Linguistics.
I have a passion and talent for learning languages.
I don't know why I never thought about it before. I was trying to talk when I was 6 months old and always had amazing scores in English. In fact, my SAT for writing/english was 795 the first time I took it -- five points off from perfect. I guess I just always thought it was my affinity as a writer.
Turns out, it was my linguistics talent.
I'm not magical. I can't just learn any language quickly by listening for awhile, but I do pick it up quickly if I study it. Probably because I actually enjoy studying it. Recently, I've been trying to learn Japanese, which I think is a fascinating language. It confused me at first, but after studying sentence structure, I began picking up words and phrases. That lead to me signing up for daily study material. Now, I spend hours every day pouring over it.
I don't necessarily know that I want to take classes. I rather enjoy the feeling of accomplishment I get when I learn something new or figure out something. It's like a complex puzzle in my mind. One that I love to solve.
I've learned enough now that I can read it a little providing it's written with germanic letters, since it'll take years to learn kanji and katakana symbols -- there're thousands. Understanding it at this level is amusing me as I pick apart my study material.
Take this sentence for example:
"Utsukushii aozora o aoide mita."
My material says it can be translated to English as:
"I looked up at the beautiful blue sky."
However, since "ao" means blue, the word "aozora" means "blue sky" and "aoide" just means blue. So the sentence is actually closer to:
"I looked up at the beautiful blue sky that was blue."
That's a bit redundant for a language that is supposed to be quick and concise haha.
See? This is fun to me. Learning and pulling apart all the fibers of a language.
Too bad it's fairly useless as anything more than a mental exercise and fun hobby.
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