Learning a new language

 

Photo by Olya Kobruseva (Pexels)

To be honest, I don’t try very hard to hide the fact that I can speak more than one language since I was bound to slip up and give up that fact eventually. Let’s face it, sometimes I can only think of the word in the language I am not speaking so I will say that word mid-another-language sentence subconsciously.

This also happens with the pronunciation of names since I involuntarily won’t say the german pronunciation of the name since I prefer and am more used to the English pronunciation. That is also the reason why I am nonchalant about the pronunciation of my name since I just feel bad for the people whose names I mispronounce intentionally out of habit.

Thanks to the pandemic, who is at this point like a weird uncle who long overstayed their welcome but still won’t leave and you just kind of get used to it, I started to learn a new language because at that time I was bored and now I am in too deep to quit. Besides what is better than a person who can trash talk others using three languages? A person who can trash talk others in four different languages.

Disclaimer: I was just kidding about trash-talking other people.

Before I get into the article about how I tried to learn a new language, I wanted to share a Ted-Ed video I found, which made me understand bilingualism more and made me realize that being a trilingual is not so bad after all.

As a trilingual already speaking three languages I thought it would be pretty easy to pick up another language when I am 19 since I was supposedly able to pick up three languages when I was just half that age.

Turns out it is a tad harder than I thought it would be. Besides, if I can be quite honest, my linguistic skills are lacking. I may be able to speak and understand three languages, but I mess up all three languages all the time.

For instance, I already mentioned the lacking vocabulary during conversations. It is just something I can´t help. I just accidentally slip in words from other languages during my conversations. People may understand everything because they either know the language or the context behind the word but speaking like that is not good and should be avoided.

However, I will not get into the struggles of being a trilingual in this article since I already wrote an article about it some time ago. If you are interested, please do check it out (https://aureliajh.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-trilingual-trouble.html). To be frank, I didn’t read that article and already forgot it so I am not too sure about what I wrote and if they still hold some truths, but I believe I did mention many struggles and pleasantries about being trilingual.

Let´s start with the language I decided to learn. Since I was nonchalant about the language I was going to learn since I have no fanbase I wanted to follow, I decided to take to logical route to choose the language I wanted to learn since I am a terrible decision maker and an unlikely candidate to commit to the choice I have made.

The logical route for me was to look at the “language with the most speakers” ranking list to figure out the language I want to learn since learning a dying language might be interesting from a linguistic standpoint but useless during real-life conversations.

Depending on the statistic you find, either Chinese or English is the most spoken language in the world. Since I got both bases covered no matter the ranking, I looked towards the third most spoken language in the world, which, to my surprise, turns out to be Spanish.

To be fair, I always thought the third most spoken language in the world was either Russian or French because Russia is a big country so there has to be many Russian speakers and French has such a good reputation so there has to be a lot of people wanting to speak French. Turns out I was wrong.

Since I started learning a new language, I thought it would be logical to try and think back to the time I learnt English since it was the last language I learnt out of all three languages I know, so I thought figuring out how I learnt English would help me learn Spanish.

Turns out that was a dead end since I can´t remember much about learning English. I started learning English when I was in first grade but only became truly good at it when I was in ninth grade. To be fair I have no recollection of what happened between year one and year nine, besides the fact that I moved to England for a year.

Since I can´t reproduce that move-to-the-country-of-which-language-you-are-learning method, I thought I should try to think further back to the time I learnt German because I learnt German in Kindergarten. Then I realize that it was kindergarten, and the whole thing was just a blur. Therefore, I was back at square one.

There was no other language I could draw inspiration from when I started learning Spanish since I only know three languages and Chinese was coincidently the language I spoke since I was a baby and never needed to learn.

The next most logical thing my mind came up with was just to start learning like a normal monolingual and pretend I don’t already know three languages. To be fair, I don’t know how normal people learn new languages, but I have always seen these language learning apps and I was just curious enough to try them out.

At first, before I officially started learning a new language, I had my doubts, since I can´t read or write Chinese properly since I never fully learnt the words necessary to understand the newspaper or write an essay. On top of that, I can´t fully comprehend what I was reading in German since my mind always finds a way to mush up the words I am reading so that my mind just goes blank, which leaves me with nothing.

