And then there was language

Hello people!

Welcome to my all new blog "Babilon".

This is the very first post ever, so to start the blog off I will just briefly tell you who I am and who this blog is meant for.

On this blog I will be posting all sorts of tips and tricks for language learning. And share with you my personal experiences as I go.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to language learning.
I think anyone can learn any language. I'll be the last to say that it's an easy process, or that it's not time consuming. It isn't easy, and it is time consuming. But if you really want to push just that little bit harder you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. -With the right attitude-

Learning a foreign language can be a really rewarding process, or the exact opposite. It has got it's ups and downs and you'll encounter many issues. But at the end of the road, you'll be baffled at what you have achieved. 
However, this blog isn't only for those who have only started on their first ever foreign language. It is also meant for those of you who are a little bit more experienced with language learning.

I'll be sharing with you tips and tricks of all sorts and kinds, such as resources for language learning, helpful study methods and inspirational people. I might also refer to some articles. My aim is not to publish academically research though, it is rather to keep this a casual blog.

About me: I'm a linguistics/translation student at university in Belgium.
I have Portuguese roots and this is the reason I have been brought up with two native languages, being Dutch and Portuguese.
I've been intensively learning several languages for a while now. In highschool I was never that good at languages, and you might think that is a little odd. But I didn't feel the rewarding part of learning languages until I went to university. At this time I spoke Portuguese, Dutch, French, English and some Spanish. (Note: although I have two native languages, it was not always a walk in the park for me to learn these new languages either, but I pushed through.)

I decided to take on English and Portuguese in my first year of university. (A choice which I now regret.) I couldn't write Portuguese because until then I'd only ever spoken it, so I wanted to "perfect" the knowledge of my native language.

As I went, my interest in foreign languages grew. I wanted to teach myself Icelandic.
I was quickly let down though, because I just couldn't seem to memorize the language at all. I got nowhere. I thought to myself, there must be a way around this obstacle. Icelandic, as some of you may now, is a very old Nordic language, that since the Viking times has been left almost untouched. What I thought of doing then is to teach myself Norwegian. As these two languages are very strongly related. And sure enough, my knowledge of the Norwegian language expanded quickly, as did my love for Scandinavia.
At this time I became acquainted with a polyglot who goes by the name "Benny the Irish polyglot," he has a website called Fluent in 3 months, which I stumbled upon.
The blogposts on this website helped me a great deal and made me push just that extra little bit harder.

Learning Norwegian was very rewarding for me, because in a matter of months I was able to sustain a decent conversation and everything went really smoothly. So much so that I wanted to take on another language. I went back to Icelandic, and this time I had more success because I recognized a lot of words from Norwegian. I could almost perfectly understand an Icelandic text with the knowledge I had from my Norwegian studies. Soon enough Icelandic was no longer enough either. I took on Finnish. A language with 15(!!) cases. It seemed a little abstract at first, and I'm still trying hard, but I'm getting there.
After Finnish came Russian. A whole new alphabet, that seemed really scary at first, but it's learnable in just one afternoon. I don't speak that much of these languages yet, but I'm not scared to take them on anymore because I know that I am capable of doing it.

And then there is Japanese. Japanese is my "longterm" language project. I'm actually a little stuck on it, because I always seem to restart at the same point and I'm making no progress at all. It's a barrier that I need to break trough at some point, I'm just not exactly sure how yet.

I guess what I'm trying to tell you guys it that it is possible.