Hi Romanophile - I’m from Bermuda. But I first learned some Russian and Romanian when I lived in Kharborovsk in the Russian Far East (my neighbour in the apartment building was a widow originally from Brasov; had married a Soviet officer in the 70s - her daughter was an incentive in picking up some Romanian, lol).
A lot of the waiters here are Ukrainian or Romanian so I get to practice ordering food, lol. They brought me back a collection of Chekov’s plays in Russian, and two books in Romanian - a collection of fairy tales and then a collection of Ion Creaga’s short stories.
So, I’m in Canada… but have visited Bermuda (direct flight from Toronto) a few times. Maybe five times, and turned my parents onto the idea so they went maybe for ten or more visits. My Romanian connection comes from my mother’s family, who immigrated from Transylvania about 100 years ago, and was pretty much completely assimilated into English Canada. But I found the Romanian connection pretty interesting, and I visited my cousins first in 1987 before the Wall fell… and am trying to learn the language… from absolutely no base at home.
With such a connection, go for it! Then you’ll find out if you can learn more than one. My heart is in Italian but I’m trying a few words of Swahili because Africa was good to me.
If the language calls to you, a good reason for trying to learn it.
Interesting to hear motivations! I’m Dutch and learning Norwegian (I have lived there), Spanish (my COVID challenge) and Romanian (my wife’s from there) in parallel. I’m taking my Spanish slow but as I’m rounding up the main parts of Romanian I’m mainly focusing on my shared collection now, that I’ll look to update with what I learn from my regular in person class.
To me mixing is enriching but yes - I do find myself mixing up languages at times while speaking. I also find myself guessing right a lot though!
Regarding my last post on this thread: For the last two months or so, I’ve been working on Hebrew in addition to the Russian that I was already learning. As I had suspected, switching languages adds cognitive overhead when trying to function in either language. And of course, working in two languages also cuts down the amount of time I can devote to either one. However, I am getting better at language-switching, and learning Russian is no longer entirely displacing my ability to study Hebrew. I’d say that doing both simultaneously has been worthwhile for me.
To all the people on this thread: thanks for your comments. All useful and intriguing. The Clozemaster community may not be the quickest to respond, but has valuable things to say. Good traits, in my view.
Hi Volkert! We keep chasing each other in Romanian, lol!
I’m curious how you’re finding doing both Romanian and Spanish at the same time, with them both being Romance languages? Trying to work out if they help or hinder learning each other.
For me it’s not too bad combining. I speak Romanian more regularly and I do find myself throwing an accidental spanish word in, but it doesn’t happen that often.
I do find Romanian a bit more complex in general - more complex verbs and more complex rules for feminine/masculine - so I actually think I make more mistakes speaking and having some associations with Spanish helps more than it hurts me.
I recall living in Norway a long time ago I would in general mix up the languages I knew least well, independent of how close they were. I was throwing Norwegian words into French at the time.
