I have always been involved with languages other than English ~
My parents are from the Czech Republic, and I grew up speaking Czech and listening to Czech every day. When I was very young, I spoke Czech beautifully, but alas, my sister who had already been going to school and who was learning English, started speaking with me in English, and so it became more than second nature to me…
I then later wanted to learn French for some reason.. I don’t really know why, I just did, but never did.
Then in year 8 in high school, I became interested in Asian culture.
A friend in my class by the name of Jenny was reading Japanese comic books, and drawing that style of art. I was fascinated by the artwork, and also wanted to learn what she could do. I bought a comic book, and started trying to copy the pictures. It was a shaky start, but after some years I could draw pretty much anything that I wanted. I also, through reading the comic, was exposed for the first time to the Japanese culture, which was so different from the European and Australian Western culture I had always known…
I started becoming more and more interested in both modern and traditional Japanese culture, cooking, food, clothes, music, art, etc.etc. ~ and taught myself Japanese from a $10 CD for my senior years, learning a few grammar points, vocabulary, the 2 alphabets and some Chinese characters, (also used in the language.)
I then learned Japanese intensely in Macquarie University, and also traveled there~
I am now going to a church near Macquarie University that has many Chinese international students, so I have also started learning about Chinese culture and geography etc. I would love to learn Chinese, since I have so many people I could practice with, but I find it so much harder to get than Japanese ~
One tool I discovered from a video on YouTube, Lang-8.com
It is a website where you can write a journal, essay, letter etc.etc. – in the language you are learning, and other users who are native speakers of that language can correct your written work. Then in turn, you can help people who are learning your native tongue.
Best of luck in your language endeavours !! Even if you only know one ~ ^__^