Things I Love: #1. Language

Photo was taken near Seoul Women University (if I'm not mistaken, CMIIW)

It's seven day before V-day and the city already gears up for the day. Roses, chocolates, romantic candlelit dinner promotions in restaurant. So this week, let's talk about love! But I'd like to write about other kinds of love. The love for things in life. What are the things you love?

One of the things I love is language. Although I'm not a fast language learner, it always amazes me that there are words in certain language that are similar to the ones I knew. So we did use one language in the past. Anyway, the great thing about mastering a language is you understand what the person means. It's like pulling out your ear plugs and opening so many doors of opportunities.

During the 31 years of my life, I have been lucky to learn several languages. Bahasa Indonesia is the first language I learned. Of course. Then, I learned Sundanese from D and Javanese from M. Although I can't speak Sundanese and Javanese fluently, I know many words in those two languages.

I got in touch with English when I was 12 years old. At first, I didn't understand why there are different subject for man (he) and woman (she), because in Bahasa, we only use "dia" for either man or woman. I also mixed up every subject and its auxiliary verb.

For example, I wrote "I is" or "She am". Oh dear, I had a terrible start for English, I tell you. The fact that I'm currently working for an English-language newspaper is a dream comes true. Anyway, the point is when you're learning anything, a language, a skill, never give up! To help me with the language, I joined IEC, an English course near my home. But the big help was watching Sesame Street. I love it! My favorite characters are Count Dracula, Ernie and Bert, and Oscar the Grouch:)

The fifth language was German. I learned it along with my cousin Riska who stayed in my home for one year. Her father (or my uncle) was assigned in Vienna, Austria, but she wanted to complete her junior high school before going there. So while completing her school, she also improved her Deutsch. A private teacher would come to my home every Saturday to give her a Deutsch lesson, and I tagged along:).

If English was hard, then German was even more complicated because every thing has a gender! Book is a female, and pen is a male, correct me if I'm wrong, it's been years ago. I still remember a children's song that starts with "Wir haben hunger", and other basic German words, like "Danke", "Entschuldigung" and "Bitte schon".

During my college years, I took Japanese and Dutch courses. I gave up the Japanese course after a few meetings, because (a) the schedule didn't go well with my studies and (b) the alphabet system was different, so I had to learn from basic. Since then, I made a pact to only learn languages with alphabet system I am already familiar with.

I managed to continue the Dutch course for at least 1.5 years. One of the factors was the good-looking teacher. Anyway, since I've learned German, learning Dutch was more like refreshing my memories. Besides, there are many Indonesian terms use the Dutch words. For example, "knalpot".

One of the differences I can tell between Dutch and Deutsch is how they pronounce "G". For example, Germans say "gut" (good) like the English's good, while Dutch people say "goed" (good) like the English's hood. It's pretty interesting.

After finishing college and landing on a job, I finally braved myself to learn the eighth language, French.  Being one of European languages, French shares many similarities Deutsch and Dutch, such as every thing has a gender and so many past tenses (French loves the past, indeed). It is not easy to learn French, but it is fun! 

I met so many nice people during the French course. I met Defa, who later suggested me to apply to HoC, my former office, after I resigned from my first job. I met K, who shares similar interests on cultural events. I quitted the French course after taking it for four years, but I still meet my CCF friends from time to time.

French has similarities with Spanish and Italian too. When I interviewed Argentinian human rights activists, I found that we simply changed or added the last letter with "o" to make it Spanish. For example, "quand" (French word for "when") + o = "quando" (Spanish word for "when"). For me, it sounds very Javanese. Ha! But it does not apply to all words, of course.

The ninth language was, of course, Korean. While it was difficult to memorize the Han Geul alphabet system, I did quite well on the pronunciation. In fact, a waitress at a restaurant praised me for my well-pronounced Korean:). If only she knew...

Anyway, now I'm thinking what language should I learn? There are two languages I'm interested in: Arabic and Russian. Ok, I remember I made a pact of only learning language that uses Roman alphabet. But I know Arabic alphabet and although Russia uses Cyrillic alphabet, I am very, truly, seriously curious about Russian. So if anyone knows there is Arabic or Russian course in Jakarta, let me know please?