Introduction

My story with language learning started many years ago when I was a child.

1. English

My first foreign language was English which I started to learn in 5th grade. I was very passionate because it was something new and the textbook (Discoveries) was very interesting. So I was learning English 8 years till I graduated from high school. It was always a pleasure for me learning this language and gradually started to understand some articles and simplified texts. After 3 years with Discoveies,following 3 years with changing 7 or 8 teachers I had to learn straightforwardly Cambridge Advanced. It was a huge jump for me but I think this gave me the foundation I needed to use English independently. So when I became student in the university I started to read articles from internet, read books (adapted to intermediate level ) and to watch films and tv series. I had no one to speak with but my comprehension of the language grew dramatically. Many years later I started to speak occasionally but at that time I learnt passively. In school we followed the old fashion system - we made dictations, grammar exercises (“fill the gaps”), listened cassette tapes and tried to answer the questions at the end. But the quality of these cassettes was awful and we understood a little. In the university I did not want to learn English because there were many huge groups, everyone wanted to learn it into the beginner level because it was easy and teachers were not sufficient. Till now I continue to learn new words, expressions, watch videos and even make grammar exercises from time to time.

2. Russian

My second foreign language was Russian. I hat to learned it as a second foreign language after English obligatory in 8th grade. Then it was a strange experience for me. I was learning English for 3 years which was completely different from Bulgarian, my native language. And then Russian have same alphabet - cyrillic - as Bulgarian and so many identical words - some of them “false friends”. For me the writing was difficult because of existing of doubled letters and the grammar was so different from Bulgarian and English that I completely messed up everything. The pronunciation was difficult too but somehow I coped with it. I learnt Russian only one year and then learnt it again 4 years later when I was in the university. Then I learnt it in a beginner level because I was forgotten almost everything both from grammar and from vocabulary. I lernt it voluntarily because there was no second foreign language learning except for a few specialities like Tourism. The good news were that we had a good textbook and practical grammar with exercises. I remember how our teaher was so pleased that we went voluntarily to lectures and were so studious. Maybe because we were only 2 students - all other student were from schools with Russian. So I learnt it till I could managed it with my other (obligatory) lectures - 2 years. It was useful for me because I repassed the grammar, trained it, learnt new words and the course was focused in business speaking - this was new and difficult for me but highly interesting. We had additional dialogues and try to made conversations on business purposes. After I couldn’t learn Russian I tried to watch tv series and read books. Maybe 5 years later I was surprised from myself that I understood colloquial Russian which I never learnt. Of course my speaking is terrible - when I try to speak to a Russian, he or she immediately tells me to speak in Bulgarian. This is because my Russian is simply Bulgarian words with Russian endings. With only a 3 years actively learning my Russian is scattered - I have many gaps in grammar, poor pronunciation and small vocabulary but because of relatively good exposure I somehow have good listening and understanding abilities. Bulgarian and Russian have significant differences in grammar but have maybe about 70% lexical similarities. Maybe they are like English and French - so many common words but different grammar. Nevertheless I think I have only passive skills in Russian because of my laziness.

