Learning Other Languages

Learning other languages can be difficult, or not, depending on each of our own abilities. But is that really all it depends on? In this post, I'm writing about my personal experience during my almost 23 years of learning two additional languages. Although, one is longer than the other.

My native language is Indonesian. Even though I'm half Chinese and half Javanese, I don't really understand those two languages like the natives or those who simply learn them. Despite of my father's attempt to let me learn Mandarin by enrolling me to Mandarin Course at school, my grade were terrible because I focused on the complications in learning that language and the fact that I wasn't really fond of learning it. At the same time, I was enrolled in an English Course and I managed to excel in it partly because Indonesian also has alphabets like English so I don't need to learn how to read different characters in a language. Exposure to medias which use English from childhood also helped me getting used to the language. I spent my childhood watching Disney Channel; and my teenage years were spent watching channels which use English like AXN and Star World.

I was so comfortable using English that I switched Indonesian novels to English novels. I also express myself more on the internet using English, although I rarely write in my native language. The same comfort also made my decision of my major for my Bachelor's Degree. The only major drawback that I experience with getting exposed to foreign language from childhood is a certain stereotype. Some people here stereotyped us who often use English as arrogant slash cocky. Usually, the reason is us using foreign language too often that we don't love our own language thus not loving our own country, which is such a foolish excuse because I'd change my nationality if I dislike my country. Due to how moronic that stereotype is, that doesn't stop me from using English whenever I want to. And it certainly doesn't stop me to learn other languages.

During High School, I was starting to get interested in Japanese music. Sometimes later, I started reading lyrics translations to understand their meanings. I also watched Japanese dramas & films with English subtitles, although I occasionally found Indonesian subs as well. I was lucky to find several PVs and Lives which have Kanji, Romaji, and English/Indonesian subtitles in it. Before I knew it, I was unconsciously learning Japanese; but I didn't want to stop because of my huge interest in their culture. Later on, I could memorize Hiragana along with several Katakana and Kanji. I can also type simple sentences in Japanese. My other form of self-learning is interacting with some Japanese native speakers from an online game. In the game, we interacted through text and I have to thank Google Translate for their scanning feature. As a language graduate myself, I know that the translation for full sentences can be incorrect or simply weird; so I read each of the words' translations and comprehend what they mean when each of them are combined. I also noted the translations of those words for future references, I'm thankful for being able to interact with the native speakers because interacting with them is really useful in developing my Japanese language, and we're still occasionally catching up with each other.

So far, my personal experience in learning two additional languages have different reasons of my ability to learn them. One being familiarity and exposure from childhood, and another being the interest of the culture which lead to the want to learn the language. With that, it can be concluded that there are other things which cause the success of learning other languages, apart from the individual abilities. Exposure from childhood and the familiarity with the native language may help. But when we learn another language as an adult, it might be more difficult than if we learn it from our childhood. In that case, one thing that can motivate us to learn the language is our own interest. If we have the interest to learn a language, we may be able to learn it regardless of the difficulty of the language itself. There are plenty of ways to Rome indeed, but we must decide whether we really wanna go there or not. Until then, which method we use to learn a language doesn't really matter because each of us have our own pace.