go into the history and development of grammatical rules. This is great for languages with lots of "exceptions to the rule" or grammatical forms that you just straight up have to memorize, because there's usually a historical reason for the modern form and if you learn that then it makes more sense. But if you have no linguistic background then these resources can be very hard to understand.

41) how easy is it for you to find media in your target language? Does that impact your language learning?

For some it's easy, like Spanish and French. But I'm also at a higher level with those where I'm more maintaining my level than I am actively trying to learn more. So not rly affected.

For Irish, Russian, and Japanese, I'm at very low levels and the writing systems for these are more complicated so I actually mainly stick to reading and writing. I live in Ireland so I hear and read Irish around town all the time. For Japanese, I use Lingodeer which has good little stories at the end of each lesson for listening practice. And for Russian, well, I haven't been practicing Russian except at holidays since med school started :(

49) language goals for 2021?

1. What book did you last read??

Read the first book in the acotar series, which was acotar 😂

2.What book are you currently reading??

Already answered

28.First book that comes to mind, tell us about it. Rant

Carmilla, the first vampire book in the history and it’s about a female one!! Like who’s would have thought?? The different elements that started the vampire literature was so interesting to see. It was also somehow gruesome but at the same time, there was this aesthetic element to it.

29.Have you ever bought a book because the cover was so nice??

Yeah... I have recently read Dracula because of the cover and no regrets!!