*Day 7* I'm blogging everyday till VidCon. What is VidCon? Check it out at www.VidCon2010.com
Ok, I am really really tired today. I was at work for 9 hours and then I came home and cooked dinner for me and my sister. We ate dinner, cleaned the dishes and now I'm sitting down to write this, but all I really want to do is go to bed.
However, I don't want to miss a day of blogging if I really don't have to. So, you may be wondering why I titled this blog "Where is the train station?". When I was in grade school, I studied French for 4 years and I've continued to try and teach myself the language even though I no longer study it in a formal class setting. I've also been trying to learn Japanese and Spanish for many years, and for many years I have been frustrated with the books and cd's I have bought to help myself learn these languages.
So many of them start off with the assumption that you are traveling, so they teach you to ask for the train, the airport, or how to find a taxi, a hotel, your luggage, or a good resturaunt. I don't use any of this language in daily life, so I forget these phrases almost as soon as I learn them.
I work in a store where about half of our customers are spanish speakers. It would be great if I could assist them in their own langauge, but I'm always stuck thinking, "how do you say, "it's at the end of aisle ten"?". I know how to say, "I want to buy a train ticket" in spanish, but that is honestly, very unlikely to ever be a useful phrase for me.
Recently, I've realized that my job is very repetative and predictable. As a cashier and returns cashier, there are only a handfull of phrases that are absolutely necessary for me to know in order to do my job. I've become determined to write my own language program specifically designed for the job I do.
Eventualy I will be able to speak Spanish, Japanese and French, even if all I know is the phrases I need for my job, that's all that really matters to me anyway, because that is my daily life.
Okay,.... bed time :-)
QUESTION: If you could speak another language that you don't already speak, which one would you learn?
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I would love to read and write hieratic (i.e. ancient Egyptian). I don't think it would be in the slightest bit useful. But I'd like to learn it anyway!
ReplyDeleteFrench, for sure. I've taught myself a lot... I can read pretty well, and understand the spoken language passably well... but I still suck at putting sentences together on my own and my vocabulary could use a lot of help. So my goal is to be fluent. That would make me really happy.
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