I’ve learned that being a self-directed language learner is much harder than being in a traditional class setting and being told what to learn and when to learn. As for a cultural explorer, I’ve always been someone that has been interested in other cultures so learning more about Ethiopia and Eritrean culture was definitely something that I enjoyed doing. In some ways, I liked this better because I got to learn exactly what I wanted to learn. However, sometimes staying on top of my own learning was difficult. I also found keeping my notes organized difficult. I try to learn words and phrases that are related at the same time, but if I forget one then I have to go back and add to notes if I have space. I have enjoyed learning the language that my dad speaks and it is exciting to be able to understand some of what he says when talks to his family. I also enjoyed the satisfaction of improving in the language. Since the only language I’ve ever learned is Spanish, and I always took that in school for a requirement,it was much more rewarding to improve in a language that I chose to learn myself. I plan to continue learning for a long time until I am as close to fluent as I can get. I was lucky enough to have my dad as my language partner, so I will still have someone to practice with once the semester is over. I am also going to be living at home next year so I can pick up a lot more conversational Amharic speaking with my dad and other family members. It will be more intensive than my studies now when I am living in the same house as a native speak. I will also probably go back to Eritrea and maybe Ethiopia at some point so I will be immersed in the language and see how much I have learned. On top of that, my family in America always speaks Amharic when they visit each other so I can work on trying to understand and join in the conversation.
The readings that were most useful for me personally were the ones from the beginning of the semester that talked about tips for language learning. I have never embarked on the journey of language learning on my own, so reading those helped me figure out what I wanted to put on my learning plan and how I wanted to go about my studies. One of the activities that helped me the most was looking at the phonetic sounds because when I first began learning, I was overwhelmed by all the sounds that don’t exist in English but it was comforting in a way to see those sounds in the phonetic alphabet. I would also like to learn more about the similarities between Amharic and other languages. I know it is similar to Tigrinya, which I would like to learn as well in the future, but I want to know if there are any major similarities to languages like Arabic.
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