Interview with English learners №6: "The English language is one of the most important things in my life"

Hello everyone! It is time for the interview with English learner! And our guest today is web developer, designer and foreign languages' lover - Kirill.

Name or nick-name: Kirill Panfilov, or Erlang, or kirillpanfilov, or Debugger ;-)
Age: 29
Native language: Russian
English level: High
Web: http://blog.erlang.com.ru/


Kirill, could you tell My English Webmarks' readers a little about yourself?

- The main direction of my professional life is to become a web developer of the highest level. I am not satisfied using usual engines and solutions, so I use to create my own web applications and frameworks. But I am not just a web programmer only: web design and layout are two professional priorities for me as well. There are about 50 websites in my personal portfolio.

I am also a lecturer of web graphics course in the Saratov State University and a freelancer. My general hobbies are foreign languages, linguistics, writing short stories in Russian, and drawing. I am married and have a little son.

Why are you learning English language?

- The English language is one of the most important things in my life. With the help of this language I can get friends over all the world,learn rare and exotic languages, and get skills in my job. I have friends and orderers from different countries. I think that learning languages helps to see more in the life.

Now I talk with my friends from Indonesia, Philippines, Viet Nam, Brasil and Japan as easy as with my Russian friends. But in English, or in their native languages: now one of my goals is to speak Portuguese and Japanese well.

How long are you learning English?

- Since I was 10 years old. My classmates had got base knowledges in English before I came to their group, so I was a bad pupil in the beginning. But just in the beginning.

How are you learning English?

- It is a part of my life: now I use to read articles, blogs and tasks in English, discuss those; a half of my web messengers contain my talks in English. I do not get any special lessons now, although I feel the necessity in it.

In your opinion, is it possible to know English as your native language if you’ve never live in English- speaking country?

-Maybe it is possible if I can talk to my friends every day, for example in Skype and so on. Sure, I do not hear every day speaking of people around me, and a lot of language details are somewhere abroad of my brain, but here is a question: what is a level which we can call ideal? Some of native speakers do not speak their languages well, I know it.

You said your goals are to speak Portuguese and Japanese well. Is it hard to learn several languages at the same time?

- No, it is not, trust me. I love languages, and I have different sections in my head for every language I am learning. Every language is individual for me; I can not mix it. The only negative side is that I have less time for each than if I learned the single language.

How many languages you are going to learn in the future? Is becoming a famous polyglot also your goal?

- To be a polyglot is not a goal - I can say that speaking a lot of languages is very comfortable. Besides, it is very interesting - I have created a special website to join people who love languages, www.lingvoblog.com - welcome!

The quantity is not so important, but I know the set of languages which are more interesting for me than others: English, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Finnish, Spanish, French, Italian, Gipsy, Polish, Chinese, Tagalog, Georgian, Basque, Swedish and few other.

Tell us about your lingvoblog. Is it part of your learning process?

- This site is my dream: to have my personal web area to gather information about exotical and rare languages, invite my friends there, have no advertising or some unusual services: just comfortable and compact collective blog keeping a lot of fantastically valuable information about languages and linguistics. I have based it on my own program framework, so this project is created by me from A to Z. Excluding posts of users, sure.

Turning back to your hobbies, what kind of stories do you write?

- My favourite writer is a Japanese one, Banana Yoshimoto. I have read all her books that were published in Russia and have a dream to read those in Japanese. And another writer, Sawako Ariyoshi. They both are my teachers. To see something great and valuable in little things and actions, to see beauty in every moment of our life, to be attentive to nearest people - this is a school of them. I try to give it in my stories.

Now I am writing a novel that describes a usual life of young people, which know the taste of real life and frienship. And show that our life is not only studying, job, sleaping and eating. I hope it will show it.

That sounds interesting! Kirill, thank you a lot for your interview! I hope I’ll see your book published one day!
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Comments are welcome!