Ever since I started working on my Applied Language Studies minor, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about my relationship with languages and language learning. According to my parents, I started learning English 6 months after I started speaking (Cantonese that is, that’s the only language my parents are fluent in). My second wave of languages came a few years before I turned 10. I started Mandarin classes when I was in grade 3, and grade 4 was when French became a mandatory part of my public school curriculum. I continued my Mandarin classes until I finished grade 10, and French til I graduated high school. I had also wanted to learn Spanish in high school, but I decided on music in the end, and my schedule was bursting at the seams, leaving no time for anything else at all.
I’ll admit, I used to be jealous of how my little sister’s Mandarin was better than mine. After all, I am the older sister so naturally I should be better than her at most things, right? Well, it’s only hit me recently that that was the case because while we started learning Mandarin at the same time, she was younger than me and therefore could grasp it better and faster than I could have. But now, I’m the one with better speaking skills (in my opinion) because I have used the language in a real world context. My month long cultural exchange in Tottori, Japan, was with other students from Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan. It was much easier for me to befriend the Taiwanese because they wouldn’t have to resort to using English or very broken Japanese to communicate with me. And that was the first time I’ve ever felt grateful to my parents for robbing me of my weekends as a child and sending me to thousands of hours of Mandarin classes. My only regret is not taking those classes more seriously, even though I was often at the top of my class. My parent’s rationale for making me learn Mandarin was to increase future job opportunities, which I (privately) scoffed at. Wasn’t being bilingual enough? If only I’d known I could use this skill to make more friends and connect with more people.
Because all written Chinese uses the same script and Mandarin was the third language I started learning, it didn’t feel all that foreign to me. French was the first “foreign” language I learned, despite it being the other national language of Canada, where I live.
Learning French was smooth sailing at first. Learning a fourth language from scratch after I’d already got a firm grasp on three wasn’t all that difficult. And all the French teacher’s I’ve had were some of the nicest and coolest teachers in the whole school. That is, until my last two years of high school. Sure, I had the same French teacher all through out my high school career, but she didn’t teach intermediate French very well. I feel like she may have underestimated our French abilities, especially in speaking. I also took a semester of French in university, but I felt like I couldn’t keep up with my classmates, so that concluded my decade of French education.
The first language I decided to learn of my own will was Japanese. Why Japanese, you ask? Because I was obsessed with anime at the time. And I couldn’t fathom not language learning, like I had done my entire life. I also needed to pick an elective, and nothing else interested me enough to spend hours studying. At first, I wanted to learn Japanese so I could watch anime without subtitles and just enjoy the artwork and maybe just listen if I wanted to multitask. But soon I realized that that wasn’t motivation enough and my enthusiasm diminished. To motivate myself, I decided to look for J-pop to listen to immerse myself further into the language. And thus this is part of the reason I became a Johnny’s fangirl. Hey! Say! JUMP was the first J-pop group I really liked and I found myself wanting more of their music and other content. That was also when I slowly realized that getting a hold of subtitled videos was a hard and slow process. Some clips and dvds weren’t ever subbed at all. And so my motivation to learn Japanese increased again, this time with the goal of going to one of JUMP’s concerts one day and be able to understand what they say during their MCs. Because real life doesn’t come with subtitles. After my third semester of Japanese, I jumped on (and miraculously got) the opportunity to attend a cultural exchange program in Japan. Of course I was ecstatic, of course I wanted to go to Japan someday, but who knew that it would happen so soon. If only JUMP or NEWS were touring then, my trip would have been perfect. Anyways, this month of “knowing English isn’t super useful here” helped boost my confidence in speaking both Japanese and Mandarin. And that, in turn, helped me become more confident as a whole. I’m still actively learning Japanese now. I’m getting much better grades in Japanese class now, but whether that’s due to my increased exposure and confidence in using the language or that I’ve finally adjusted to university life, I’m not certain. But that month in Tottori really shows: I’m doing consistently well on my weekly kanji quizzes and I got 95% on my oral test. Actually, during the second part of that test, I wasn’t even sure I was giving much thought to how I was responding to questions, I simply spoke in Japanese. Of course I panicked after; was I grammatically correct? As it turns out, enough to be understood.
I haven’t said much at all about English, simply because it’s my primary language, the one I’ve been using in school for 17 years, the language of the internet and my daily society. In fact, I give English such little thought that seeing it being taught as a second language was quite the experience. Also during my stay at Tottori University, I observed an English as a foreign language class. It was designed for students from Japan; if I’d taken the class, I’m sure I’d do much worse than I would like. I wouldn’t know the grammar explicitly, I just know what sounds right and what doesn’t. It really drove home the fact that I would rather not teach English, although I wouldn’t mind helping someone learn it. Add what I’ve been learning about language, culture, and society in class, and I feel less qualified than ever to teach the language I use everyday without a second thought.
Cantonese, as the first language I’ve ever spoken, and the primary language of my household, is also something I don’t consciously think about. That is, until recently, when my mom starts pointing out curse words to me when she’s listening to Hong Kong radio. Don’t get me wrong, Cantonese is extremely nuanced and endlessly fascinating, but personally, its existence is rather mundane, because I have instant access to it whenever I want, whether I want it or not. My parents may or may not have noticed, but I do listen carefully when they’re listening to the Chinese radio or watching the news. Where else am I going to get my vocab? I’m not particularly interested in Hong Kong entertainment, like some of my friends are. And when I get praised by my relatives who live in Hong Kong when I don’t sound particularly jok sing or understand something they said that my sister is now questioning, I’m slightly miffed. I don’t use Cantonese that much less than English, and don’t underestimate my observational skills. What I lack in academic prowess, I make up for with my ability to be flexible in any given situation.
If I were to tell you how many languages I know, I’d say I’m conversational in all 5 (a bit of a stretch, if you ask me. I’d confidently say 4, though) but I’m definitely fluent in 2. Languages I may want to tackle in the future are Spanish, Korean, and German. It would be hard to find a motivator to keep me interested in these languages, but maybe by the time I get around to learning them I’ll simply be interested in the learning process itself.
And so, like it or not, learning languages is a part of my life, a part of me. It’s just who I am.
Vee
November 27, 2018