+Two=Polyglot
On the Road to Deeper Expansion
At times, I feel like a sock puppet, with Arabic and English acting as threads weaving through my soul, forming the fabric of my identity. Yet, the Arabic feels frayed; the insecurities of speaking, reading and writing are mismatched by my confidence in comprehension. As that thread withers, a new one compels me. Japanese.
Sometime in September, I decided to take my dive into the adventures of [proper] language learning; starting with Japanese.
I didn't go in blind. I knew the difficulty was 'Oh dear' levels of hard, but I can't admire languages and cultures from afar forever - I had to do it. I didn't have to start with Japanese, but I had a goal and I had motivation. The goal is to be able to read and speak Japanese by March 2025, motivated by my return to Japan!
七か月はたくさんのじかん。 So it's fine. I'm going to focus on exploration and discovery, taking it at the speed that my mind is comfortable with. No stressing about time running out; almost as if the goal doesn't matter. Because if I think about it... the goal doesn't actually matter. Will my trip be ruined by not having learned the language? No, I've been before and I loved it so much that I'm going again, the following year. Did learning go to waste if you didn’t meet your goal? No, because unless you're on a tight schedule with a scythe and cloak, you won't fail because learning a language is indefinite and language learning doesn't have to be tied to your visit to a country; applying a time limit is merely a challenge. Challenges mean nothing in the bigger picture.
Goals shouldn't make or break your learning; it should add to the fun of it. If it starts to take away from the fun, then またね goals!
My studies involve:
- Weekly 50 minute lessons with a native Japanese woman living in Fukushima, via Preply.
- [Mostly] daily Kanji and vocabulary learning via WaniKani.
- Independent immersion via things I find interesting (films, TV, audiobooks, YouTube, games, etc).
I've watched and played heaps of videos, films, TV and games over many years. So why am I not fluent? That's more than 10 years of Japanese immersion right there!
The key is quite obvious: INTENTION. It's so important because it properly prepares your mind and shapes the way you approach learning. To illustrate this, think of how intention makes all the difference in other scenarios - like policing. Imagine a dark, early evening sky pouring it down with rain, so much so that the rain is like a mask the city is wearing. A police officer is on their first shift, searching for someone at a random location the department had received a tip about. They can't find anyone. The newspaper shielding their head has soaked up enough rain to become a showerhead. The officer pleads, 'MARCUS! MARCUS!' They're desperate to find him, desperate to cosy up next to an open fire after a long, hot bath. This officer makes a mistake though, they're expecting a live person, so they'll likely miss a corpse. If they start again with the intention of finding a corpse, they'll find Marcus. If they had gone in without the blinkers of bias, expectations, or assumptions from the start, they might have been more likely to find the corpse on the first search.
Similarly, your intention is the key to unlocking doors that commitment alone can't see.
Your brain will, passively, take everything in; even tiny minute details you'd never know you knew. When you finally intend to learn a language, all those years of exposure should help you. Though if you don't realise your brain is more powerful than any computer known to man, you probably won't reap any benefits because you won't allow your mind to tap into what it's picked up over the years.
I already knew how conversations sound in Japanese; I knew a lot of the culture and traditions as previously mentioned, and more importantly I've visited Japan for a month, where everything is Japanese, Japanese, Japanese. Imagine what my brain learned in just that one month alone! I wouldn't even know! Please, dear Brain, tell me everything you've learned! Once I started learning, some things came to the forefront - for example, I was able to produce correct kana sounds for Hiragana thanks to a cocktail of already mentioned experience and the Arabic language. Without diving deeply into Arabic, there are sounds that don't exist in other languages so I'm able to produce difficult and unique Japanese sounds that English speakers might find challenging, while for me it comes a bit easier if I consciously put effort into correct pronunciation.
As we near the end of this post, I want to reiterate very briefly how important intention is. If you intend to learn, you will progress steadily. You will naturally take studying more seriously, you consciously and subconsciously know that learning a language is not a quick process and it comes with a lot of hard work to keep pushing through barriers - some of which will make you want to throw your PC out the window and shred all the Japanese study books you've bought and the notes you've written then cry yourself to sleep at 2 in the afternoon.
But it's okay; it's normal and shouldn't discourage you, but fuel you to start smashing through future barriers with the force of every ounce of frustration those barriers have inflicted upon your soul!
What's important and what works for me is ensuring that what you do to learn the language is fun for you. Zoom out and observe, from a bird's-eye view, everything about your life in relation to learning your target language. Pick and choose how you learn; if you don't like thick books, put them away. If you don't like quizzes, turn off that website. Find what's fun and interesting for you - there isn't a right or wrong way to learn. Incorporate your target language in your everyday life and your hobbies. Learning isn't supposed to be boring. You'll learn quicker if it's fun. Have fun. You don't learn a language to sit in a dark room, smiling to yourself. Have fun, have fun, have fun.
べんきょうの力！
ありがとうございます！
ムーサ。