lifelong language learning

Inspired by Pippa's post, I decided to talk about my language learning experiences as well.

I won't be limiting this to just Japanese as people are usually super interested in picking my brain quite literally about how it's able to sponge up 6 languages (give or take) lol

so here we go, lifelong language learning

I grew up with a multitude of languages. Is the simple answer. Simply put, immersion.

My parents are multilingual and covered Vietnamese and German, my sister spoke English and German with me, while my uncle and grandmother spoke English and Vietnamese with me in a wild mixture. We're a bit of a crazy family, yes.

My maternal grandmother was an amazing woman. Not only did she raise her own siblings by herself (her parents passed away early) but she also took care of her own family mostly by herself as her husband was brutally murdered only a few steps away from the family home. She could no read or write until her oldest children had reached school age. Age did not deter her. She started to study how to read and write along with her children and to this day, her handwriting is still the most beautiful in the family.

And then she left the country she was born in and went to the USA. She could not speak the language of course but again, she did not let that stop her. She worked, she studied and she became a citizen.

When I was 2-5 years old, many of my relatives from overseas came to visit. One of my uncles from the states along with his foster parents (before my grandma was able to go he lived with them) came to visit my family in Germany. His foster parents only spoke English so they naturally spoke English even with tiny little me. After that came my grandmother from the US and one of my aunts from Australia. And after that another uncle from the US along with a cousin.

So while I was in kindergarten, I was surrounded by 3 languages on a regular basis. I watched Disney movies in different languages as well. You'll notice whenever I sing Disney songs that there are some I really know the lyrics of in English while I know others better in German.

It's hard to describe but as a child, you just learn. So before I even knew it, I was able to understand 3 languages without a problem and also speak them - as I was answering people in the respective languages. 

By the time I entered elementary school, I was semi-fluent in 3 languages - German, English and Vietnamese. Speaking and listening only of course. I learned how to read and write German in Elementary School. There was no international elementary school around us or my parents would have sent me there. I did go to an international school for secondary school, though (no more racism, yay?).

My elementary school offered English and French classes in Year 4, though - both as an elective but I chose to join both classes and thus, started to familiarize myself with French. Oh and my family had moved a few metres across the border into the Netherlands at that point so playing with neighbours and going shopping, I also picked up a few bits and pieces of Dutch.

So at age 11, my language count was:

German, English, Vietnamese, French, Dutch

My French education continued through high school, as it was a mandatory language to start in Year 7 ( that or Latin, but I chose French as I had already started it and it seemed more useful). Then in Year 10 you could choose between a more Literature based curriculum or a more Science based one. I chose the former and I chose to study Latin (Spanish wasn't an option at that time as my school was lacking a teacher for it... sad). I decided to study Latin because I was still thinking about going into literature studies or language studies after graduation and Latin was a requirement for those subjects.

When I was 15, I also briefly tried to study Italian because I went on a school trip to Italy for a week and stayed with an Italian host family for a few days (it was for the European Student Council Project, a project that brought together schools and students from all the member countries of the EU for projects and activities once or twice a year). But my skills here are like nonexistent? lol Or more like, I can kind of understand what is being said but I wouldn't really be able to answer.

Along the same lines, I started to pick up bits and pieces of Spanish. My family went to Spain for summer vacation quite a lot when I was in elementary school and I also switched from doing ballet to doing flamenco because of a foot injury and because ballet just didn't seem to suit me anymore and flamenco just seemed like a great way to let off some steam (compared to tap dance or jazz, the other options).

There were also brief flirtations with studying: Norwegian, Finnish (Suomi), Thai, Russian and Chinese oh and Maori. But none of them are really worth mentioning. Although I'd like to look into some stuff again someday. Maybe. I don't know lol

Anyway, back to the topic.

How would I rate my skills in the different languages and why... for German, English and Japanese, I never -really- studied these languages in the regular language studying sense. I was surrounded by them naturally and picked them up by ear and then only the fine-tuning happened in class for German and English. Japanese is entirely self-taught and soaked up. Vietnamese was a mixed bag of soaking it up from my surroundings and then sort of being forced to study more of it in Saturday School. I have communication skills in Vietnamese but it's pretty basic. Dutch was another language I never studied but just sorta picked up by living in the country and going to uni there.

I also had to do my driver's license in the Netherlands so I kind of just learned how to do traffic related things in Dutch - so I didn't really study the language but I studied for the exam. And passed. So when it comes to traffic related vocab and then every day life conversation (simple conversation) I'm pretty okay.

French and Latin were the languages I had t study at school the most and my performance in the subjects was super dependent on the teachers. My French teacher for the initial period was terrible and thus my performance was suffering under that influence... the second teacher I got, who was way better could not save much (she despaired at the level of the entire class because the previous teacher had basically just ruined all of us). Latin was pretty much the same, starting out with a terrible teacher and finishing with a decent one. So I passed my qualifications for both classes but I can't say I love either of the languages.

The way I learned Japanese was also different from how I learned German, English and Vietnamese. I had not grown up with it. When I came to Japan for the first time I was 17. But my survival instincts and a bunch of really nice people I met along the way helped me out, I guess.

I did a home stay and my host family lived in this tiny village surrounded by rice paddies and bamboo forests. There were 1 vending machine and 1 shop that sold everything you kinda needed for daily life.

My host mother gave me a small whiteboard and a marker for when I moved around on weekends, so that I could somehow communicate with people. She didn't speak any English - her daughter was at cram school most of the time because exams were coming up.

So yeah, I learned how to speak Hiroshima-ben first (because that's what the old people in that village spoke and taught me lol) I remember a time when my host mother gave me a shopping list and sent me out with some money. I went to the store and gave the lady there the list but instead of just handing me whatever I needed she taught me how to say things in Japanese.

I remember the first thing on the list was 卵 and that's how I learned how to say 'egg' in Japanese.

Long, long story short, I think picking up a language through immersion is the best way to 'acquire' a language and speaking and listening skills in it. Reading and writing however require studying and practice. At least if you want to be accurate. It is possible to also acquire reading and writing skills just by 'living' in the language... or at least that's how I think I did it. To be honest, I have no real recollection of how I started with writing and reading...  ^^;