Therefore, I thought it would not be the best idea to learn a new language on top of the ones I haven´t perfected yet. My parents were not too fond of the idea either since they thought that I should perfect my native language first before I move on to new ones.

Then I remember my parents always told me that they studied so many languages when they were in college. Determined to beat my boredom, I decided to learn a new language just like my parents did. Unlike my parents, however, I can´t speak any language properly but can speak more languages.

After a lot of back and forth, I did decide to start learning Spanish, since not being bored was more important to me than being able to speak my native languages fluently. And besides, let's face it, online language teaching platforms don´t teach mediocre natives how to speak, understand, read, and write their own native language.

I started learning a language by settling with a language learning platform that appealed most to my learning style and my financial budget since I was not willing to pay for anything I do online as a hobby or a pass time.

During the first few weeks of learning Spanish, I was ecstatic since it has been some time since I learned a new language. To me learning a new language is just like seeing the world through a different lens and experiencing the culture more authentically.

However, then I realized I am learning Spanish through English. I am not learning Spanish as it is, I am learning Spanish by translating it from English. That just left me with an uneasy queasy feeling because this has never happened before.

As a child, I never learn languages by translating them from another. However, I can´t remember the time I learnt German or English since it just comes so naturally now. Therefore, I am a bit confused if I should proceed since translating Spanish from English just feels like cheating to a certain extent.

Taking a moment to think of another way to learn a new language without translating, seemed like a logical next step to take for me. Nevertheless, it was useless. There is no way I could learn a new language without using an already known language to translate it from.

After a month, I realized that learning Spanish is far different from learning German or English since in Spanish sentences the verb always comes behind the noun unlike in English where the verb comes before the noun. So translating became harder with the structural rules that need to be followed but it was translating nonetheless.

To be frank it took me some time for me to completely ignore the fact that I was learning how to translate Spanish to English and vice versa so that I can just continue learning Spanish like that even though it may seem insufficient in my mind. I guess that is the adult way of learning languages.

Despite my concern, I managed to learn some phrases in Spanish and understand some basic sentences. I have even gotten to the point where I would slip some Spanish words into my conversations subconsciously, so I must be doing something right.

A few months into learning a new language, I started to wonder how others learn a new language so I can improve my learning methods and make them more efficient.

Turns out learning a new language is just like learning anything new and tricks that work are different from person to person. My roommate, for instance, likes to learn with sticky notes on her belongings with the names in the language they are learning. However, I find trying to speak Spanish more efficient.

One method, my roommate and I both agree on is practice. Practice and revise the language on a regular basis to improve your language skills. Most people give up on learning a new language because they did not practice enough yet they expect to understand the language perfectly.

Now I try to incorporate more Spanish into my daily life by listening to more Spanish songs and trying to read more Spanish. For a short while, I even set my phone settings to Spanish so I could learn new vocabulary on something that is already so familiar.

In the time, I have been learning Spanish, I grew fonder of the Spanish culture. Just like the K-pop fans who started to learn Korean to understand the songs for what they are, I started to understand Spanish cultures and customs for what they are.

Furthermore, even though I might not understand what the songs I am listening to are all about, I started to like their unique musical style, which before learning Spanish I never truly appreciated or liked because I never gave it a shot.

Sometimes exposure is the best way to learn a new language. Just listen to news, shows, and songs in the language you are trying to learn to improve listening and comprehension. You might not understand anything but your brain will start to notice patterns and you can start learning from there.

Make mistakes and use the technology to improve. We live in a time where we have the world's knowledge is at the tip of our fingers. Why not use it? Even if it may seem silly at first, it will go a long way.

Being a trilingual who never learnt a new language ever since childhood, learning a new language is a pain because one never had to learn a language before and now it just seems so hard. Moreover, it just seems pretty inefficient to use a language to learn another.

However, learning a new language as a trilingual has taught me that there is more to the world than I initially thought. There is so much more than putting the verb before the noun to describe the object. There is so much more to learn and if I never have started to learn Spanish I might never have known.

At the end of the day, learning a new language is not about becoming fluent in it if you are not that invested in learning a new language. It is about learning something new every day. Whether it is a new word or a new tradition that you might have not known of. Learning something new every day just makes every day seem new and interesting.