This is a post I shared on the topic What are people who truly love languages like? on the Zhihu forum in 2021. Please refer to the Chinese version for details here.
I am, in general, someone who truly loves linguistics.
My hometown is in the northeast of China, near the Russian city Чита. From childhood to adulthood, I’ve interacted with many Russians. There are also Russians who speak Russian, Manchus who speak Manchu (although I rarely encounter Manchu speakers now), and Mongols who speak Mongolian (Mongolian is more widely spoken). Linguistically, languages like Manchu and Mongolian from the Altaic family are not of the same origin as Chinese. I grew up in a diverse linguistic environment, laying the foundation for my future.
My grandfather traveled extensively when he was young, and the breadth of his knowledge is astonishing. He had a particular love for Chinese literature and grammar, and even when I was very young, he imposed strict rules on my grammar. In my youth, my favorite activity was practicing Mandarin in front of the mirror and memorizing the Xin Hua Dictionary. Even now, I can still write some obscure characters like 齑薮爨 that I learned back then. To this day, I love my mother tongue and insist on writing various short articles in it every day to maintain my writing skills. Chinese, as an analytical language, is concise, but it possesses rich and beautiful imagery, as well as balanced tones. Chinese will always have a special place in my heart.
My third language is Russian (English is skipped), though I haven’t delved too deeply into it. I started learning Russian from scratch to understand the country in the northern part of my homeland. Starting from zero knowledge of Cyrillic script and Slavic languages, I now have a vocabulary of around 500 words and can engage in basic communication.
Italian, my fourth language, is something I’ve studied more than Russian. Similar to my motivation for learning Russian, I wanted to understand the cultural sphere of Italian speakers. During that time, I listened to Pavarotti’s tenor, appreciated operas by Verdi, Rossini, and Puccini, and delved into art from the Renaissance period, with Uccello and Botticelli being my favorite painters. Italian, with its simpler morphology, grammar, and pronunciation compared to Russian, was learned more smoothly. However, I haven’t practiced it for a long time, and my proficiency has declined significantly.
At this point, I discovered my passion for linguistics. As some highly praised respondents mentioned, reading grammar books is as enjoyable as reading novels for me. When memorizing words, my memory is quite good. Language is also a medium that helps me learn about history and art.
I now have many language learning apps on my phone, but my favorite is still Duolingo.
My fifth language, and my favorite foreign language, is German. My love for German stems directly from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, particularly the fourth movement, Ode an die Freude. After listening to it about twenty times one evening, I decided to use almost all the time I had allocated for learning Italian to study German instead. Many people complain about the difficulty of learning German, but due to my genuine love for it, I found it easy to learn. However, I still often make mistakes with articles like der/das/die/den/dem and ein/eine/einen/einem. Despite German having many consonants and sounding somewhat harsh with its guttural sounds, I truly appreciate its precise nature. I later had the opportunity to chat with many Germans to practice my pronunciation and intonation, and I gradually improved.
My sixth language is Classical Latin, with a proficiency similar to Italian. I learned it because I am a philologist, focusing on Cicero’s Latin. My favorite phrase is Mens et menus.
My seventh language is Finnish, chosen because of its unique position in linguistics (Finno-Urgic Language Family). Currently, my proficiency mainly lies in grammar and writing, with little speaking ability. I plan to practice more in the future. Finnish has some similarities to Italian in terms of pronunciation, both being languages with multiple vowels, but they differ in stress placement and language type. Finnish has over ten cases but lacks gender distinctions, making it noticeably different from inflectional languages like German or English. Learning Finnish requires a lot of practice.
The subsequent languages I learned were primarily for linguistic research and focused more on morphology, phonetics, and grammar. These include Czech from the West Slavic branch, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic from the Celtic language family, Persian from the Indo-Iranian branch, and Standard Arabic from the Afroasiatic family. I spent the most time on Arabic, followed by Gaelic.
Recently, I’ve been learning French with the goal of improving my speaking and listening skills. With a foundation in Classical Latin and Italian, learning French has been particularly easy. I can remember around 200 French words a day with ease. C’est la Vie.
I plan to study more languages in the future, including Basque, Breton, and Swahili, among other lesser-known languages.
I’ve also read numerous books on linguistics, including domestic linguistics textbooks, Saussure’s General Linguistics, Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, and more. Whenever I come across comparative linguistics, it’s always fascinating because it’s often intertwined with a wealth of historical and geographical knowledge. Language and these elements are closely related and mutually reinforcing.
Being proficient in multiple foreign languages makes me feel confident and dialectically understanding of foreign cultures. A particularly vivid memory is when, in the presence of a German struggling to speak English, my spontaneous remarks in German surprised him. Language is like a bridge that instantly narrows our distance.
Studying languages has become an indispensable part of my life. I listen to a lot of foreign language materials for comparison, and even during meals or walks, I’m memorizing words and using Duolingo. People may call me diligent and time-efficient, but I just smile because learning languages, something I truly love, is an enjoyable process for me. Diligence is irrelevant when you love what you’re doing.