Well, maybe you're wondering who this crazy guy is... who would want to know as many languages as possible? I do :)
Actually, there are lots of people around the world who share this hobby/obsession with me, for lots of different purposes and differnt goals.
For me, language learning is a strange desire of the soul for knowledge, having as secondary goals stuff like travelling and knowing other cultures and so on. Also, another interresting purpose relies on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (future post on that), which makes me basically search for different ways of thinking.
Now, a short language-biography:
My mother language is Brasilian Portuguese, but, since I remember I existed, I had English classes at school, so I can comfortably speak in any of these languages. Also, in High School, I had an one-year-long trip to England, which's the only English-speaking country I've ever been (so far).
Besides that, the first official "second" language I started to learn was Esperanto. My father introduced it to me. I was 11 or something, exactly when I was discovering my passion for Languages and Linguistic. But, unfortunatelly, Esperanto became uninterresant for me (that time). I hope I can continue my studies and have some posts in it here.
A couple of years later, I started Japanese. At that time I wanted a lot to live in Japan and, as half of my blood is Japanese, I had a lot of stimulus. But as my life was changing, so was my thoughts, and I stopped the Japanese course in the begining of the intermediate level (as often). I'll try to revive my Japanese and post something here too.
My interest in learning languages was always there, so that, still in High School, I had Spanish classes for a year, studied some Latin and learned Toki Pona. Ah, Toki Pona, a nice language, which really helps to clean your mind and think simpler... (for simple texts, I'll give the translation in Toki Pona as well)
Ok, after that, in the month before begining College, I started learning French by myself, which I was willing to continue. However, the majority of friends I made there wanted to begin German (which is important for mechatronical engineers), so that I began with them. Currently (and ironically), there are just two of the ten of us left (including me, of course).
And finally (is it?), still in College, I looked for some Klingon and Na'vi, but, most importantly, from the great writer J.R.R. Tolkien, Sindarin and Quenya! The elvish languages are really interesting, and I heard from a friend of mine that they have more speakers than Esperanto itself! Well, these ones I'm still in the beginning of the journey, but I'll try to bring some text in Quenya (my favourite) with its circumlocutions.
For the future, my list of "ten" is completed with Russian, Hindi, Persian, Arabic, Mandarin, Finnish and Turkish, some of which I had already did some preview :)