3. Spanish

In 9th grade we had an oportunity to choose which language to learn as a second foreign language - 2 hours per week. We could choose between Russian, Spanish and German (there were no enough students to form a french group). So I decided to quit with Russian and to dive in Spanish. I liked Spanish very much because of the latino music but frankly I fell in love with this language. I can’t say a purpose or something else for learning Spanish. But I can say that I love this language and have learnt it 24 years till now. Our textbook was Espanol 2000 but we couldn’t pass through it for 4 years. We was going ahead so slowly that I had to refresh each year my level. I think the textbook was good, interesting but we had no enough learning time. So at the end of the high school I was somewhere around B1. In these years we had no internet, no Spanish books, no tv in Spanish or even radio. Then in the university things changed. I decided to continue with Spanish but faced a huge problem. All students, willing to learn Spanish as a foreign language, was gathered in one audiance to be divided into smaller groups.The teacher asked us who of us were had learnt in Spanish high schools. From about 200 students all except 5 had been pupils in Spanish schools. And I was one of these 5 students. I was horrified then because I couldn’t compare with these students - they had certificated, they were learning the language 4 years 10 hours per week plus all other disciplines in Spanish. Then our teacher put us into one group that studied Spanish as a second foreign language. This group was from the Tourism speciality and we became to study with them. The textbook was very difficult - so many new words, expressions, colloquial dialogues. Our teacher was excellent - she spoke in Spanish, explained everything in Spanish. We had two exams - one was written - very difficult - dictation, grammar exercises. And we had oral exam - a free conversation and to retell a random lesson in indirect speech. I am so grateful for these two years in the university. I learnt a lot and became so hungry for new knowledge. Sadly but I couldn’t continue learning Spanish in the university because I had other lectures in that time. So I try to learn by myself and to try to teach myself the rest of the textbook. In addition I bought all textbooks, student books, dictionaries and etc I found in the university and in the city. I tried to read them, made some exercises but it was not enough to keep my level. I found two newspapers - El pais - and try to read it but couldn’t understand much of them. This was because I didn’t understand the whole grammar. Then I had 4 tenses that I didn’t learn - the Subjuntivo. So I tried to understand it but it was difficult to me to exercise on it. I made the exercises on a grammar book but still had gaps. I tried to read some books I found in the libraries but they were university textbooks or critics on literature or grammar books - I couldn’t found then graded readers. So after 3 years trying different thing I became gradually forgetting the language. I graduated, started to work and 7 years after my university classes I understood that I was almost completely forget Spanish. So I asked myself what I was doing wrong and understood that I had to take private lesson to take the whole grammar - to get the whole picture and to have a oportunity to use the language. So I read one grammar to refresh (I had nothing to refresh then but that is the word) what I thought I knew and made a try. I started with 2 hours per week for about 2 months. I tried to speak a little and to learn new words but my main focus was to cover the whole grammar. It was introduction for me because never had private lessons before. So the first course was time for me to plan the strategy. Then I spent half an year leaning English and Business English to refresh my knowledge and to speak. After that I take private lessons in Spanish one year - 2 hours per week. I made exercises with Subjuntivo, perifrasis verbales, etc. Although my teacher insisted to speak with her about something - whether, work, some news, etc. She found cortometrajes in YouTube and wanted to listen them, to try to understand the context and to extract words and expressions. It was very useful for me - to learn to examine the video and to understand colloquial speech. In addition I started to read in internet about language learning, techniques, flash cards and etc. In the end I understood that I was right - when I passed through whole grammar I could have right context, I could understand a book. So I started to read first articles from internet, then - books.

4. Italian

About 20 years ago I thought it could be very good to try to learn some languages that are close to Spanish - Italian and Portuguese.(I don’t know why but I always consider French very distant from me and Spanish.) Then I was in high school, our Spanish teacher told us some words about Portuguese. I have heard some Portuguese from songs. Italian for me was totally unknown - I only like songs of Eros Ramazzotti. But I like Roman empire, latin language, italian culture - opera, architecture. Maybe it was only a matter of time to start learning Italian. So many years back I had a strong feeling that I must learn exactly these two languages. No one around me (till now) speak Italian, Portuguese or Spanish (I have only one friend that luckily forgot Spanish). Some of my relatives was learning French including my mum and dad but for me French was suspicious and really taugh for learning. So I lived about 14 years with that thought in my mind that in some point of my life I would become learning Italian. So in 2014 I realized that there was no time to spend “dreaming” or more likely “sleeping” with such a thought and took action. After one year and a half learning Spanish I switch to Italian. The reason to choose Italian was that there were no teachers in Portuguese. It is an exotic language in Bulgaria and although there is a Portuguese philology and some schools with portuguese classes there were only 2 or 3 language cources in some academies and almost no one private teacher. So I found that there was a teacher in Italian in my academy where I took classes in Spanish and started to learn Italian. And I found that this was not so easy as I thought. I faced samed difficulties like with Russian. Same alphabet but different spelling and pronunciation, 70% similarities in the vocabulary but many “false friends”. When I started I only could read in Italian but my teacher told me that this is a huge step forward. I wanted to learn from some textbook like Teach yourself but my teacher suggest to try with Progetto italiano. It was boring for me and the texts were for children. Little by little I realized that I had to invent a new approach of learning Italian before I was dying of boredom. So I convinced my teacher to try to focus on differences between languages and to skip similarities. Also we made exercises on grammar where I felt unsecure - like with pronomi raccombinati, congiuntivo etc. At the end my teacher was thinking to learn Spanish and I after one year could read articles and started to read little by little. My goal with Italian in the beginning was only to read and understand speaking. I had no intention to speak or write because I had no friends with Italian.These lessons were very helpful for me because I repassed whole Spanish grammar. I told to my teacher how is something in Spanish and she told me how is this in Italian. In the beginning was difficult to me to switch between languages. Now is difficult to me too. But this comparison was very helpful to my future learnings especially when I added Portuguese to the soup. Little by little I read srticles about grammar from Treccani, I read 3 grammar book in Bulgarian but thoroughly. I started to read articles from Wikipedia, started to search in Italian, switched Google in Italian. And finally last year I found some interesting podcasts in Italian and started massively to listen. Before this I listen two seasons in Comissar Rex:Special unit in Italian with Bulgarian subtitles. So when I broaden my listening abilities I decided to write. And these diaries are for that reason. I viewed something similar in Spanish maybe 3 or 5 years ago and I liked the idea. I tried it immediately but I felt not prepared.

