50 in 50: What is something you are passionate about and why?

I suppose something I always end up passionate about is language learning. I find it incredibly enjoyable as a hobby. When I was thirteen or so, I began to learn German, and can now speak it almost as if fluent. I began at the age of around fifteen to learn both Norwegian and Polish. I stopped both as I did not find them as enjoyable; I still know a decent bit of Norwegian and can understand odd words of Polish, ale teraz nie umiem mówić po polsku...

I started I think around seventeen, as a way to avoid having to study for my A-levels, to learn Japanese. I learnt it with focus for a good three years, and picked up a decent ability in it. I was able to read books (albeit with some difficulty) and knew a good few kanji. I stopped studying it after a while, and now, while I can still understand a good deal and read a bit, I am not able to speak it incredibly well. I still do love it as a language though; I think it is possibly the most beautiful language I can conceive of.

Recently, I've begun to learn Italian and Latin. Both are decently fun.

I'm not sure why I am passionate about language learning. Probably, it is because it is something I picked up as a teenager during my formative years. I just enjoy learning grammar, too, for exactly inflectional endings, etc. I have a bit of a predilection for agglutinative languages (like Japanese!) - I was actually also considering Turkish before I picked up Japanese, and think that Turkish honestly would be a language I would love to learn someday... Finnish too, and Mongolian, basically anything Altaic.