Languages
My love for
languages.
I dedicate this page to my grandpa, who like me loves learning languages. In 1968 he left communist Czechoslovakia to practice medicine in Mexico for one year. In 2018, I sat with him, my grandma, and my Colombian ex-boyfriend (over 50 years later) in his home, while my grandpa still spoke fluent Spanish with us.
He speaks Russian, German, English, Spanish, and Czech. I feel like he understands this part of me very closely.
// The languages
Czech
Native
My first language. The one I dream in.
English
Native
My second native. Raised between countries, both became home.
French
Fluent
Where the pattern began.
Spanish
Fluent
Learned most of it in one month. French had already done half the work.
German
Fluent
Zero to B2 in four months. Certificate earned. That was 8 years ago. Somehow it never left.
Arabic
Fluent
The language I least expected to find myself speaking.
// On mixing languages
People often ask whether I mix languages up. In my experience, languages blur most when they haven't yet fully matured in your mind, when a language doesn't yet have its own lived experience tied to it. But the more a language matures, the more independent it becomes. Each one starts to have its own interior world.