Originally published on LinkedIn. Reformatted for Medium / zahradnik.io.
Maybe. I’m curious.
As a systems engineer, I love natural languages — even more than my programming peers. They are imperfect, and that’s what makes them human.
I enjoy digging deep. Finding similarities between languages, common roots of words, and sometimes just listening — trying to catch a few familiar words floating by.
I’ve wanted for years to learn Italian and French — but I also want Ukrainian, Russian, Spanish, Polish… We could go on and on.
The point is this: the classical school system is slow. Usually you stick with one language for years, and even after eight years you’re still not fluent. Sounds familiar?
I don’t want to limit myself to one language at a time. Spending months on Ukrainian while my Italian is on hold feels wrong. And I don’t want to spend years and… maybe speak.
So I decided to apply my systems engineering mindset, cross‑domain knowledge, and my own introspection to look for more efficient ways to learn.
One observation: languages are not isolated. You can learn them in clusters. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese — the Romance cluster. Or English, German, Swedish — the Germanic cluster.
Bona serata, cari amici!
