My Polyglot T-shirt

Grabbing the opportunity of printing this T-shirt, I would like to tell you about the languages I speak.

1.       Russian: My both parents are Russians so it was the first language I learnt. My grandma was a Russian teacher in Uzbekistan and later a director, so she did a great job in teaching me Russian.

2.       Greek: Being born and living in Greece very soon I learnt Greek, too. So, by the moment I went to kindergarten I was speaking two languages. I feel really blessed that one of my mother languages is Greek, I strongly believe that it helps me a lot in learning other languages as a lot of words have Greek origins.

3.       English: At the 3^rd grade we started learning English. I was so overjoyed that I was finally going to learn the language that I have been hearing in my favorite movies & series on TV. I still remember how I was trying to understand “Friends” without reading the Greek subtitles!

4.       French: Two years after my grandma’s death, all the relatives decided to have a meeting in Samara, Russia. There I had also the opportunity to meet my aunt and cousin from Canada, they made a great impression to me. So when I returned to Greece, I immediately found a French teacher and started learning French, (still hoping that one day I’ll move to Canada). This September (2016), I will be learning French for two years.

5.       German: The truth is that I started learning German in the 5^th grade, but I wasn’t that interested in this harsh language, I was already speaking Russian which was more than enough!! After two years in primary school, three years in gymnasium and my last year in lyceum, I still can’t speak German. I had other priorities such as English and, later, French. Usually I understand when I hear or read German, but I can’t speak it, yet. Hopefully, once I’m done with romance languages I will give German another try.

6.       Italian: Well, after have been learning French for a year, I tried Italian on Duolingo. It was so interesting, because I could understand most of the words from French and some more from Greek. I was learning Italian on Duolingo for almost two months, but then I started to feel that I’ve been starting to forget French language. Also, I was starting my last year in lyceum and I had to do my best for my finals, so I had to postpone it for later.

7.       Esperanto: Just like Italian, I started learning this language on Duolingo. It was very easy, due to the fact that it is mostly inspired by romance languages and that it has only 16 rules in its grammar. I managed to finish the course within 2 weeks, just before my birthday. Once again, due to my finals, I had to postpone it for later.

8.       Latin: I started learning Latin this year and it was one of the 6 subjects I was going to have in my finals. Having studied French for a year and Italian for 2 months, it was quite easy for me at the beginning. Then it got difficult and furthermore I really liked the fact that it’s spoken by very few people, so very quickly it became my favorite language, that’s the reason I wanted it so much to be on my Polyglot T-shirt.