Getting back into the Russian

Being an Irishman I should by now be fluent in at least two languages – English and Irish. Unfortunately things don’t always go to plan and I wasted my younger years quietly plotting world domination while I should have been paying attention to my Irish lessons. At the time I always wondered what was the point in learning a dying language. It’s only now that I ‘get it’ and regret not being able to say more than “An bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?” in Irish. This was one phrase you had to learn if you wanted to make it through the day in school – “Can I go to the toilet?” – If you didn’t master this phrase the consequences could sometimes be dire!

While the Irish ship has passed me by (it may sail again in the future) I have set myself a goal to learn another language (beyond the basic French that I vaguely remember from my school days). In the last two years I’ve dabbled in Japanese and Russian, but everytime I made progress with one I jumped ship and moved to the other. So as of today I am focussing all my attention on developing a proficient knowledge of Russian.

I’ve invested in a number of teach yourself books, audio files and iTouch applications, so this time I mean business. I’ll keep this blog updated with my progress so as to give me a goal to reach on a regular basis.

до встречи
(see you later)

Philip Norris
(Филипп Норрис)