5. Portuguese

As I said I wanted to learn Italian and Portuguese after Spanish. After 22 years of thinking about I started to fight with Portuguese. In these years I bought books, grammars, dictionaries, search internet and read two grammar books. I tried to learn to read but this is sooooooo difficult in European Portuguese. So I learnt to read in Brazilian Portuguese first and continue to batle with European one. When I was child I heard from somewhere (maybe tv or cinema) some European Portuguese and I was fascinated, tantalized. I couldn’t understand anything, of course, but I started to dream some day to learn European Portuguese. I had some textbooks and grammars (sadly in Russian) and before 12 years I finally bought the unique Portuguese grammar book in Bulgarian from 1981. I was thrilled and immediately read it. The second Portuguese grammar book was out of print for almost 18 years and when was made second edition I bought it immediately, too. So 22 years back I batled both Portuguese and Russian and I surrendered. The explanations in Russian about Portuguese phonology puzzled me. I remember the explanation of the sound “schwa” which has an exact correspondence in Bulgarian (the sound “ъ”) that the sound is something between “э” and “ы”. I was stunned, petrified. I was about 16 and was studied Russian and I just tried to understand something from curiosity. I remember I asked my mum about this I she told me that Russians couldn’t explain good phonology. She was good with Russian although she was English philologist. Yes, I learnt more Russian than Portuguese. So then I understood something, many thing couldn’t understand and I stuck at that level - only phonology. But now I realize that I remember many things and that time was not lost. Many years later I read the FSI Course “From Spanish to Portuguese” and understood many things about similarities and differencies between Spanish and Portuguese. Then after another few years I watch the film “Trash” - first the trailer and then I found the film. I watched without subtitles and I was so amazed that I understand so many, maybe 60% or more of the film. So after my adventures with Spanish and Italian I decided to add Portuguese to the mix. Maybe the trigger was about 3 years ago when I found in a bookshop a self-study book for Portuguese with two discs (also found similar books for Spanish,Itaian,French,Greek) and I immediately bought them and read them in a hurry. And the phonetics was so good explained in Bulgarian. So with so many ons and offs in my Portuguese studying 4 months ago I finally decided to make a starting point with this book in mind - Start speaking Portuguese in 40 lessons (original title: “40 lecons pour parler portugais”). The lessons are short and I like it. I found some podcasts in European Portuguese and started to listen without subtitles. I want to familiarize with pronunciation first. Now I understand a lot but now is time to start learning new words and start to read some books. For me at the beginning Brazilian Portuguese was strange, suspicious and so distant from European one. That time I couldn’t understand no one of them if they are spoken. But many years later I found in YouTube grammar lessons from a teacher from Brazil - Professor Pasquale explica. These lessons I watched twice. These lessons and “Trash” changed my mind about Brazilian Portuguese. Now I am split between European and Brazilian Portuguese and hope I learn them both (or stuck in Portunhol between them).