Since I’ve set up my blog, I got many messages from people who told me that they really like its name. I am, of course, really happy about this feedback because the name of my blog means a lot to me. It is the result of an interesting discussion and a long thinking progress. Some of the readers actually asked me if there is a story behind the title and so I decided to share the little story behind my blog title with you today. Enjoy!

My friend and fellow student Maria and I have a very nice tradition. Before long holidays start (e.g. summer break, Christmas holidays) we have lunch together, usually at an all you can eat Asian restaurant. It was already more than a year ago, when we sat in this restaurant, eating all we could eat, and started a deep and philosophical discussion: Why do we - personally - learn languages?

To give you some background: we both study translation with Russian as one of our main languages and we both study linguistics. So of course, this discussion was heavily influenced by our complaints in regards to our (in our opinion still too low) skills in Russian and theoretical linguistic background.

During the discussion we spoke about various issues related to language learning. Some things you hear very often, such as “It’s great to read literature in their original language”. Some were more philosophical, such as that the concept of human language usage is fascinating. The more we discussed the more I realized that I was not able to answer the question: Why do I learn languages?

It’s not because …

It’s not because I travel – Let’s be honest, I could travel to nearly all places with a few words of English, my hands and feet and big smile on my face.

It’s not because I want to read literature – German is the one language most literature is translated into. There is hardly any book that I couldn’t read in German.

It’s not because I want to watch movies/serials – Again, a lot of movies and serials are dubbed into German in a very high quality + I don’t watch many movies in general.

It’s not because I want to impress others – Who would I want to impress? Most people can’t appreciate your talent and are already impressed when you are able to order a croissant in French… and usually I stop telling people which languages I speak as soon as they put on a strange face – which is normally after three languages.

It’s not because I have many international friends – Most of friends including my boyfriend don’t care about language learning at all + most of them are Austrian.

It’s not because I want to live in foreign countries – Although I love travelling, I’m pretty sure that I will never live in a foreign country for a long period of time.

Well, now I know the reasons I’m not learning languages for. But I really love language learning, I’m very passionate about it and there must be a reason behind that, no?

Some explanations I could find:

I love languages because…

I love languages because they are like riddles which you have to decode step by step. That’s why I especially like getting to know a new language.

But I also enjoy the advanced – the “mastery” – level. I want to know everything about the language, why the sentence is as it is and not any different etc. By the way, I also enjoy this not only for foreign languages but also my native language.

I love languages because the fact that thousands of languages exist on earth is truly amazing. As I do not believe in the story of Babel, I try to understand how all the different languages could elaborate over time.

And I love to see how the languages changed or are changing over time or how the dialects are evolving compared to the standard language.

I love to play with languages, finding suitable expressions, analysing metaphors or idiomatic expressions.

I love the feeling when somebody is talking in a foreign language – even if it’s not me – and I can understand what he or she is saying.

I love everything related to languages: reading, writing, translating, teaching, studying, linguistics etc.

I love speaking about languages – and most of my friends hate me for that. But I managed to combine their hobbies (e.g. watching soccer) with some language related information

My overall conclusion to the discussion was: I learn languages simply because I love it!

So a few days later, still fascinated by the discussion, I found this slogan I simply love languages. I found that it describes me and my passion best. And of course, I think it sounds really fancy, so when I decided to open up the blog I used my motto as title

Thank you very much for reading this post. I know there is not so much “practical” content in it, but I really felt like sharing this story with you. I also hope that it helps to understand the overall concept of my blog.

Your turn!

Do you want to share why YOU are learning languages?

Update July 25, 2014: I came across a great initiative - a blog bang: In this blog bang bloggers collect their articles about WHY they love what they do or do what they love.And well, that’s what this article is basically about. So I decided to submit this article to this blog bang and you can find the collection of articles (most of them in German on www.markuscerenak.com)

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