My most previous language learning experience mainly focused on Latin and Italian. As far as I can remember, I chose Latin because of my interests in both Spanish and Italian and I believed that learning Latin will help me build a solid foundation for acquiring those languages later on. I started off with Dr. Gunkel who I learned a lot from when it comes to linguistics. I liked the fact that the class was mainly about grammar and syntax. It helps me look at languages as if they were organism being examined through a microscope in science classes. I am majoring in computer science which a lot of the time resembles learning a new language. It is incredible to see how the learning process overlaps.
In the beginning, I had great deal amount of trouble just reading Latin since it makes absolutely no sense to me. However, I had the experience of learning English when I was younger so I know it takes time and your understanding and ability grows exponentially. As a result, I was not dismayed or anything but just simply consistent on taking Latin as one of my daily inputs. I would try to think in Latin and read Latin even though sometimes it makes no sense. And that's where the beauty of studying a language. Proficiency and fluency rely more on consistency and approach. I would spend hours in the library just to memorize the paradigms every day and mark the endings of each words. After about a month and a half, read and write in Latin becomes somewhat easy for me in the intro level.
I also liked the fact that Dr. Gunkel went on to the content in the intermediate level which brings more challenges but it seems like they were there for a reason since it kept me out of comfort which could have a negative impact. As for intermediate Latin and Italian, the usage was more about practice. One of the projects we had to do was presentation in Latin about a celebrity. I had no idea that you can put so many modern phrases and expressions into Latin which is one of the oldest and least used language for most people. It was really challenging but it made me realize when it comes to expression, Latin can be just as expressive as any other language. That really helps me when I learned MIPS in CS which is the assembly code that only has 20 instructions. It is strict but powerful at the same time just like Latin.
In conclusion, I have encountered great difficulties when it comes to language acquisition but none of them made me think about giving up since the nature of language acquisition is consistency and problem solving.
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