I begin to subscribe to National Geographic Indonesia and National Geographic Traveler Indonesia magazines in this month. I know it's a very late move given that NatGeo Indonesia published its first edition in 2009. Several reasons have prompted me to take the subscription.
Languages I've got to know
For over twenty years, I've grown up in a monolingual milieu. Living in a suburb to the east of Jakarta brings an ugly consequence: I don't have any privilege of acquiring a regional language effortlessly, unlike those raised in rural areas. While my parents do speak different dialects of Hakka, neither of them speak in that language to their offspring, except mere numbers 1 to 10 and interjections. As a result, Bahasa Indonesia is my mother tongue. A Bahasa-Indonesia-only-speaking Chinese man, that is enough for a Malaysian friend of mine to raise her eyebrows. Indeed, both Hakka and Mandarin are all Greek to me; at least as of now.
Despite my guilty feeling due to incapability of speaking the language of ancestors, I've been confident, though, to say that I am pretty much fluent in the language I'm now using to compose this blog post--English. And not just English, but a specific spoken variant of English--Standard British English. This is a particular goal, I must admit, that I have been aspiring to since I purchased the 7th edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary in December 2009. With no exaggeration, I think I just need to get some exposure to more and more colloquial terms, mend some inconsistent pronunciation, and, voilà, the mission is accomplished.
But that's actually still far from the finish line--or, is there? My pursuit revolves around language learning, and human voice is becoming my playground. There's a list of languages I've got to be able to speak, or, at least, to write in. If I am to classify them, here's my language-learning plan.
Despite my guilty feeling due to incapability of speaking the language of ancestors, I've been confident, though, to say that I am pretty much fluent in the language I'm now using to compose this blog post--English. And not just English, but a specific spoken variant of English--Standard British English. This is a particular goal, I must admit, that I have been aspiring to since I purchased the 7th edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary in December 2009. With no exaggeration, I think I just need to get some exposure to more and more colloquial terms, mend some inconsistent pronunciation, and, voilà, the mission is accomplished.
But that's actually still far from the finish line--or, is there? My pursuit revolves around language learning, and human voice is becoming my playground. There's a list of languages I've got to be able to speak, or, at least, to write in. If I am to classify them, here's my language-learning plan.
The virtual me, reborn
This is my first post on Blogger after months of hiatus on Wordpress and Kompasiana. I personally do not know yet how long this brand-new blog can survive. Technical errors have prevented me from staying faithful to the previous platforms. And Blogger, on which I first created a now-defunct blog of mine, has appealed to me de nouveau. July 2013 saw this as my personal history.
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