Who am I? Well, I am... that is, a work in progress, I am human after all. That being said my name is Sarah, I am a female American student in my late twenties. I am a bibliophile.
I not only love books but I love to read them. As a teenager I wasn’t grounded from social activities but from reading. That isn’t to say it is the only thing I enjoy. Among my other interests are cooking, music, cinema, dance, and history. There are very few styles or genres in which I cannot find at least one thing I enjoy, so I don’t really have favorites.
Currently one of the things which most consumes my time is being a student. I am in this particular English course focusing on linguistics because I chose to be.
The subject of linguistics has always interested me. I grew up bilingually (English/Spanish) and as I grew older I came across Tolkien. His philological exploration of diverse languages, writing systems, and creating languages has completely fascinated me. After my run-in with Mr. Tolkien I took one year of French through language immersion and then one year from a bad instructor. This briefly dampened my passion for language. This did not enough to prevent me from doing an Italian crash course to help out a friend’s parents as they visited the U.S., with translation and general conversation, even a bit of cooking. I failed with German but next I moved to Turkey and though not fluent I am conversant in Turkish and can read a fair amount.
In Turkey I was able to teach English to 3-5 year old children. It was an incredible experience seeing how quickly children attain a new language, even though they may already have two under their belt. This occurred after a brief stint doing habilitation with a highly functioning autistic boy. Children have a much greater facility with language than adults.
Through all of these linguistically based experiences I have had a great many opportunities to explore language. This semester I look forward to deepening my knowledge and through this my enjoyment of how we as humans relate to one another.
~ Sarah
