Language Journey

I'm sure you know it. I love languages. I always loved languages. I could write a whole book with the title Antonia and the languages - A weird way in no direction. Here's the "short" version. (I love to talk about languages...you have to cope with it ;) )

I had my first language obsession when I was about 8 years old. I loved Italian. We had a tiny dictionary with the most important Italian words and I think it was my favorite book. I only learned to count from 1-10 and the word otorinolaringoiatra (because it's such a funny, long word).

My next obsession was German. Yes. It is my mother tongue, but I got obsessed with it. I always read a lot and was honestly addicted to reading when I was 10-13 years old. And I started writing.
I still read (or let's say, I read again (I stopped reading two years ago)), but I don't write anymore. It's sad. I don't have any ideas. :(
Anyway, I decided that it is possible to live without writing.

When I was 12 the only language I liked was German (and Italian). I had English at school, but I didn't like it. I was good in English (at this time I was good at everything...I was an excellent student before I turned 15...after that I was terrible), but I couldn't stand it. I had the chance to take Latin or French at school. I decided not to take it and took more Math and Science instead (I love Math).

At the age of 15 I had to take French at school. First I loved it, then I hated it, then I liked it, then I disliked my French teacher, then I hated French and now I regret that I hated it.
That's my story about French. French is such a difficult language and you have to know that I'm amazingly bad at learning languages. I'm not an ambitious student, I don't like studying and I don't like to learn words or study grammar (and I don't do it). I love to learn languages by using them. Unfortunately that's not how you are supposed to learn a language at school or university (that's why I fail all the time).

Back to my language journey.
At the age of 17 I took Italian for a year. Oh, it was like a dream. I always wanted to learn Italian and now I had the chance.
It was awful!
The were too many students in this class and the teacher wasn't that great. I quickly lost interest in it and I forgot almost everything. I still know how to introduce myself and some easy sentences.
I still want to learn Italian one day.

At the same time I started Italian I got obsessed with English and as you all know, I'm still obsessed with it (even more).
In my opinion English is something like the best language ever. You can do much more things with the English language than with German and so many people speak English. That's cool! :)
I also wanted to learn Spanish when I was 17. I have two Spanish study books, but it's hard to learn a language without someone teaching you (especially if you are not ambitious).

At the same time I also got obsessed with Swedish and Russian. That's why I started to study Swedish in October 2010, but I quit it. I learned nothing. The teacher was bad. She was really nice and I liked her a lot. But she couldn't really teach. Too bad.
I also started Dutch last October and I'm still studying it. I like it a lot, even though I failed at every exam *cough*

So here I am now. I'm obsessed with English. I love Dutch. German is my mother tongue. I would like to get fluent in French (and Dutch). I wish I could speak Swedish, Russian, Spanish and Italian. And I'm doing a bad job at all this things.

I don't know what's coming next. I'll definitely love English forever and I think I can manage to improve my Dutch skills (it's a lot like German). I'm not sure about my French skills (to complicated) and I doubt that I'll ever learn Spanish.
Sadly I'll probably have to quit Dutch after the summer and it could happen that I'll study Russian after the summer (I'm not sure about it yet...I can't get around it...maybe).
I also have to study Latin. I dislike Latin so much! I never learned it, but Latin is all about grammar!!!! Argh... :(

One more thing to add: I would love to teach German abroad one day or English in Austria or abroad. Maybe...

That's about me, but what's about you?

Do you like foreign languages?

Do you speak another language besides your mother tongue? How good are you?

Which languages would you like to learn?

p.s: I did a tiny blog makeover :P And I accidently deleted everything from my sidebar. I'm working on it. Don't worry if you've suddenly disappeared from my "Blogs I Love" list. It's not that I don't like you anymore ;)