Hola... Hello... Bonjour... Guten tag...

Hello,

The subject of my blog isn't representative of how many languages I can speak. In fact, I only speak English fluently. I took Latin in 9th grade (why learn a dead language? To be a Catholic choir boy. I am not. I chalk it up to being home schooled), but in my heart I was always resistant to the idea of learning another language. I can't really explain why, naiveté on my part I suppose. Anyways, I haven't taken any language courses until this school year (I learned a little German during a one month stay over there). I decided to take Spanish at community college. I have loved it! Sure, I can't say I always love the homework or the occasional headache of learning that different people say the same thing with different words (ex. Why express how long ago you did something with the verb "hacer" which means "to do, to make"?). Overall, I have found it a welcome challenge. Unlike my friend ajpolyglot, I don't intend to major in linguistics. I intend to major in English and hopefully pursue a career in journalism. If possible, I'd like to go into international journalism. That's where language comes in beyond just my curiosity. Right now, I'm thinking I will probably learn Chinese or perhaps Arabic. After this year, I still have one more year of Spanish to finish as a prerequisite. My posts won't necessarily be based out of knowledge but out of shared curiosity. Every now and then, I'll post something about Spanish and my progress. What you'll also see from me are overviews of various languages. I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to blog here, but I'll attempt to make it interesting when I do. Thanks for reading.

Hasta luego,
Roy G. Biv

Intro to Langwij

Welcome to Langwij, a blog exploring the use of world languages. You may see that my profile name is "ajpolyglot". A polyglot is a multilingual person. Though I am not exactly multilingual, I would like to be someday. In fact, my eventual goal is to reach fluency in 20 languages. I am one twentieth of the way there. I still have nineteen languages to go. In this blog, you will not only find info on languages; you will follow me on my journey to icosalingualism (you've heard the word "bilingualism," meaning the ability to speak two languages. Icosalinguism means the ability to speak twenty languages.)
Learning to speak twenty languages may sound impossible to you, but I assure you that it is not. Consider a man by the name of Ziad Fazah. He owns the record for the world's most accomplished living polyglot. Fazah is able to speak 58 different languages. Two men stand out as the most accomplished polyglots in history. Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, a Vatican librarian of the 19th century, spoke over 50 languages fluently and spoke with a high level of proficiency in 114 others. Sir John Bowring, the British governor of Hong Kong from 1854 to 1859, was able to speak about 100 languages fluently and almost 100 others with a high degree of proficiency.
As far as my language learning goes, I am presently using the Rosetta Stone program (which I highly recommend) to learn Spanish. I also start classes at the Berlitz Language School in Portland in a couple of weeks. There I plan to take two languages. I am still deciding what those languages will be. They will be made up of some combination of French/Arabic/Italian. So I am beginning training in three languages. I am most likely starting at Portland State University in the fall (with a major in linguistics.) I plan evenually to use this desired language knowledge to help people in need (more details on that later). So there is my first little intro for you. I will have more tidbits later. Thanks for reading. I hope you visit again and follow my Mt. Everest of a journey. -Andrew J. (a.k.a. "ajpolyglot")