What is difficult?

Hi everybody!

For all of you that have been following my blog since the beginning, you must already know that I have the habit to always question myself in the things I do. Learning a language is not that easy, it’s not something that you can approach with halfheartedness. I have already wrote in previous articles how you can study different languages by following simple tricks that I have been using throughout the years.

In today’s article I want to share with you all, which part/field of each language was hard for me to learn.

Well, not considering the Italian language, I will start with English. The English language was the first language I started to learn and let me tell you, no matter how many years have passed, I still have a lot to learn, like which word should be used in a given context. I keep telling myself that it’s normal!!! First of all because Norway, where I live, is not an English spoken land, second I don’t use all the contexts and third my bad, I don’t speak it so often, even if thank God, we can always watch original version movies.

But the question here is: What can I do to improve it? I am reading an English book now, so I think it is a good exercise in order to refresh my memory and learn new words and as we are under the Academy Awards atmosphere, I am watching all the movies which have been nominated for this special prize! Of course I watch them in original version, no comparison with the dubbed ones!!!

When I started the university I began learning Spanish and Portuguese, it was not so difficult to learn them, but… there is always a “but”… I found some difficulties when I had to learn how to put in a correct way the accents on the words and how to construct the hypothetical sentences in Spanish. Living in Spain during seven years of course helped me improve Spanish and in time I got to an almost native level. About Portuguese I can say that the most difficult part was to learn the nasal sound and the right pronunciation, pay attention: I am talking about the Brazilian one!

But about both or the three, considering my native language, I can say that it is hard sometimes to not confuse words, the false friends, cause they are similar in all the three languages but each word has a different meaning, this is a MESS! Of course I always try to speak them all the time and in the same time, I mean thanks to the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian people I know here I can keep speaking them and learn and fail and learn again…

The last language I approached was Norwegian and I had to learn it because my life circumstances brought me to live in this beautiful country: Norge! Norwegian is similar to English and as it is for English, it is difficult for me to know the words which correspond to each context and use them in a correct way, of course! Another difficult thing is to learn the several different accents and dialects they speak, this is horrible but nice at the same time because I am fascinated by them! But living here and working with Norwegians and watching Norwegian Tv or listening to the radio I always keep improving it, which is very good!

At this point I wonder: Am I crazy? No I just have too much information in my head and as I am trying to organize my brain in five chips, according to each language, I think it takes time to put everything in its place, this is crazy, hehehe!

Good luck to me!