There are days I wonder if I’m crazy. Other times, I’m quite sure.
Here’s the back story: Several years ago I fell in love with an incredible man who, while born and raised here in America, came from a very different culture than mine. He is Chinese and I am…not. He grew up hearing three different languages at home, Taiwanese, English, and Japanese (when he was in trouble!). I grew up hearing English. That’s it, just English.
I got lucky and he fell in love with me too and asked me to marry him. We had five incredible kids (three girls and two boys) and, though living here in America, they got interested in Japanese anime. Because of the internet, they were able to watch these shows with English subtitles. As they grew, their interests diversified further and they got interested in Kpop and Korean dramas. We’re a close family and I found I liked Kpop and Korean dramas too. This went back and forth as I explored on my own and got interested in Chinese and Japanese dramas as well (and most recently, Thai dramas).
As time went on, and my oldest daughter decided she wanted to become a missionary to Japan, she began learning the language. She frequently would say during an anime that the subtitles were not bad, but not always completely right.
It was because of her that I decided to learn these languages for myself. I wanted to get away from subtitles and get more enjoyment from the songs I listened to and the shows I watched. I wanted to understand and be able to talk to my mother and father-in-law in Chinese and Japanese. I wanted to talk to my Korean friends and neighbors in their native language. I wanted to understand the beautiful Chinese characters.
So began a language learning journey with lots of ups and downs. I’m still nowhere near my goals, but I’ve learned quite a bit along the way. No regrets, except one: I wish I’d started sooner!
I recognized that my frustrations were not an excuse to complain and quit, but rather a wake-up call that I needed to take a look at what was obviously not working and figure out why and what I needed to change. If I don’t think I’m experiencing enough progress, what am I not doing that I need to do? Or, what am I doing that I don’t need to do?
One thing I took a hard look at was what my goals actually were. Along with that, I recognized that I was more than a little naive in my approach. Language learning is NOT easy, but it’s not necessarily hard, either. You can’t pick up a language by simply watching dramas with subtitles or listening to Kpop and occasionally looking up the translations. To learn a foreign language requires consistent, daily discipline, mindfulness, and clear, achievable goals. Think SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.
Trying to learn three separate languages all at the same time was possible, but perhaps not the best approach, especially languages that were so different from English. To be more effective, I needed to focus. At this point, I recognized that Chinese has basically the same sentence structure as English. The difficult parts are all the characters and stroke order and various small, but important differences between the two languages. Korean is perhaps the most different from English, in that its sentence structure is nearly backward. Think Yoda-speak. While the Korean alphabet, called Hangul, is fairly easy to learn, the sentence structure has verbs at the end of the sentence and various levels of ‘formal’ speaking. Japanese is an interesting mix of the two with three different alphabets, one of which uses Chinese characters with a Japanese pronunciation.
Of the three, I decided to focus on Korean for now, mostly because I listen to Kpop (it’s mostly clean!) and watch Kdramas (also a lot cleaner than Hollywood) the most. I figure if I can conquer Korean, the other two should be easier because they incorporate various elements of each other.
For Korean, my specific goals are to be able to comfortably converse with my Korean friends and neighbors in their native language and understand 70%+ of Korean dramas and Kpop songs by the end of twelve months. This is about a ‘high intermediate’ level. To achieve this, I engage daily in Korean lessons through various apps, including Duolingo and Lingory, along with others. (I have nearly an entire screen on my phone filled with Korean apps!) As I watch dramas, I pause and look up words I either recognize or want to understand on a Korean dictionary app. I try to incorporate new vocabulary words throughout my day. These practices will get tweaked as I go.
Because I don’t want to lose what little progress I’ve already made with the other two languages, I will continue to review past characters and words in Chinese and Japanese, but this will take only a few minutes each a day. Of course, I’ll also watch Chinese and Japanese dramas and listen to both Cpop and Jpop.
So, for now, my main focus is to grow daily in understanding and appreciation of the beautiful language and culture of Korea.
Chinese, determination, goals, hope, Japanese, Korean, language learning, Mandarin, progress
ChristinaLiLanguages 