Hello, classmates! Welcome to my blog!
My name is Lily Oliver. I'm a linguistics major and a Japanese minor. I'm a senior now and I was supposed to be graduating in December, but things didn't quite work out. It's a little bit disappointing since I'm ready to figure out what I want to do with my life, but I really enjoy learning and being in an academic setting, so in a way I'm happy to still be at OU.
As you can see in my Favorite Places post, I studied abroad in Yamaguchi, Japan in the Spring of 2013. I was required to take 7 classes so I took 6 intensive Japanese language classes and one Korean class. It was pretty intense but I wouldn't trade my time there for anything. While I was abroad, I also got to go to different places in Japan: Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Fukuoka, etc.. But my favorite of all of those was my new home Yamaguchi.
It's a stereotype that linguists and linguistics students study tons of languages. In most cases, that's not necessarily true. The "studying" that is done is looking at how languages work. But in the case of some of my classmates and I, we are total nerds who will try to learn any language that comes our way. I've taken Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Korean classes and I'll start a Chinese class soon. On my own and with friends, I've studied Irish (my favorite language!), Welsh, Swedish, Esperanto, and a few more that I can't remember at the moment. So as you can see, I like me some languages.
(a picture of library stairs taken by greenmonsterz7 at deviantart)
My future plans are pretty unclear to me but I'll most likely be applying for the JET Programme so that I can teach English in Japan. I'm not sure if that's the direction I want to go in but I think it's a good place to start. Random tidbit: If I could have any job in the world it would be living in the Gaeltacht helping to come up with a proper revitalization plan for Irish that would be more effective. Oh also, I'd totally be living in a thatched cabin. But for now I'm trying to be more realistic. So I'll go back to Japan, make some money, and maybe go to grad school somewhere for language acquisition or applied linguistics.
My hobbies other than learning languages include:
-starting craft projects I'm never going to finish
-reading books until the last chapter and then stopping
-scrolling through netflix trying to find something to watch until I give up and bug my friends on facebook instead
-listening to my favorite albums over and over again until I'm sick of them
I also like video games, but I haven't played many lately for some reason.
I love to socialize so if any of you read this and have any questions or comments or just want to talk about something, please let me know! It's nice to have friends in every class. :)
Hey Lily! I found your interdiction of yourself to be very wonderful. After reading about your experience in Japan it makes me even more excited about the opportunity for myself to study abroad someday! I am glad you enjoyed your time abroad! As an anthropology major I have come into contact with many Linguist Majors! I am very impressed by your love of languages! I tried my hand at French, but unfortunately languages seem to not be my thing.
ReplyDeleteI can 100% relate to all of your other hobbies about books and Netflix especially! I also wanted to tell you that I think your future plans for teach and language revitalization are super noble and sound like an amazing time! I hope everything works out for you!
Best,
Christian Allen
Your comment made me happy! :) I like the enthusiasm!
DeleteYou know, it's kind of silly sounding but the best thing to do before you try to learn another language is to learn HOW to learn another language. Make sense? haha I took Spanish for several years but it never "clicked." Then I took French in high school and I started to understand what the heck was going on. Then before I got into college, I started learning bits of Esperanto. Esperanto is ridiculously helpful (especially if you're learning a Romance language) because it's basically designed to teach you how to learn the parts of a language super easily. Just two weeks of studying it 30 minutes per day will give you incredible insight into how to learn a language.
After I studied Esperanto and got into my German classes, it was like suddenly everything made sense. Not to sound full of myself or anything, but the teacher had me explain things to the class sometimes because I had a better understanding than they did.
So yeah, I totally nerded out there but when I hear people say they don't think they can learn languages I get all passionate and have to write an essay about how they definitely can! Imagine how impressed your fellow archaeologists would be if you could speak the language of the people you were studying. Hardcore.
Have a great semester!
Lily
Lily and Christian, I am so glad you two have connected... because really, we need to get Christian excited about languages since that is one of the most beautiful dimensions of anthropology! :-)
DeleteHiya Lily!
ReplyDeleteThis is an awesome introduction! I love your passion for learning languages! That is truly inspiring. I have taken French for 7 years and am praying to be fluent soon, so I can relate to your excitement a little bit! It's awesome you were able to study abroad in Japan, it's such a wonderful experience! I did my study abroad in France :) I like that you enjoy starting craft projects that you never finish because I do the EXACT same thing. Your goal to teach English in Japan is wonderful too! I'm trying to do the same thing inf France! Haha so we have plenty in common! Keep up the awesome blogging!
Hannah
Seven years of French! That's so impressive to me! I'm kind of all over the place in my language learning so even though I love everything, I haven't studied one for more than 4 years (and that would be Japanese). I'd love to know how your future as a teacher goes. Maybe after this class we'll both be inspired to blog about our experiences teaching abroad (if you end up doing that)! It would be so interesting to see what it's like in France as compared to Japan. I'm so excited! haha
DeleteAll the best!
