The rain in Spain...

The tree of languages (credits: www.openculture.com)

Click right on the image, choose to see it it in another window, then click again on it to enlarge 

Hello my Romanian and non-Romanian friends!

I was speaking today at work with one of my collegues and the discussion went on to the linguistics field, my collegue being a speech-language pathologist. If we talk of linguistics, I should also mention one of my all-time favourite musicals, My fair lady, after George Bernard Show's Pygmalion in which Professor Higgins does miracles with Eliza Doolittle's way of pronouncing the words (try clicking on that link for the video). 

So, this encounter and our chat have given me an idea. Considering that almost every internet browser has nowadays the option of translating the page and that I have friends of different origins, I thought of this experiment which implies writing my articles in English. I know I could have easily created a new blog, but I have invested a small part of my soul in this old blog (which is almost 10 years old!), so I could try revigorating it with a new approach. I will also, of course, continue to write in Romanian when I feel like, so the English articles will probably be tagged in the right area of the page so you could easily click on them.

Moreover, I don't find myself at ease anymore when speaking English for I barely use it since my moving to France five years ago, so maybe writing my articles in English could help me improve my vocabulary in Shakespeare's language. Plus, I could share my thoughts with my non-Romanian friends.

The European Day of Languages is being celebrated on September 26th. I invite you to take a look on this page in order to discover some very interesting fun facts about languages. 

One of the psychologists who works in my hospital told me once that it is actually proven that if children learn a new language before the age of 10 they could learn it like a native. He also told me that there are some studies which have shown that Asian infants, when tested while listening to other Asian languages than their parents', have some sort of reaction when hearing the sounds they have been used to. Here's a beautiful 10 minutes TED talk video on this subject. It also has a subtitle in your own language and the transcript of the talk.

One thing is certain. If I have a child, I will speak to him in Romanian, English and French.

And one of the things on my bucket list is getting to learn Portuguese.

Tenha um bom dia!