I can remember when I was a young girl, and my mother once took me with her when she went to school. While wondering around the library, I found a book – a conversational text.  I checked it out, delighted by the idea that different sounds could mean the same things, unrecognizable to some and not to others.  Later, in high school, I signed up for French, vaguely familiar with the words.  One year, my parents gave me a small short-wave radio, and I fell asleep most nights while listening to different stations.

Bad grades in French, a half semester of Spanish in a short-lived college year, and out in the real world, my language skills deteriorated.  Not that high school French actually taught anyone French – I never spoke with natives, never practiced outside of school, and let the knowledge lapse immediately during summer vacations.  I did, however, discover that language was a definite interest.  Not just French, but also Italian and German. Sitting in a classroom, unfortunately, was not the way I wanted to pursue that interest.

It wasn’t until a job with a Danish company that I rediscovered the thrill of language. The wife of an engineer was kind enough to give me free private lessons, about six months of them.  They weren’t intensive lessons – just informal get-togethers with her around the kitchen table.  I studied from TeachYourself and she generously recorded her own voice so I could mimic it on my micro-cassette recorder.  My pronunciation was pretty good, and it remains so to this day.  She gave me a Walt Disney read-and-listen children’s book, where I memorized the first paragraph of Sleeping Beauty.  For me, the sound of Danish will always remind me of children’s books. I think it has a beautiful sound.  But again, I was shy to speak it with natives, and after she and her family moved back to Denmark, my newly developed skill languished.

It was during this time, single and employed, that I purchased an inordinate amount of Barron’s Foreign Service Institute language programs from Barnes & Noble.  This was before the Internet was flooded with language programs.  I still have most of them!  I didn’t learn anything, except that I could easily waste an entire paycheck at the bookstore.

Enter Swedish.  I took a job with an Austrian-Finnish company.  Through my profound ignorance, I had not the highest impression of Swedes.  I had heard that it was an eastern country that was a little fond of alcohol and saddled with an incomprehensible language.  Maybe the Danes had a little something to do with this.  Then I met one who for some reason liked to talk to me about language (he was fond of Italian).   I discovered that Swedish was extremely similar to Danish, and I could speak Swedish with a heavy Danish accent, much to the annoyance of every Swede in the office.  Obviously, due to my lack of knowledge in Danish, they were spared from real torture.

Eventually, this Swede and I were married, and we moved to Sweden – a place where everyone says they speak English, but no one actually speaks it with me.   Maybe they think that because of my skin and hair color, I am Greek, Thai, Argentinian, Phillipino, Afghani, Spanish, Iraqi, or Indian as I have been asked so far. In any case, I have not flourished with the language.  I want to get better and also learn some new ones while I am here.

Which brings me to the purpose of this blog.  I am using it to improve my language skills overall by entering into challenges designed for self-improvement, and also keeping a general log.  This blog will be boring to most of you.  That’s O.K.!  Maybe you can be inspired, too, to pick up something new.