Lily
What a great example of how languages and people "click" or just don't click... here is Hannah becoming fluent in French, and there is Christian who definitely needs a language to study that will click for him. I will confess to having my favorites among the languages: for sheer fun, Italian is my favorite language that I have studied. It is not the most difficult or even the most exciting in terms of linguistics, but my brain is just happy when I am speaking or reading Italian! But for poetry, it would be Russian. And for grammar, ohhhhh, absolutely: Sanskrit. The coolest grammar ever.
DeleteI'm guessing Lily's blog may turn out to be a place where we language nerds can unite this semester! :-)
Wow, Lily, this was so much fun to read! I am really glad to meet linguistics majors... I probably should have been a linguistics major myself, but just as you point out here, I was so infatuated with studying the languages that I didn't have time to add a linguistics major; I double majored in Classical Languages and Slavic Languages. Since so much important linguistic work in the 20th century was by Slavic linguists, though, I got a nice dose of linguistic knowledge indirectly through my Russian and Polish and Old Church Slavic classes. But Berkeley has an amazing lingusitics major... argh, I should have been a linguistics major too! And I am so jealous that you have studied a Celtic language! That is something I would so much like to do... but there's never enough time! And of course the Celtic storytelling tradition is one of the great traditions of the world, so perhaps you will do an Irish topic for this class!!! Anyway, you will find all kinds of connections between your linguistic adventures and the readings in this class, and I look forward to seeing which way you will go with the readings and your stories and your project for this class!
ReplyDeleteOooh, have you ever heard of Duolingo? If not, I think you'd like it! They JUST released an Irish course (in beta) yesterday. It's a pretty challenging course but it's great. They have a bunch of other languages, too, and a few are being "incubated" at the moment. I hope they'll add some Slavic languages on there some day! They're adding Esperanto soon. hehehe
DeleteYou are so lucky to have those tools and opportunities, Lily! When I taught Polish way back in the 90s in grad school, finding audio-visual material was a nightmare, and of course we couldn't just chat with people in Poland do language exchange, or find beautiful websites to explore online. For language teachers and students, the Internet makes so much possible that I never even dreamed of pre-Internet!
DeleteAt the top of my list is learning Hindi... I thought I might do that this summer, but the Un-Textbook took over my life, ha ha. But SOMEDAY I really have to do that!!!
Lily, just to say "thank you" (!!!) for commenting back to your commenters. Doing conversations via blogs is kind of awkward sometimes, but there are strategies that can help and as the semester progresses I am going to try to find some ways to promote conversations and connections. I really appreciate your getting that started here!!!
ReplyDeleteLily, I have to tell you that your introduction was so interesting and inspiring I had to read it twice, seriously!! I think you would be a fantastically fascinating person to know. The places you've been....inspires great jealousy (lol). You have learned so many languages, that's just incredible. I would think one would find it very difficult to keep them separated and not mingle them together; however, different accentuation and pronunciation (Latin-based or not) would probably provide enough differentiation. But, I definitely share your interest in languages. I took Spanish extensively and still speak that pretty well and used it quite a bit on my scuba diving trips to Mexico. The "foreign" (that's ironic-it's native lol) language I chose to take at OU is Cherokee. I am Cherokee and learning that language is so much fun. I enjoy speaking it around the house and practicing when I attend the Red Earth Festival or the Cherokee Art Markets. I would love to learn Gaelic too, as I have a lot of Irish ancestry as well. One of my professors takes a group of sociology majors to Ireland every other summer for a month!! I would KILL to go!!
ReplyDeleteOn a personal note in regards to your travels and accomplishments, I think those will make you an even more incredible person with so much to offer. I'm nearly 40-years-old and there are so many places I want to see as does my daughter. If we could pick anything in the world to do together, we would take Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods job and travel the whole world experiencing cultural cuisine. Kudos to you for being brave and adventurous enough to expand your horizons. I'm sure I'll see you on the news one day....perhaps discovering a long dead language!!!
Oh my gosh, you flatter me! :D I'm really not as interesting as my introduction apparently makes me sound. At least that's how I feel. I see myself as just some nerdy girl who has gone to Japan and has crazy dreams. hehe But I'm glad to know others don't think I'm so boring! If you ever want to nerd out about languages or anything please feel free to message/email me! I'd love to hear about your adventures in learning Spanish and Cherokee, and I can tell you all the best resources for learning Irish. And some of the worst, unfortunately. I hope one day you and your daughter can go to Ireland together! That would be such a perfect mommy-daughter trip. :) And also you should smuggle me over with you if you do go... hehehe
DeleteDiscovering a long dead language... That would be like... The bonus level in the game of my life. I think I'd be too busy crying out of excitement to actually do any work with the language!
Lily,
ReplyDeleteBefore I say anything else, I just need to say how crazy I think it is to stop reading a book before the last chapter! I can't comprehend it! Is it a creative thing? Do you like to imagine your own ending? Or is it a power struggle thing? You're telling the book that it doesn't have the right to tell you when to stop reading; you'll decide when you're done with the book. I say this jokingly, but it does astonish me.
It's painful, isn't it? Even to me! I really, really hate that I do that. I don't do it on purpose, it's just that when I LOVE a book I never want to finish it. So I end up putting it off until I just forget I never finished it. It's one of my quirks, I guess.
