Hello, I'm coming clean here on the first line; that title was just to grab your attention. If you stick around, you might find out why it's not too far from the truth.

For my first insight on Twocents, I wanted to tell everyone about something I'm a veritable expert in; Me learning languages. I don't have much data on the subject matter, but I have been my guinea pig for the past seven years.

I can tell you that I have now taught myself french to an intermediate level and I'm enjoying being a beginner at Italian at the moment. Before I go into where disloyalty and childish traits come into helping me achieve this, I want to establish some facts about the subject in question here (me). For starters, I had already absorbed another language other than English by the time I was six years old. I realise this is important to mention because I have seen multiple studies that say bilinguals find it easier to learn new languages. A study from the University of Haifa is my go-to for this part of my story: "Bilinguals find it easier to learn a third language as they gain a better aptitude for languages". It's all there in the fine print. I unconsciously absorbed Idoma from my mother, another polyglot and maybe I have some edge that I think is worth mentioning; an aptitude for learning languages.

That being said, my Idoma is more potent in listening and having absorbed the language without intention, I can't boast of acquiring language learning skills I could easily replicate.

Beyond my bilingual background (a disposition I believe applies to most Nigerians), I am unsure of any other constraining factors I can prove here. say "intelligence", for example.

On the matter of disloyalty. I developed a fascination with french in my second year of University because it simply sounded excellent amongst other things. We had a french course we all had to undertake that taught us very little in the way of useful french, but when I started, I used any app I could lay my hands on. I had free trials open on Babbel, rosetta stone, tried Duolingo in its nascent form and even when I stayed on it I went about picking its weaknesses apart just so I could find some other app or website that filled the gap. this immensely helped me, so I'm begging you to be disloyal with your learning. pick a Main tool (Duolingo in my case) and find a host of side apps and tools to help where your learning device [read as partner] comes up short.

As for being childish; children are amazing. they go around being idiots with pride and they find everything interesting at least till they abandon it (disloyal as they must be to learn). the second ingredient in picking up your next language is childish curiosity and the willingness to be an idiot. I realise I have just told you to be a disloyal idiot, but I have been doing this for seven years now, and I can't complain even if others surely can.

I watched films as best as I could in french, I used youtube children's books narrations, I kissed my Duolingo app good morning each day then went out to cheat on it with my other teachers. I played my video games in french, and read my football news in French; I faked being french till I could understand my shows without Les sous-titres; so maybe I know a bit about what I'm saying. I want to conclude by wishing you luck in your learning endeavours and I hope you'll be a slutty foolish learner who speaks many languages eventually.