Languages

writtenbysahara
Jan 14, 2024
2 min read

I have always been interested in languages. I enjoy studying and learning them.

Spanish was the first language course I took. I enrolled in a Spanish language course at Instituto Cervantes Manila when I was still a college student. Lola was our language teacher. She was wonderful. I learned a lot and had so much fun learning Spanish. But I haven't spoken and/or written in Spanish since. Sigh. Lo siento.

That was only the beginning, though, of me studying and learning languages. When I was pursuing graduate studies, I was required to choose and pass an Asian language course as part of the curriculum. I chose Bahasa Indonesia. I still remember what we did for our final exam. It was a two-part exam. The first part (Wait, was it second? Sheesh. I can't remember. Lol) was the oral presentation. We were invited to a seminar where we had to accommodate officials from the Indonesian embassy, which meant speaking in Indonesian! The most exciting bit was when we had to sing an Indonesian song. We had trouble doing it because we were laughing while singing, but enjoyed a lot. Lol. A day after the performance, our teacher, Ibu L, texted me and told me that the Indonesian embassy officials were impressed by my Indonesian language skills. Terima kasih banyak, Bapak-Bapak!

The second part of the final exam was translating an Indonesian classic novel into English. It was a novel titled Salah Asuhan by Abdul Muis. It was a very difficult thing to do mainly because the book was published in 1928. Because it was an old book, a number of words and phrases were already outdated. And language learners like me know that languages evolve over time. Despite the challenges involved in translating, I passed the two-part exam with flying colors. Benarlah!

I also enrolled in a German language course, but did not complete it because I went somewhere to study. Auf wiedersehen! Yes, yes. I had been a lot of places studying. Lol. I studied Turkish too. Teşekkürler!

So here's something I wrote more than a month ago. It is in Bahasa Indonesia.

Ini tentang kucingku yang namanya Ching. Terima kasih untuk membaca!

Cheers,

Sahara

#saharapiang #writing #languages #bahasaindonesia #indonesianlanguage #kucing #menulisdalambahasaindonesia #menulis #cat