Roshni
Introduction
My foreign language journey started in the United States where I was born and raised. I started learning English in preschool, having English being my first language from birth. I grew up in an Indian household though, with Tamil being our native language. I was enrolled at a Tamil language school when I was age 4 and graduated when I was age 15. Pretty soon, I was able to read, write, and speak Tamil fluently.
In 2013, I took my first trip to India where I understood most of Tamil back then, but realized I could not speak it properly. I have been to India more times and it got easier to speak there when I took more classes. Growing up in a bilingual household was interesting – I was exposed to both Indian and American cultures, and I would talk to my extended family only in Tamil since they barely understand English, whereas I would talk to my parents in both Tamil and English.
I developed a deeper language learning interest when I was in 8th grade; then in high school, I started taking French classes, which inspired me to study French here at UIC. I chose French in the first place because I thought it was an easy language to learn and it is a very popular language. Later I started learning Korean on my own and became fluent in it by my sophomore year of high school and was able to read, write, and speak it. Currently I am also learning Greek on my own and I am still at a beginner level.
The happiest part of knowing all these languages is that it opens up a whole new world for me. I figured French was easy because it seemed to be a popular language taught in America and many countries speak French. It is also a Romance language and most useful to learn. I started learning Korean because I developed an interest in Kpop music. I started learning Greek because I wanted to learn a language that was a bit more challenging, it also had a new alphabet which made it more interesting. I also wanted to travel to Greece one time. In Tamil, I can use the language to talk in small village towns in Southern India which I would not be able to do in any other language.