Spanish classes

I was wondering why my head hurts so much after the Spanish classes - they weren't that hard, you know.
Then one day I got it - my head was exploding because of constant switching of languages.
Our teacher was Spanish and she spoke only Spanish and English. She tried to talk mostly Spanish, but sometimes we just couldn't understand her (it was a beginners class), so she switched to English. And we mostly asked her questions in English. Then the class itself was mostly Hebrew-speaking. There were also two or three speakers of Russian, and several of Arabic, but since everyone knew Hebrew it was the language of communication. The girl that sat next to me was a speaker of Russian, so we preferred to talk in Russian to each other.
So, during one lesson I spoke English, Russian, Hebrew and Spanish, constantly switching to another language... Wow, no wonder the head hurt that much. I still can't understand how all these languages live in one head and interact with each other, but, apparently, it's not an easy process.

My Multilingual Life

I was born and raised in Russia, in a monolingual environment. Yes, I studied foreign languages at school, of course, but, frankly, it was a waste of time. I studied French from the 1^st grade till the 9^th. I don’t remember anything. Well, perhaps, some basic words, but that’s it. I took Latin, Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic for a year in the 9^th grade. I don’t remember anything either. I started to learn English in the 10^th grade, and, though, I studied it for 4 years (two years of the university included), my knowledge was very poor. The thing is that I’m actually good at learning languages. How come at 21 I ended up not knowing a single foreign language? Well, I blame the educational system – considering that foreign language is mandatory in Russia on all levels of education you’d be surprised to see how many people are monolingual.

I always wanted to study abroad, but without English it would be impossible. So I decided to learn it. It was the summer after my graduation from the Ural State University (Philosophy major), all the courses in language schools started in fall, but I wanted immediate action. I got the first Harry Potter book in English (I’m a big fan of Harry Potter books, I read them countless times), which I’d read already in Russian (several times, yeah) and started to read. Well, read wouldn’t be an accurate word. Though I had some knowledge of vocabulary and a very vague idea of English grammar, still I had to look up almost every word in a dictionary. At the time I didn’t have an electronic dictionary, so I used a bulky volume of the Oxford English-Russian Dictionary. It took me one hour to get through the first page. Half a year after I was able to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in a few days without using any dictionary. But don’t assume that in half a year I understood English fluently. It was a long journey that still lasts and I learn every day.

Since then many things happened. From my monolingual environment I moved to Israel about two years ago. I study English literature at the Haifa University, and my basic day is divided between three languages – English (the language of my studies, reading for pleasure and watching TV-series), Russian (the language of my family and friends) and Hebrew (the language of the country, of my job and of many other kinds of interactions). Sometimes I have to speak all three languages in 10 minutes. When talking to my fiancée I am usually code-switching a lot, speaking a messy mix of Russian, Hebrew and English. I started to learn Spanish. I’m thinking of taking up Korean and Polish, and of reviving my French. I started to make mistakes in Russian (and I was proud of my almost flawless Russian before).

This blog is about my multilingual life, learning languages, funny episodes, challenges, losses and victories. Occasionally I’ll also write about the books I read and the shows I watch.