My mother’s been a code-switcher, like you, as long as I can remember! She got to western Finland as a child when (pre-war) Finnish Karelia was evacuated, and we moved close to the (new) south-eastern border when I was four. Always soon after she answered the phone I heard in her dialect whether the call was from a neighbour or my father’s family in the west. And I learned to speak more formally, because I felt insecure about the dialects. Also because I had a big sister who spoke on my behalf, I started speaking (to people outside the family) late – more comfortably only in my twenties, and I could almost say that I learnt to read and write before learning to speak.
Now that you’ve made me ponder this I realise, for the first time, that perhaps this background of how I learnt to use my mother tongue has affected the way I learn foreign languages. Like for you, grammar has always been the easiest part for me. But my major weakness is in pronunciation. I became fully aware of some sounds in English only when learning and also staring to teach Modern Greek (when I was twenty-seven). Polish pronunciation is a huge challenge for me. Learning vocabulary has not been that hard for me, because I’ve had an excellent memory of texts I’ve read. Just when studying Polish around ten years ago, I felt that remembering separate words had got harder when I’d aged – whereas the other members of my theatre troupe are surprised how quickly I learn and never forget my lines.
Yes, I’m definitely in that camp – all for the readers’ right for interpretation and extrapolation.
I do watch some things (recently Money Heist, The Witcher, Mindhunter) but only with one of my sons, who needs that sharing. And of course I read other things, all the time. But I never feel like making fanworks on the basis of anything else than HP. I trust the HP fandom won’t die – and I believe it will outlive me.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninetydegrees
(no subject)
Now that you’ve made me ponder this I realise, for the first time, that perhaps this background of how I learnt to use my mother tongue has affected the way I learn foreign languages. Like for you, grammar has always been the easiest part for me. But my major weakness is in pronunciation. I became fully aware of some sounds in English only when learning and also staring to teach Modern Greek (when I was twenty-seven). Polish pronunciation is a huge challenge for me. Learning vocabulary has not been that hard for me, because I’ve had an excellent memory of texts I’ve read. Just when studying Polish around ten years ago, I felt that remembering separate words had got harder when I’d aged – whereas the other members of my theatre troupe are surprised how quickly I learn and never forget my lines.
Yes, I’m definitely in that camp – all for the readers’ right for interpretation and extrapolation.
I do watch some things (recently Money Heist, The Witcher, Mindhunter) but only with one of my sons, who needs that sharing. And of course I read other things, all the time. But I never feel like making fanworks on the basis of anything else than HP. I trust the HP fandom won’t die – and I believe it will outlive me.