Hi! Awesome thread! Thank you! I see no new posts since February!
I'm Moont from Catalonia, Spain. What I love from my country? I don't really know. Maybe its diversity - we have four official languages here, Castillian Spanish, Catalan in Catalonia (north-east), Euskera in Euskadi (North-west) and Gallego in Galicia (west, above Portugal, and quite similar to Portuguese). I dislike the chauvinism of some narrow-minded monolingual Spanish speakers against us bilinguals (since we speak Spanish and our native languages practically since birth, though sometimes we are discriminated against because of our accent when speaking Spanish or because of our non-Spanish surnames, an ugly- lurking remora from Franco's dictatorship times, I'd say) I also dislike the incompetent, corrupt politicians leading our empoverished country and their cheeky disregard for justice among other things. I don't know if I want to become independent, but whenever I hear those bigots speaking so hatefully about us, I wish we were. Though I don't trust Catalan politicians, either, and I can't visualize a Catalan Republic finding its acceptance in Europe. I don't understand this separatism - Aren't we all inhabitants of a single planet? Why not unite, instead of dividing? Maybe I'm a Utopian dreamer.
I love paella, our wines, our cheese, and sangria, and typical dishes from everywhere. I love our traditional dances and music like sardanes, jota, flamenco, bagpipes... Our beaches, our mountains...
I studied Anglo-germanic Philology (but I'm fluent in English and a bit less fluent in German), French and Italian at university, specializing in Comparative Linguistics. I love languages and travelling and meeting people from everywhere. My family are multilingual, too, and we travelled a lot all over Europe in the summer, on holidays, in a caravan. My dad spoke perfect Italian, Mum was our French interpreter, me and my 4 siblings spoke English and some French (but only I could speak some German) and I recall how weird we looked at the camping in Austria singing German songs in Catalan and Spanish! I recall how people stood listening to us sing as if we were some sort of foreing von Trapp Family, because we loved singing and one of my sisters used to play the recorder or the harmonica, as the rest of us sang... and we had a great time singing in any language we knew at the time.
Like LongevityLetter, I also used to write my diary in English to ensure my privacy cos my parents didn't speak English, but alas, my bros and sisters did, since it was compulsory at school, so it was not much use... Until I decided to learn German!
Alas, my daughter is not as language-oriented as I am, but she can get by in English and some French.
Great to learn about all of you!