DeleteHa ha, I noticed these comments and had to chime in: I often don't finish books. There's a rule I read somewhere based on your age: take 100, subtract your age - that is the number of pages you should read before you decide whether to abandon a book or not. I abandon plenty of books. It's not a big deal; sometimes I actually really enjoyed what I read a lot. Occasionally I come back. But I never thought about it as a power struggle before, ha ha. I am glad the book cannot jump up and coming running after me, all angry that I did not finish it!!! :-)
ReplyDeleteWow it's awesome that you know several languages. That's a very useful trait to have now, i'm sure you'll do great things with that. I've actually given thought to studying abroad in Japan. I love the culture, the fashion, the food, and basically everything Japanese culture has to offer. I feel you with the crafts part, I always start enthusiastically then end up stopping...and never starting again.
ReplyDeleteLily, I think it’s so awesome that you know so many different languages! I struggled just to learn Spanish in high school, so I think it is definitely a gift to be able to learn languages (and remember them) like you do. I l have also lived in Okinawa, Japan for 5 years when I was younger. It is by far my favorite place I’ve ever been so I get why you like it so much. You seem like you really know what you want out of life and that’s admirable!
ReplyDeleteLily, I'm glad you cleared that up about linguistics majors - I was probably one of those people who would annoy you with my questions about how many languages you speak (sorry!) Its cool that you're interested in learning so many languages on your own, though. Way to take initiative!
ReplyDeleteWow, I can't imagine how cool it must have been to study in JAPAN. You probably saw some really interesting things! Hopefully it wasn't too much of a culture shock to find yourself back in ol' Oklahoma.!
I hope you have a great semester!
Hey Lily, I hope things all work out for you. It’s totally understandable sometimes life throws a curve ball at you. I think your major is quite interesting. You must be fascinated in all the different accents and the way different people use their choice of words and languages. Good for you. I wish you all the best in your future and good luck with this semester.
ReplyDeleteThat is an extreme amount of languages! I cannot imagine knowing that many different languages. Do you plan to become fluent in any of them or do you just enjoy learning the basics of all of them? I have heard many good things about Japan but I have never been. Their culture definitely seems interesting and it is awesome that you want to go back! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteWow you are truly talented. I thought I knew a lot of languages. But by far nothing compared to you. Believe me that is definitely an advantage with the world we live in today. I think it is amazing having a culture outside of the American culture. I would love to visit japan some day. But who knows when. Good luck with this class. I am sure you will do great and who knows your talent might allow you to incorporate some of it into this class.
ReplyDeleteI think that the fact that you want to teach English in Japan is your future is something that is so wonderful! I think that is something that is so selfless and would be such a rewarding experience! Also I commonly find myself searching through Netflix to find something to watch but end up just wasting a lot of time! Hope your semester is going well so far!
ReplyDeleteOne of the best compliments I can give a person is to say that they're interesting, and you certainly fit that label. Linguistics? That's so cool. I'm actually applying for a scholarship to pursue a Masters degree in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology abroad. My majors at the moment are microbiology and Italian, so I know it seems like a bit of a stretch, but I can't help it that I love languages!
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ReplyDeleteTeaching abroad in Japan sounds like it would be a lot of fun, and I’m sure it’s not the only job you’ll have available to you as well, considering how valued people who can speak multiple languages are in today’s job market. It’s awesome how that you are passionate about Gaelic as well. I took an Irish literature class and learned a little bit about the language’s history in relation to how it was used in literature. The Irish native tongue has a pretty sad history, and I hope that revitalization efforts will help to see the language revived in the future. I hope that you can be a part of it as well, since it’s your dream.
Lily,
ReplyDeleteYou're the first linguistics major that I have met, kinda, so far! I would think that learning how languages function would be a difficult and confusing matter, but maybe that because I never really put much thought into it. The fact that you have studied and learned so many of them is pretty impressive and awesome in itself. So many of us think we know what we want to do in life and pursue a set path. I think that it is actually very cool that you're waiting until graduation in order to see where life takes you. Good luck with your future, and enjoy the rest of the semester!
Hey Lily! It is always fun to meet another curious mind! Although I personally do not know any other languages, my Granddad and my Grandma both spoke at least five languages a piece and knew parts of many others! I always found that to be an incredible skill. My goal is to someday make myself sit down and start to learn Dutch. Well, I wish you the best of luck the remainder of this semester as well as your pursuits to teach in Japan! I have a wonderful family friend who has been teaching English in Thailand for the past eight years and she absolutely loves it!
ReplyDeleteWow! That’s amazing that you’ve been able to cover that many languages throughout your college career! I love languages as well, but I’ve only had time for Spanish (which I can sort of speak, but only very, very slowly, ha ha). I also can understand a little Telugu, which is a regional language in India, since my family’s from Andhra Pradesh (a province of India). And speaking of Asia, that’s awesome that you’re thinking about teaching English in Japan! If you end up doing the JET Programme, do you still want to live in Yamaguchi, or are you thinking about moving to a bigger city like Tokyo just to see what the cultural change would be like?
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