An In-depth Look At My Language History

I've been learning languages for almost a decade now. My interests have always fluctuated so my timeline is a bit sporadic. 

For anyone not wanting to read a lot, here are the basics. 

Native: English

Proficient: Japanese, Korean, Chinese

Interested/Dabbled: Italian, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Thai, Toki Pona, ASL, Vietnamese, Russian, etc. 

I don't use it often but here's my Duolingo for anyone interested. 

The False Beginning ㅡ 

I had just started watching a Norwegian web series called SKAM. I was impatient waiting for subtitles so I decided I would learn Norwegian and Japanese. This did not go very far. I was really naïve to resources and how to approach learning a language, so after a few weeks of Memrise flashcards, I'd stopped. 

I had started learning Spanish in my freshman year of high school in 2016. I was struggling a lot, there were completely new words to remember I had to actively participate and progress regularly, something completely different from what I'd done before. Ironically enough, I had also changed schools in my third quarter so I had a new teacher. Although I had struggled previously, now we were moving too slow and I felt stunted. I learned it off on in high school, but because of how small my school was and how all the years were mixed together, we never moved above freshman year material. 

The Real Beginning ㅡ 

As a bit of a repeat, I had started watching two Korean dramas that were on-air. Again, I grew tired of waiting a week for subtitles and decided to learn the language. I found a chart of mnemonics and learned the alphabet in a little over an hour. I would practice writing names of actors and shows and became more comfortable with reading as well. 

At this time, in the middle of 2017, I was using Amino. I had joined communities for Korean, but also Japanese and Chinese without much thought. While using PDFs I'd found, I also unconsciously started interacting more with Japanese. I had made friends in a community for it and spent a lot of time there, especially while they were studying. Naturally, it lead me to study it too. One of the friends I had made in this community was also learning Chinese in school so she would share that with our group as well. 

This experience essentially catapulted my interest in languages. I was learning, albeit slowly, numerous languages and finding more foreign content I enjoyed. I would learn tidbits about other languages but Japanese, Korean, and Chinese were my main focuses. 

The Plateau ㅡ 

In 2019, I had started learning Arabic! Although my school only had five teachers, our social studies teacher was coincidentally from Egypt and students expressed an interest in her language. We started it and I truly enjoyed it at first, but it soon fell short. Our classes was really small, five students, so whenever someone was absent, we would instead review. We for three or so weeks continued going over the same introduction phrases and I grew tired of it. That weekend I went home and learned the alphabet. I was obviously slow at reading, but I could do it! I started to use Duolingo to get more comfortable with making sentences and building vocabulary, but our class only lasted for one term so I had no one else to use it with. 

At the end of 2019, I had actually gotten really depressed. It was my last year (2019-2020) and I needed to start doing senior things like volunteering, making resumes, filling out things about goals, the whole go around. As someone that felt stunted with my education never going beyond (what I believe to be) freshman year material, I wasn't able to develop an interest in certain subjects and actually think of a future with achievable goals. This depression led to losing interest in my actual hobbies, like languages, as well. 

One thing I did like to do at school was go on field trips as it got me out of class. One of these trips ended up being to my current university. We were all seated in a banquet room waiting for a speech to start, and my English teacher had randomly asked me if I wanted my transcript sent over. I didn't think so much of it so I said sure. Other parts of this day made it very bad for me, but it turns out my transcript was sent to admissions and on that specific field trip they were doing an "Instant Admission" thing. They told me I was accepted and just needed to officially fill out an application. This gave me something to distract myself from "real life" starting and I was able to come out of that depressive episode for the most part. The worst outcome of this, was that I realized my language abilities had depleted. 

The End of the Beginning ㅡ 

Before starting university, I had to do a placement test for any language. I went over everything I'd learned and concluded that Japanese is what I'd learned the most so I figured I could take more advanced classes. The one thing I really enjoyed about the language, the kanji, ended up honestly being my downfall. During the placement test, close to 70% of what I was asked to read and translate was in hiragana. With languages, I prioritized reading and writing and always got stuck with long chains of syllables. I was told to take the first year classes and it brought me to tears. I decided to major in Linguistics so it would help me learn languages better and a requirement for that was two terms of a language phonetically different from English. In my mind, if I didn't like it, I wouldn't need to commit long term so it was okay. With that in mind, my first year of university (2020-2021) was also completely online due to the pandemic. 

Come my third term, I realize the linguistics program was anglo-centric and had no emphasis on language acquisition. I made the decision to change my major to Japanese as I had already taken a few classes. Although I didn't enjoy the materials, I had enough knowledge for that first year to be a breeze. The first year was far too slow as well. They took an entire term to memorize phrases and learn a writing system. So term one was hiragana, term two was katakana, and term three was a few kanji... I truly hated it and was really vocal about it. 

This year I had class with someone that would really irritate me because they would only memorize things phonetically rather than to understand and would constantly talk about how they wished they were still taking German. For like two weeks, I started taking German spitefully believing I could learn it better than them. I had also taken French on Busuu and got an A1 certificate. 

