Recently, I'm slowly realizing the significant impact I'm having on my siblings, or at least, my brother. I'd bought my brother a ticket to Poland for his 18th birthday. I hadn't given it much thought at the time but he's missing school for a few days while there (although today was a snow day so he's only missing 3 days). He left early on Friday to fly over to Warszawa. Arriving on Saturday morning, he dropped off his bag at a youth hostel in Warszawa and went sightseeing for 2 days. Monday morning, he bought a ticket to Kraków and met with Tomasz, who showed him around then they went over to Katowice, where he is now. I received an e-mail from him today letting me know all was well and he'd safely gotten to Katowice. Apparently Tuesday was spent sightseeing in Kraków again, Wednesday will be exploring Katowice, then and he'll be headed back to Warszawa on Thursday morning to catch a flight back that night. He'll be back in the U.S. on Thursday night, so just in time to go back to school on Friday.
Apparently, he shared a room in his hostel with some Russians and Germans, who he found to be amazingly friendly and nice. He now wants to learn Russian and/or German!!! Yes! So my brother won't become a monolingual American!!! He apparently can't decide which one to start first. I personally can't give him any advice on that. French has always been my favorite language but as for my second favorite... it used to be German for a long time but now, I'm not so sure anymore. Now, I've really begun to appreciate the way Russian sounds more and more... maybe I like Russian better than German now? But right now, I think I like them both equally.
You know what I noticed though? People who like German almost always like Russian as well, and vice-versa (I'm talking about non-German-speaking and non-Russian-speaking people). For instance, in college, everyone I met who was studying German really liked or were also studying Russian. Russian language students were once German language students. I like both languages and so does my brother. Same goes with the random French language partner I talk to; he liked German then suddenly realized he also likes Russian. Why is that? I know these are completely different languages. One is Slavic while the other is Germanic. Yet, even when I'm studying or speaking German, I tend to mix it with Russian these days. It's so strange! Just a random observation... I'm really not sure if there's an explanation for that or if these languages even sound similar (which I don't think they do at all). Is it because they both have 3 genders? Kind of puzzling, but just thought I'd throw that out there in case someone had a theory as to why these languages seem to go hand in hand.
Today's Random Picture:
5 comments:
That's interesting! i really liked the sound of German and I realized, now that you mention it that i like the sound of Russian too!! but sorry, I can't give you a reason or theory why that is.
I don't understand why German lovers are Russian lovers. Perhaps there are some similar sounds? Like the "ch" sounds in German and Russian and the "sch" sounds?
That's not true. I am an exception then because I like German but I don't like Russian very much :o) I like Slovak and Czech better :D
На самом деле, я всего несколько дней назад с один из знакомых обсуждал Русский и Немецкий языки. В чем наши мнения точно сошлись, так это в том, что произношение немецкого языка нам (русскоговорящим) гораздо ближе, чем англиского. Обычно у русскоговорящих немецкая фонетика не вызывает проблем. И даже не смотря на то, что звучат эти языки по-разномую, я думаю, фонетика у них достаточно схожа (мне тоже нравиться как звучит немецкий :).
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