Alex Harlequin
As a creative writer, I’ve always had an interest in language, and once I was old enough to understand what “bilingual” meant, wished I was.
I can currently speak only English, and over the years I failed many times to learn another language. I learned about language acquisition and multilingualism in a linguistics module at university, but only in relation to children.
However, I’ve spent many hours since 2020 exploring how to acquire another language as an adult. I’ve made some progress with French, but recently put that on hiatus and started again with Ukrainian.
Other languages I hope to acquire eventually include Japanese and Welsh. My full language bucket list is much longer!
Who am I?
I’m a fiction writer, poet and blogger, with aspirations to add polyglot to the list. I’ve always been fascinated by language beyond the writing craft.
I live in England, which is often mistakenly considered a monolingual country, and always wanted to be able to speak another language but never got on with conventional teaching methods. I have cognitive (and other) disabilities which make studying very difficult. Comprehensible input has been the gamechanger.
Outside of language and writing, I love reading/watching fiction, talking about fiction with other fiction nerds, food, travel (mostly virtually), and puzzle games. My motto is “If at first you don’t succeed, drink tea and try again.”
About this Blog
As well as chronicling my language acquisition journey, I also post on what I’ve learned about language acquisition generally, any resources I’ve found useful, and anything relating to language generally. I don’t feel at this point I could call myself even an amateur linguist, but it’s an area I’m interested in.
There may be some posts in which I have not provided specific sources for my information. If you want to know the source for a stated fact, please drop me a message. I can’t always remember where I learned things and I’m not very organised with bookmarks, but I could try!