Sanja Milenkovic (Serbian, B. 1983)

Sanja Milenkovic (Serbian, b. 1983)

The first element, 2020

Acrylic on canvas

My Languages

part 1

in order of when i picked it up. I grew up in an english speaking home, had friends who only spoke english, and really did not get any conscious exposure to another language until i was around 7 years old. my great grandmother on my mom’s side, married into the family, was a lovely woman from Tokyo whom we called Chick. she awoke my interest in other languages and cultures. i was eager to learn japanese from her, and she taught me some. just a few sentences here and there.

it wasn’t until middle school that i really got back into languages. i remember feeling excited for moving to high school, and being able to take french. i told my father over dinner at one of our favorite mexican restaurants, where he, my sister, and i would almost ritualistically go to [until it burned down]. he was quite irate that i had fancied french over spanish, and understandably so. spanish is much, much more common and useful in the united states than french is. however, i couldn’t be deterred. i was naturally drawn to french, and that’s what i would choose. i primed myself using google translate, looking up random words here and there. i would go on to study it for four years in high school. i was the top of my class, and everyone knew it. i just simply loved french and was good at it. i was fortunate enough to take IB French (international baccalaureate) which i can’t brag enough about. ib was awesome. like a breath of fresh air compared to the crap american standardized education feeds us. well, anyway. french will go along to become my major in university, not so much due to passion or interest, but because it’s common enough that it’s a major at most universities. france isn’t my favorite country and i don’t really want to live there. i’d choose quebec or luxembourg or belgium first. but hopefully it serves me well.

japanese was my other focus. in middle school i got into anime (death note specifically) besides already being madly in love and obsessed with pokémon and yugioh. i attempted to teach myself katakana. i remember thinking my name kyle would be キユレ kiyure, cuz i didn’t know how katakana worked back then. it’d probably be more like カイヨウル. however aside from that i didn’t really have much more need or pressure to learn more. the high school i would later go on to offered japanese, but for some reason that escapes my memory, i never took it. i ended up taking four languages in high school, but japanese was not one of them.

i guess this would be a good segue into spanish. but back to japanese first. i would later study japanese in college, centre college, to be exact. im thankful i did because i was able to write my great grandma chick a letter with the japanese i had learned. she was living in north carolina with my grandma and step grandpa, as she lay dying. i wasn’t able to see her before she passed, but my grandma said she loved my letter and wouldn’t stop mentioning it. lol.

synchronicitly, my japanese professor would be an awesome mormon man who i would have a good rapport with, because i was passionately mormon at this time in my life. and he was pretty awesome. he probably just thought i was some dumb kid, and i was. but if you’re reading this brother dixon, おはようございます！「元気ですか？」

i supposed i have lied, though. i forgot that i studied spanish in elementwrycschooo. so i did have exposure to foreign languages. we did not take spanish in middle school though, which is odd and embarrassing tbh. but i would later take spanish in high school for three weeks, before i dropped it because my class mates were pronouncing me llamo like... mee lahmo. not may ahmo like literally anyone should know by now.... so i switched to chinese.

inspired by avatar the last air bender, and an anxious and impulsive desire, i signed up for chinese class to get away from the heathens who didn’t know elementary spanish. why i didn’t ask if japanese or german was available, and honestly now that i think of it, i may have. at least one or the other. i distinctly remember being told chinese was available, and i just took it. so began my journey with 中文.

spanish was too easy and nothing about spain or south america really draws me. i do like argentina though, and catalan seems interesting. and definitely portuguese, but that’s not spanish!

before i continue on that though, let’s rewind. my knack for languages was already blossoming in middle school, even though i hadn’t had any formal study besides elementary school spanish from señor ramos. i told my dad as we sat together at the dinner table that i wanted to learn five languages. i was surprised later when he brought it back up, because i didn’t think he had remembered. looking back, i guess that is kind of unique. not many people have that desire, let alone accomplish it. in america at least.

well i still remember those languages. i believe they were japanese, french, german, spanish, and danish. yes. undoubtedly those were it. which one doesn’t belong? lol. danish, i know right? which is why we need to rewind. my love for denmark probably isnt worthy of its own post, but i will leave off here, and pick this up later. i gotta go to school, hun.

xx gossip girl