My journey started at 9 months when I started speaking in my mother tongue. A few months later, I started making up my own words with a strong Italian accent. At the age of 3, after a week's vacation at my grandmother's, I started speaking Hungarian. During this period, I tormented my parents with constant questions "how do they say that?".
Primary school taught me English and at the age of 14 I taught English at school because my teacher told me I could. In the German class at the age of 10, the German teacher told me that I shouldn't study the language because I don't have the head for it, and a few years later I was sitting in the first bench in the same class and was the best of about 50 children. When I was about 8 years old, I came to my mother saying that I wanted to learn Italian. I learned about 2 lessons and the feeling that I understood the words "casa" and "chiesa" was like an Oscar in Hollywood for me.
From the age of 15, I spent summer vacations with textbooks in hand and learned the basics of Serbo-Croatian, Italian and Spanish pronunciation. In the meantime, I devoted some time to ancient Egyptian. I passed the highest level in English. I don't even know how. I just remember that the committee just nodded their heads after the first few minutes. After that I could talk what I wanted.
Language textbooks followed me and still accompany me, so they did also at my first university, where I underwent torture for 5 years in the form of translation from Slovak to Latin and Ancient Greek. In addition to this torture, I learned the basics of Polish, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Modern Greek, Romanian, Turkish, Spanish and German. (A German teacher even convinced me to study it.) Since these languages were taught to me by native speakers (often they only knew their own language and from the beginning they explained only in their own language, we were naturally only 2-3 students or myself in the classroom) I still understand most of these languages in conversation, but the grammar would need an update. To make matters worse, I also attended the lectures on Hittite and Luvian - languages written in cuneiform.
Thanks to my interest in the circus and a lot of literature written in Russian, I learned to read the alphabet while waiting for the Bratislava public transport. After college, fate took me into tourism, which is still my passion. There I could finally use all my knowledge. During the many hours spent at the reception, I learned how to switch among 10 languages in 1 hour and communicate with everyone. Well, even here, my textbooks accompanied me to the work, and I spent every free second doing exercises, learning vocabulary and grammar.
My teachers and hundreds of private lessons that would have cost me to build a house at the time helped me to progress further. With all my heart, I thank the following teachers for who I am: Dario Eurialo Magnani, Aldo Bani, Jasna Rendulić, Vice Šunjić, Ada Josifi, Sonila Korriku.
Since I subsequently felt that I had nothing to learn, I decided to start another university in addition to working 2 shifts, running a household and 2-phase aerial acrobatics training. Finally, another dream of mine came true, which ended with a diploma on my shelf that says "Italian language and culture". I always said that my children would speak Italian first.
After the state exams, I had an identical level of knowledge in Croatian, and I was recommended for a job as a translator at the Croatian embassy, which I ultimately refused. All my life I had one more scene in front of my eyes - how the geography teacher at the elementary school told us the sentence "there is nothing in Albania". The whole year I sat under the map of Europe and looked at the country where there is nothing and thought, why is it called Shqipëria? Since my nature did not allow me, I finally visited this country in 2012. The strange-sounding language became my passion, and since then I have not put it down even for a moment.
I am a big travel lover. It is interesting that I was in Italy and Croatia for the first time when I already knew their languages at least on a basic level. I always started learning the language before I visited the country. Today I also know why Shqipëria was written on that map.
Languages are part of me. I cannot exist without Italian food, a sense of beauty and music. Dalmatian songs always move me and Albanian roughness combined with warmth captures my heart every time I'm there. You can always find a textbook in my purse. If I have some time, I do exercises and plant flowers in my garden by listening to videos. I still have a lot to learn, but I don't want to know everything, because then revealing the charms of the language will lose its meaning. My playlist consists of Tomislav Bralić, Colonia, Andrea Bocelli, Amedeo Minghi, Il volo. Elvana Gjata and Ardian Bujupi must also not be missed. On vacation, I go around to Italy, the former Yugoslavia and Albania....where else....it's the best for me.
At the moment, I hope to be able to pass the Albanian and Croatian exams at the local universities. Tourism also gave me the opportunity to improve in all languages even more, since I had to use them every day.
When I was writing my thesis, which was aimed at comparing Italian with the Romance languages in the Balkans - Istrian, Istro-Venetian, Istro-Romanian, Dalmatian, Aromanian and Megleno- Romanian, he said to me: "Miroslava, you know all the languages of the world, but Slovak...". I will never be a Slovak. There are other nations in my heart. The covid period brought an important turning point, when my lifelong priority became my work. And it's the best job in the world...
This is your teacher. I never studied pedagogy, why? I don't need to listen to theories about how to teach. Either you enjoy it or you don't. You either know it or you don't. That is why I say that I am not a teacher. I am your guide on the journey of a new language.