Learning a new language when you are over 50 years-old seems impossible but it will not stop me from trying. I know I will never learn another language well enough to speak it fluently and have a conversation with someone but I might learn enough to understand some things that I read and hear.
One of my hobbies is model railroading and the area of the world that I want my model railroad to emulate happens to be Germany. There is a lot of information online regarding German model railroads but most of it is in the German language. I think learning a little bit of the German language will help me greatly with constructing my model railroad and it will help one day when I travel (with my family) to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I am trying to learn German with the help of Duolingo.
Some of the languages that I have tried learning in the past include Spanish (one of the very few other languages that they teach in American schools), Russian, Italian and Romanian. Of the languages that I mentioned, the language that I was most serious about learning was Romanian. Learning Romanian seemed like a good idea since Adriana (my wife) is from Romania, I have visited the country many times and I once had the idea of one day retiring in the country.
There is one problem with trying to learn to speak Romanian, it is an incredibly difficult language to learn, maybe the most difficult. I have learned a fair amount of Romanian words but to pronounce and use them correctly in a sentence will never happen.
So far learning German seems a little bit easier than the other languages. I think trying to learn a new language is good for the brain so hopefully I will keep at it for a while.
Before posting this I had Adriana proofread it, she speaks Romanian (her native language), English, Italian and French fluently.
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