Languages
Last Friday I suddenly got the feeling that I wanted to learn a language (possibly because I started reading How to Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own by Barry Farber - rather interesting*).
* He appears to take a somewhat different approach to Jack Seward in Japanese in Action, especially towards learning the rude words. I personally believe that knowing the vulgar terms as well as the polite is important, but certainly it would be a mistake to start with the curses. My favourite piece of advice comes in the phrase I spill more than you drink!
I started with Russian on Friday (okay, I just learnt the Cyrillic alphabet), French on Saturday, Korean on Sunday evening (mostly just learning Hangul, which is indeed a great writing system), then a little Mandarin on Tuesday.
In the end I chose French. Partly because Davina speaks it, and maybe to prove a point about compulsory foreign language education (I learnt it for three years before choosing GCSE German for the sole reason that it wasn’t French).
Salut.