Friday, November 2, 2018

What Happens When a 5 on The Enneagram Studies A Language?

Lol so what does the secret stash of a 5 look like?

They say that those people who are a 5 on the Enneagram have many interests that only people who share those interests are really aware of how deep these hobbies go.

You guys tend to share my love of languages so you know all about it...But did you know that most of my friends have no idea how much I love languages, or that I can even speak multiple languages? 

Funny, I know. That is because I'm a 5, I guess. I have other secret hobbies too, but they are secrets for now.

As you may also know the first semi-secret language I studied obsessively was Hindi. 

So how did I study early on? What made my Hindi study obsessive? 

I created worksheets* from videos and a couple websites, basically making textbooks to study from and then I began (but we moved here and I never finished) filling in the Hindi script by hand. 

In one series I had 137 lessons that I summarized typed up and took notes (from Learning Hindi) and in another series maybe 20 (from a YouTube Series by Anil Mahato). I had a system where I did one lesson in the morning and a couple after Jim went to bed. 
I had created 30+ flashcards (before I began studying). One for each day and I created more as needed and repeated cards as well. 

I ended up being one of maybe 4 moderators for a Hindi learning group on Facebook (also ran by Anil Mahato). The group over 10,000 people and has grown to over 13,000 people. 

Let's not forget that I was very active in the Indian Student Association at the University of Wyoming. I was nominated for officer by the Indian student organization at UW (but we were moving so I never ran). I play(ed) cricket and was part of the Bollywood dance group. You can tell that I did not grow up with this style of dance and, I think it's fair to say that choreography is not my thing. I still had an amazing time and all the others spoke Hindi so I learned a ton! I have danced since then.

I also "analyzed" "translated" nearly 20 songs into English. This was simply a way to practice. I'm sure that I could have found the translations online but it was much more beneficial to go through the lyrics myself and see how words were used (knowing that Hindi, like the notorious Arabic, does not use proper grammar in songs).

At this time taught at an art center for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and taught Indian Culture and Art and then a Hindi class. So my work was also studying **Hindi.

So though people assume that I am a 4 because I am an artist and I am pretty sure that I do have a decent 4 wing, I have no doubt that I am a 5. I could offer more examples if you like...but if you dig online you may also find my other secret (or not so secret blogs and videos...trust me. I'm a 5).



*I'm attempting a similar worksheet series but will be much shorter (closer to 10 lessons) for Somali (there just are not many resources) and I'm not as dedicated to Somali so I don't know if it will happen. I have a video with all the languages that I've studied here.  

**I was actually hired to teach Spanish and Sign language (and later art). Keep in mind my average student was at a 3rd grade English level, I didn't need to be fluent. Since learning Portuguese, my Spanish is pretty awful. It tends to annoy native Spanish speakers and I can't understand Mexican Spanish at all so I just say I don't speak it. Here is a blog post from when I realized I didn't speak Spanish anymore.

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