Babbel Team members Anne, Janet, David and Crisi explain why, of all things, they chose to learn Turkish, Dutch, Polish and Indonesian.
Anne: Turkish
When I was a little girl, I was always wondering about the kids who shared our backyard in Berlin. They were constantly calling out my name. When I leaned out of the window and asked what they wanted, they would look at me blankly. As soon as I ducked back inside, it would start again: “Ann-eh! Annnnnnn-eh!“
It turns out that Anne, (Ann-eh, as it is pronounced in German) is in fact the Turkish word for “mom“. Had a grownup in my vicinity spoken Turkish, they probably could have saved me weeks of headaches!
Almost thirty years later I’m finally learning Turkish. Even after just a few weeks of studying, Berlin has become a completely new city for me. Businesses with once mysterious names suddenly reveal themselves to be “The Star Driving School” or “The Harbor Café”. All of a sudden my neighbors have names that I can pronounce. And I can ask for all the goodies in the markets by their proper names and not just by pointing at “that…”
In the park and on the metro my ears prick up. Listening out for Turkish has changed my perception of the city and of the people who live here. Sometimes I even understand some bits and pieces.
People ask me, “why Turkish?” Well, it meets my three main requirements for learning a language: good music, good food, and fun grammar!
Now I wish I had started thirty years ago. The question is not “why Turkish” but “why only now?”
Anne from Berlin directs the Support Team and is learning Turkish with Babbel.
Janet: Dutch
Dutch is an underdog of the European language set. It suffers from something of an image problem, much like the country and its people, a less an obvious choice in the language learning stakes than its more widely spoken, sexier cousins, English, German or French, or exotica like Japanese or Mandarin. I started learning Dutch because my significant other (husband) is from Zeeland, in the south of the Netherlands, but I’ve realised along the way that the Dutch language has plenty of charm of its own.
Worldwide more than 30 million people speak Dutch, not just in Holland but in Belgium, South Africa, the South Pacific and South America. And English words of Dutch origin are countable in the thousands. Cookie, biscuit and many, many seafaring terms: dok=dock; boei=buoy, jacht=yacht; schipper=skipper.
Dutch grammar is much less daunting than German, the spelling is more logical than English but the pronunciation is, let’s be honest, a challenge. The easiness of mastering the 13 vowels and four diphthongs depends on where you come from – if you’re a native Swiss-German, Norwegian or Hebrew speaker, you’ll pick it all up more quickly. It’s been described as “A nearly fatal throat disease” for the guttural, throat constricting ‘sch’s and ‘g’s.
I’ve been visiting the Netherlands on and off for years, but I’ve yet to nail the pronunciation of the beach district where we regularly stay, Scheveningen or, embarrassingly, my significant other’s surname. Fortunately, the Dutch are a forgiving lot and indulge my mutilations of the language with good humour.
Janet from Tasmania, Australia, edits our English courses and learns Dutch with Babbel
David: Polish
The language is completely nuts. What strange letters! How do you pronounce “Wszystkiego najlepszego” anyway? I never imagined I would even come in contact with the language. Italian, French and even Japanese were more important to me. But now I thank fate for introducing me to Polish.
When I came to the eastern German city of Frankfurt/Oder for a year to do a foreign exchange, I wanted above all to improve my German. But living there at the border with Poland you should speak at least a little Polish… and at the university they were offering it. I went back and forth. Isn’t it too hard? Could I do it? I reasoned that I had time to at least get a passing mark.
So I signed up for Basic Polish 1A. The pronunciation turned out to be not that hard at all. I found out that Polish was almost like Russian, except that it uses our alphabet—even though it’s a Slavic language. I found that very interesting.
The Poles I’ve met are very nice and have always been helpful. I also find the country and the culture to be really fascinating.
A year and a half later I still want to learn more Polish. I want to get to know the beauty of a culture like the Polish one closer up.
David, from Bogotá, Colombia, passed both semesters of Polish with the highest marks. He edits Babbels Spanish courses and learns Polish with Babbel.
Crisi: Indonesian
I like to learn ”just a bit” of all sorts of languages… preferably the more difficult and exotic ones, like Thai or Arabic. All at once.
Usually you can’t get very far with languages if you don’t put in the extra time and energy. But this is actually not the case with Indonesian. It’s my favorite language at the moment. Why? Because…
- It’s the language they speak in several exciting tropical places I want to travel to:
- Indonesia comprises of more than 17,500 islands that cover a total of 1,912,988 square kilometers, and on top of that, there is Singapore and Malaysia.
- Fascinating—some ancient—cultures like Borobudur on Java and Georgetown in Malaysia
- Amazing flora and fauna—Jungles, volcanoes, lakes, tigers, orangutans, the near-extinct Sumatran rhino
- It’s one of the easiest languages you can learn:
- It’s written with Latin letters—no complicated alphabet to learn
- Totally straightforward pronunciation, everything is pronounced as it looks
- Extremely simple grammar
- It’s more widely spoken than you might think:
- Indonesian is spoken by more than 162 million people
- Malaysian is virtually identical to Indonesian—that’s 12 million more people
- In Singapore 12-16% of the people speak it as well
- That’s useful! You can get pretty far with just Indonesian
- The language is just easy to learn—and lots of fun:
- Breaking down compound words can be pure poetry:
- Mata hari=eye day=eye of the day=sun (and of course… Mata Hari!)
- orang utan = person forest
- I’m a big fan of structure! As you can tell from this blog post.
Crisi is a classic “Berliner by choice”. She works in marketing at Babbel and is currently learning Portuguese and Indonesian with Babbel.
Read this post in: German (Deutsch), French (Français), Spanish (Español), Italian (Italiano)