Learning Estonian
Trip Start
Jul 04, 2005
1
4
37
Trip End
Jul 18, 2005
Brussels,
Belgium
Thursday, June 2, 2005
Most of the people I meet say : "WHAT ?" "Why would you want to learn a language like that ?". I can divide these reactions in two groups :
1. Some of them have never heard the language, so I tell them not to judge too quickly. It is a beautiful, mystical language that will prove a nice challenge to my brain.
2. Other people know the language, but still can't figure why I want to learn it. This includes quite a lot of Estonians and a Russian girl. To them I say : I think it's only normal to learn at least the basics of a language when travelling somewhere. Of course I know that many Estonians speak English or even German, but that is not an excuse. Sometimes I hear people who work in Flanders say that they don't speak Dutch because 'we are from France'. To me that is not the best attitude to meet interesting people.
So, here I am in Belgium, trying to learn Estonian. I took the following steps :
A. contacted an Estonian girl, Piret, who gave me one language-tandem lesson (French-Estonian) but she had to leave for Switzerland, so that didn't really work out
B. met some Estonians in Den Haag (Holland) but they were so fluent in English that it would have been stupid to try to talk to them in Estonian. Anyway, they gave me some pointers and they told me I had a good accent...maybe they were just being nice ?
C. Got myself a book : Colloquial Estonian with cassettes. Now my personal experience about these kinds of books is rather negative. I'm a teacher myself, and most of these self-study books fail in two big departments :
1) the students is often too lazy (this includes me!) : I once tried to study Hungarian with cassettes but I didn't get further than the first 10 lessons. Having said that, I still know the first 10 lessons by heart, just like a parrot!
2) there is 0% feedback. You have nobody to ask questions to, no idea if your pronunciation is good...I know there are computer programmes that can measure your pronunciation, but I tried them and they suck big time.
So now I'm here, listening to the cassettes, hoping to get at least a decent basic knowledge to help me when I leave in about 4 weeks.
