JOURNALING IDEAS

I love to talk

"To have another language is to possess a second soul"- Charlemagne

"Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own" - Johann Wolfgang

So this is the chapter I have to emphasise the most. I think language and communication is really important for everyone to work on, to connect ourselves to others and get in touch with our selves. Learning a second language, or if you're bilingual, then learning a third. 

I'm currently fluent in two languages and studying two more.  And even if its only a couple of phrases, I try to learn more from other languages too. It's especially helpful to learn from the people around you and have them teach you a few phrases here and there because they can give you what most textbooks can't and that's real life application.

In this day and age, its true that most people can speak the major languages like English, but it's important to remember that not everyone can really connect with you on that level if English isn't their first language. It's especially important for college, University and work applications to speak more than one language. It's a useful skill for travelling and it helps in communicating with others. But I find that it is especially rewarding to yourself. The satisfaction of feeling accomplished is what you should strive for. 

There are amazing tools online to learn languages that are free of charge and great places for beginners. Learning a language doesn't have to be difficult, time-consuming or even feel like your redoing your language GCSE. The beauty of learning a language on your own, is that, you are your own teacher, deadline, coach, and motivator. It's up to you what phrases you learn, how much you learn, how often you learn and even how you learn.

Below are some tools that I think would be really helpful for people who want to learn languages; but remember, the internet is vast and you have plenty of opportunities to engage with language.

Check out;

# Language Pod 101; this is both a website and a YouTube channel where you can learn the following languages;
Afrikaans,  Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

# Tofugu; is an amazing website for those of you who are interested in Japanese, it also provides you with other amazing resources.

#Japanese from zero/ Korean from zero; these are two YouTube channels based off the learners books that are also really amazing, taught directly by the teacher of the from zero books. George teaches you so well, he's funny and engaging and you can't not love learning from him. He makes it simple. It's usually taught alongside the text book, but you can work without a text book too.

There are many other resources online, on YouTube and in textbooks that also teach you the basics of language. Wherever you start, whatever language you choose, I promise it will revolutionise your life. And remember when learning a language, you aren't just learning another way of speaking, you're learning a culture, you're learning traditions passed on through generations, you're learning a way of life.

So take a pen to paper, a start your journal page of 50 phrases from that language you would love to learn...