International (Sign) Language

Languages really do catch my interest, for so long.

Indonesian is my mother tongue but I've learned English since I was young (approx. 10-11 years old). So it's been ages English has been my second language, but still I found out that I am not as good as native speakers (of course). I would rate my English fluency something between intermediate level to advance - but then, as long as I survive with my language capability (know how to order food, find direction, even in my case, doing a literature review) I know it's not a problem whether my degree of fluency is advance or not.

Hungarian:: definitely not the easiest one

Just couple of years ago, I also interested in Deutsch (German) and Français (French).
I took a private lesson, and just when I was about to master (well, master my basic lesson- that's what I mean :) I had to leave to Europe for my master program.
But then I found out that my Deutsch was actually really crap in practice, because I couldn't understand what these Germans people were saying. My Français was a bit (slightly a bit) better cause I could understand a bit- at least I got the important point of conversation- but most of the times I kept using English instead of 'parlez Français' (when I was in French speaking area).

It's so lame... I think it's all just the matter of practice and confidence of making mistakes :-)
I'm sure if I settle longer in France or French speaking regions, I'd definitely enhance my Français competency :-)

I also learned a bit of phasa Thai when I was in Thailand (for short time), but every Thai people that I met told me that I had the right accent. So it was really encouraging :-)

Also a bit of Dutch when I was in Netherlands (I was there cumulatively for almost 5 months). I didn't really learn it the way I learned Deutsch or Français. My Dutch language lesson was basically because I hang around with friends and colleagues (and people around me in public spaces :-) who speak Dutch. But I came to conclusion that in Netherlands, almost all the people that I met could speak English very well, so I didn't have to learn Dutch at all :-)

Danish, even though I stayed in Denmark for more than 6 months- is something that I gave up to master. I know how to say basic things e.g. salutations, thanks, sorry, sale/discount, but that's all.
For me it's a bit frustrated to learn, for it pronunciation is tricky - and did not sound as beautiful as French or Italiano. Sorry Danes, but this is the fact from a foreigner.

Danish:: not very encouraging either

Then I also love Itali. Mi amore Italia :-)
And Italiano is a very beautiful language, they also have a lot of meanings in sentences.
For example saying thanks in Italian is 'Grazie' (just like 'Merci' in Français) it has more meaning than just 'thanks' - it's more like 'grace' or 'mercy'. Showing more feelings of compassion and thankful. I just love it.
Not to mention the rhyme when people talked, or even argued about something.
And how they categorize feminine and masculine words/ nouns (similar like French), based on, what?
Anyway, this is the language I'd like to learn more in the future.

Italiano:: the language of love!

Sorry it took so long to come to the point, that International Sign Language is totally almost left out in my to-do-list.
I had this motivation to learn from few years back then, it keeps coming on strong nowadays.
Then I found out that I could actually learned it by myself (thanks to google). They put so many videos about it in webs. So I'm going there now.

ISL :: image taken from shutterstock

We'll see how much I'm getting serious about this in the future.

Ciao ciao!