{"id":17704,"date":"2020-11-20T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/blog\/what-does-learning-a-language-mean-to-you\/"},"modified":"2023-05-12T20:20:46","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T18:20:46","slug":"what-does-learning-a-language-mean-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/blog\/what-does-learning-a-language-mean-to-you.html","title":{"rendered":"What does learning a language mean to you?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Why bother?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For me personally, learning a new language has always been about <strong>opening up new worlds<\/strong>, <strong>bridging cultural gaps<\/strong> and trying to understand <strong>different perspectives<\/strong>. It wasn\u2019t until I watched <em>Ocho Apellidos Vascos<\/em> that I realized Spanish humour could also be silly and slapstick; it wasn\u2019t until a student of mine read <em>Wordsworth<\/em> that she realized English could also have <strong>delicate poetic beauty<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What I\u2019ve noticed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whether it\u2019s accessing a <strong>Wikipedia<\/strong> entry and realizing that if you switch the language you might get more information as there are more English than <strong>Spanish-speaking<\/strong> contributors, or finally noticing that <strong><em>Evita<\/em><\/strong> is called \u2018Evita\u2019 because of the diminutive -ita suffix that you always hear but are nervous to assign to a friend lest they think you overfamiliar; the <strong>wealth of experience<\/strong> that is learnt when someone picks up a new language is astounding.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Language is Changing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That said, it\u2019s important to remember that <strong>language<\/strong> is always changing and as a result so are <strong>customs<\/strong>. I used to shudder when I heard someone forgetting the<strong> third-person -s<\/strong> in the phrase \u2018He thinks\u2026\u2019 until I noticed how readily I say \u2018there\u2019s\u2019 for both singular AND <strong>plural nouns<\/strong>. As native speakers we need to open ourselves up to the same ordeals our students face and pick up a book or watch a telenovela every once in a while.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Global Connectedness<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Never before have we been <strong>more connected<\/strong> and never before have we felt more of a need to understand one another on a <strong>deeper, international, cultural level<\/strong> but don\u2019t worry &#8211; it doesn\u2019t have to be through detailed analysis of <em>Garcia Lorca<\/em> or careful study of the <strong>present perfect continuous<\/strong>, culture is everywhere if you just ask. Just look. Just read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For me personally, learning a new language has always been about opening up new worlds, bridging cultural gaps and trying to understand different perspectives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[908],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ih-madrid-team"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ihmadrid.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}