English-speaking people over the world have this tradition called New Year's Resolution that is an actual decision to do something, to give up on something or just to change something in your life in the new year. Well, in 2012 I decided to learn a foreign language. The thing is our world is getting smaller and smaller; for this reason and others, that seemed a good idea. The only problem was what language to take up? Italian? Mmm... it sounds a little bit like "nia... nia...nia..." to me, while I prefer kind of "harder" languages like German, for instance. Mind you, I'd had a pretty good command of German by that time. Not a big deal! I still had a couple of days before New Year's. "I'll keep thinking it over and a good language will somehow come to me after all." I thought. But it never came.
At this point, I have to say that, unlike most people, I don't like New Year's... I mean the way most Americans understand it. Here, they will go to New Year parties, drink until midnight, wish one another a happy new year and... go on drinking. I for one prefer staying at home, enjoying my favorite food and watching a movie. Long story short, that night my brother and I were sitting in front of the tv, enjoying the lasagna I'd made and watching The Sum of All Fears. In this movie, the lead character (Ben Affleck) works for the government as a Russian Affairs expert. In one of the episodes, he flies to Moscow as part of a delegation to meet up with the Russian President. During the meeting, President acts as if he doesn't know any English and Ben takes the liberty of reminding him, in Russian mind you, that he apparently learned English in college. I obviously didn't understand a single word, but that sounded so cool that I figured it out right off the bat - Russian's going to be my new language!
Funny enough, a few years later I rewatched that movie and realized that Ben actually sucked at Russian and I speak it way better. But I'm thankful to you, Ben, for the inspiration anyway. Cheers!
I forgot to read the title and was wondering why you had to learn Russian when it's your mother tongue. Then I scrolled up again to discover you actually translated a Russian text by CocoPop back into English :)
Tatiana, that was amazing! Such good English and you wrote exactly what I was thinking in almost all of it. Excellent work!
Yes, Eric, I’m not much of a writer, but I wanted to post something too. Maybe, it’ll be my own story next time. Thank you for your time and corrections!:))
Thank you so much, CocoPop! Actually, I started translated this story quite long ago, but I couldn’t get around to finishing it for some reason. And yesterday, “fortunately” i came down with the cold, so I didn’t have to go to work.))) Thanks for all the corrections. Some of them were my first guesses, which I brushed off in the end.)))🤩🤩🤩
I have to say that “such good English” is what I learned from you!))🙏
You flatter me! Your English has really come a long way from when I first met you. Brava!