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a gift to myself

 I'm turning 57 in a few weeks. Not ancient, but definitely not young. My grandfather died at 57. I have that in the back of my head. No, I don't see myself croaking any time soon, but even if I live to 100, I have more years behind me than in front of me. So what am going to do?


I'm teaching myself to speak Bulgarian! And yes, that involves learning not only a language, but also a whole new alphabet. This is a gift from me to me for me. I think it's a shame that American schools don't do more to teach students to be multilingual. Back when I was in school, we could study Spanish, French, German or Russian (which was eliminated before I even finished high school). I can't say that I know anyone who took these classes who became truly proficient in the 2nd language they studied. 3 years of German and I speak it about as well as I did before taking the classes. (OK, I had some German speaking relatives, so that helped) I got straight A's all 3 years. My senior year I took French, only because Russian was no longer offered. Spanish never really interested me. I don't know why, it just didn't. 

Knowing a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th, 5th) language, especially in this day and age, would seem to be a must. Whatever your chosen profession, I'd think you could expand your work just by being able to communicate with colleagues/customers in another language. It opens up new markets. 

More importantly, you learn better overall communication skills, and that's a bonus for anyone. 5 minutes on social media demonstrates how little we think of our own language. Now imagine someone speaking your language, but as a 2nd language. We probably come across as morons. Sure, social media often isn't considered anything serious...unless you're a politician or celebrity. But language matters and is important. Communication is probably the most important skill any human has. Unless you live alone on an island with no contact with the outside world, communication is a necessity. 

I communicate through music as often as I can, but it's not the clearest form of communication. I can reach people, and they can react/respond, often how I hope they do, but to be able to sit down with someone, from another part of the world, and another culture, is magic to me. I often chat with people from a number of other countries, thanks to Google Translate. But 2-dimensional text ain't the same as honest face-to-face conversation. Understanding tone of voice and body language, along with the spoken (or even unspoken) words makes conversation much more important. 

As I understand, there are maybe 7 million people on this planet who speak Bulgarian. It's also an aging country. Some of those native speakers are dying off. I hope to add at least 1 more person capable of speaking/understanding the language. I have a long passion for their music. The more I learn about the country, its culture, its cuisine, its geography, the more I'm fascinated by the place. I'd love to visit. I think it would be great to visit small towns and villages, and have conversations with the regular, everyday people. I'd love to hear their stories in their own words, in their own language.

Of course, I chose what is considered to be one of the hardest languages to learn for an English-speaking American. But that doesn't mean I won't try. I actually already have a favorite letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It looks like a snowflake and sounds like "zhhh". It's pretty neat to look at a word in a foreign alphabet and recognize what the different symbols sound like! Довиждане for now. I have studying to do. 

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