During fall of 2021, I had been accepted to a free online program to Kansai Gaidai University. I took a Level 5 Japanese course (a step up from the Genki series, high N4-low N3) and a culture classes on folklore and mythology. It was such an eye-opener and I was able to improve even faster. Through this opportunity, I realized just how inefficient my home university classes were and a grew a bit resentful. Also during this term, I tried taking Chinese but the program had changed and they prioritized using traditional characters along with full immersion. There were some teaching techniques that I disagreed with, so I ended up actually switching to Italian. 

In this term, I also had to take two weeks off as my grandfather had gone into hospice and passed away. Although I passed Italian, I didn't make what I felt was proper progress due to what had happened so I didn't pursue it the next term. 

Spring term 2022, I'm in Japanese 203 and also Japanese 304. They had a weird set up for third year and 304 prioritized reading and writing. As one could probably predict, the term I took 304 was when they decided to completely changed that year. I really enjoyed the change in materials and the teaching style; during the term, the department decided to cut 305 and make 304 the equivalent of 303. When I wanted to enroll for fall classes, I was told to go straight to 401 because I couldn't take lower classes. Evidently, my university is pretty shit. 

During the summer I took online Korean classes for the Online King Sejong Institute twice a week. It was really fun but was at 12am so it was a bit tiring. I had also gotten into the Vietnamese artist Min so for about a month I studied Vietnamese. I had an exchange partner over Skype and it was really fun. I also dabble in Toki Pona and a few other languages like Spanish. In excitement taking Portuguese, I started looking more into it at this time as well. I had found a small Youtuber from Brazil that teaches the language and got to actually interact with them and get proper advice and help when needed. 

Fall term 2022, I was obviously under prepared for a 400 level class. I was talked down to and had my development invalidated by that professor and the head of the language department force enrolled me into 301 Japanese. I grew depressed again. Despite coping with everything I disagreed with and how stunted I felt for two years, I was set back again over poor administration and department management. I wasn't able to attend class for a completely weak with how poorly I felt. At the time, I was also taking Portuguese 101 and Korean 201. These classes were really enjoyable, but my depressive episode did effect Portuguese a lot. 

For Portuguese, it was a minor language I would practice off and on since 2020 because of friends I would play Minecraft with that were from Brazil. The course started out really well but the professor was a bit strange when it came to disability accommodations and my family was going through a number of issues with harassment over inheritance, a s*xual assault and having to move due to it. It greatly fucked with my attendance and led to my grade tanking. 

A New Start ㅡ 

Finally, I decided I couldn't keep wasting away over it and just decided to scrape the Japanese major. I switched over to liberal studies (an interdisciplinary major) and for the first time I could take whatever I wanted. I wasn't restricted to Japanese or general education requirements. During the summer I heard of CLS Spark and my campus had a Russian flagship. I decided to apply to the Russian flagship and to CLS for Chinese. My though process was that it wouldn't hurt and if I didn't get into one, there was a change for the other. I had gotten a call from the Russian flagship within two days and they let me join. Of course, it was towards the end of the term so I couldn't formally enroll, but I was able to attend the classes. I had a new focus and it was great. 

Russian was completely foreign to me so it gave me the change to start completely from scratch, no cognates, limited loan words. I was a bit frustrated with my teacher's cursive being stylized, but over all it was fun. I took Russian that full school year, it was also an accelerated course so the regular year one and year two were combined. Come summer, I realized Russian wasn't for me but I really enjoyed the new experience. Some of the grammar just wouldn't stick for me so it just didn't work out. 

Early in the school year though, I had heard back from CLS in March and was accepted into their Chinese program. I had done a placement test and was actually in the advanced class for our group. There were three of us and we met every weekday for two hours. I learned a lot but it was incredibly physically and mentally taxing. I said, I learned a lot and I am grateful but the teaching style was constantly kicking my ass. We had a day to memorize a full page of text, the vocabulary, and grammar, and had to do it all the very next day. I ended the program with low intermediate level Chinese which was around HSK3-HSK4. I was also able to take the virtual academic year after this (October to March) but this was instructed by an entirely different school and just wasn't great.  

The Present ㅡ 

For this school year, I took two terms of third year Korean. It was really fun and I adore the teacher. Out of all my language courses, she's been by miles the best professor I've had. I also took one year of ASL but the teacher kept cancelling classes so we didn't learn much. As of now, I've decided to stop pursuing languages academically. I really enjoy them but have reflected a lot. My joy for them came from studying them on my own time when I was able to diversify what I use and how I use them. Being in courses takes the joy out of it and makes you focus more on deadlines and ensuring everything is right rather than having a fun time with the process. I'm about two more terms away from graduating so I'm just going to meet degree requirements and explore more topics that I haven't already. 

I'm thinking about getting back into Spanish properly right now. I was also given a challenge by someone on Twitter to learn Portuguese for a month to get $50. I have no idea if it's true but I'm genuinely considering it. I've been watching a few Thai dramas and I still have my Korean Thai textbook (a textbook for Thai that's in Korean) so I'm really tempted.