Learning the next Language

Not a lot of people love learning a language. When most people are teenagers, a lot of them don't want to even confront something that isn't their home language, at least not in America and not in my experience. In my previous attempts at learning languages, I had learned French and Spanish via the free mobile app called DuoLingo. Although it was useful for learning basic reading skills and pronunciation with the two previously mentioned languages, I found speaking Chinese hard because I didn't have a way to record myself on the app, so I couldn't know how I was doing with reading unless I recorded myself on my phone's original voice app. I didn't have enough space to do this, so I just suffered through it until I discovered WeChat through a friend named Arvin.

Arvin and his friend from high school, Phil, became good friends with me and helped me with my pronunciation. Some days I had it right on target, some I stumbled a little. On those sorts of days, the guys would chuckle a little bit, correct what I did wrong, and even gave me a few pointers.

Every day discussions

One thing that Arvin used to say to me was "you should go to sleep." He said this because I would often stay up late (12 AM midnight) but it wouldn't be late in China (3PM.) The reason being the time difference, of course. As we talked, and as my living situation changed, the topic of sleep didn't come up as much. I also began to use my Chinese skills more as it was easier and easier to write it. Some words began to make more sense as I used them.

When I first learned Chinese, I only knew "thank you," "hello," and "fire." (谢谢你，你好); and the thing that drove me was when I went to a Chinese food place at Cache Valley Mall and the guy there said "You should learn more Chinese. You're good at it!" And thus started my journey to learning a new language, a 5th language.

Being friends with someone from China also lends you a few more open doors, including culture snippets, linguistic hacks, and more friends. Of course, one must still be careful when making friends on the Internet, but you can get really lucky if you know who you're talking to. I made friends with Arvin through an app and that carried on through WeChat.

I've continued learning languages since then and I've learned something else on top of that. With each language learned, at least one new location in the world is open for me to interact with, in some way. Whether this is online or in-person through immigrant interaction, learning a new language has enabled me to be able to talk to people around the world, in ways I would never have thought of before.

Linguistic studies also teaches me about different perspectives and lends me a more open mind. For instance, I thought China hated disabled people. Or, at the very least, disliked them enough to consider them to be cursed in some way. But I found out that, not only is this far from true, but it is actually flat out false. Chinese people treat everyone with respect, regardless of who the person is or how they identify sexually or religiously. As long as you don't go looking for a fight, they won't give one to you.

Arvin and Phil don't speak to me as often as they used to, neither do I do the same with them, but I still check on them from time to time and I still ask how their day went because I want to maintain a friendship with them.