Have you ever had the desire to learn more languages? Have you ever had communication constraints while traveling abroad? Did you have any curiosity of knowing what those vietnamese or asian nail workers said about you or anyone while they were doing your nails? Did you struggle to learn about languages when you were in High School? Then you might have a slight chance of relating to this post.
To tell you the truth, understanding and learning other languages has been a struggle for most people like me. According to David Skorton and Glenn Altschuler, contributors of Forbes, the U.S. Secretary of Education said in 2010 that only 18% of Americans claimed to know a second language. Coming from a monolingual country where tourism isn’t a particular strength, I had very little to no experience hearing, seeing and knowing people from other cultures. By learning about different languages, traditions and cultures at school and family travels, I acquired a strong curiosity that pushed me little by little to investigate more about other countries.
I recently saw a feature story about an Australian young man who had a car crash and went into a coma for a week. He woke up and started speaking mandarin to the nurse. He even wrote in mandarin while he was recuperating. The reason why he spoke mandarin and not english was because his english skills had been obstructed and damaged when he was hit in the car crash. His brain had to use the alternative language skills that he learned when he was in High School. The young man had traveled to China recently before the car crash and was forced to polish his mandarin skills. After he recuperated, his life took a 360 degrees change by becoming a successful foreign communicator in China. Many Chinese admire his mandarin skills and even claimed that his mandarin was better than theirs. This story came into my attention because is interesting how learning a language can become a benefit in the long term and in the most unusual ways possible.
I could say that I am trilingual, but I have to be honest with you, I don’t think I am good at any of the languages that I have learned including English. My mother language is Spanish and I have learned English since I was in kindergarten. Somehow, I had a facility with English that no other classmate had. I read the books, loved to study vocabulary words and aced the english tests. I also did well in Spanish by writing great pieces and entering poem contests when I was in High School, but I do accept I have always struggled with grammar.
The torture started in sixth grade when my mother, in the concern that I didn’t have “enough” knowledge of languages, made me take French classes at the French Alliance. I struggled with French like I have never struggled with another school subject; I hated it and I tried to make up excuses, so I wouldn’t go to class every Saturday. Until the end of the second semester of French classes, my mother got tired of dragging me to the French Alliance school and decided to let me take the decision of “taking the opportunity or leaving it”. I was so mortified that I decided to leave out french classes for good. A year went by and I realized that I missed learning French. I started classes again, but without success I ended up leaving it because it was too difficult for me to understand it. I wasn’t able to construct more sentences other than the basic sentences that everybody knew. I felt I was wasting my time because I couldn’t advance with French. I could say “Bonjour”, “Je ne sais pas”, “Je t’aime”, “Au revoir”, “Comment allez vous?”. My french was extremely basic in comparison to my classmates. I was behind and I had to ask for more assistance, but I couldn’t do my homework well. I felt like I wasn’t made for knowing languages and that I had failed to learn them. I decided to quit my french classes at the French Alliance once again. When I started tenth grade, it came to my surprise that my High School included French in the academic curriculum. I was actually astonished that after quitting French several times, I had to face it again. I thought I was going to fail at it once again, but I did feel I had an advantage among my classmates because I had already taken French classes. I can only say that I survived the classes and I was able to graduate with a very good cumulative GPA. I thought the nightmare had finished after graduating from High School because I was no longer forced to take french classes.
College started and I never had French in my mind up until sophomore year. I did a placement test in French thinking I would have a better french and I could be placed in a higher level class. To my surprise, I only passed French 101 and I couldn’t skip the rest of the French classes. I decided to take a couple of French classes and I did enjoy them, let alone they were almost killing my GPA. I decided to stop taking French, but someone told me I had to think about my future and the necessity of multilingual speakers in the job market was huge and not many had the opportunity to acquire jobs because of the lack knowledge in languages. I was actually scared of not getting a job after graduation that I decided to do a French minor. It was a rocky start, but at the end, I started thinking, speaking and writing in French. I obviously don’t have the best french accent or the best writing composition for that matter, but I do know that when I pushed myself to learn and opened my mind, I was able to capture information that I wasn’t able to acquire when I was in my early years of middle school and high school.
Now, you must be thinking, how is this story relatable to the title let alone the video? This post is relatable because its a story of accomplishment and also a personal consideration of how languages can be a future tool for survival in a growing complex world in which we are living.
I just recently graduated, I haven’t used my french skills yet, but I do foresee a better future if I polish my french skills. I had the opportunity to use my Spanish skills into practice throughout my work experiences and its a very rewarding experience because I get to help people in some way.
To answer the inquiry, learning a language is profitable; its a good investment if you put your mind to it and know what you will do with it. I myself have experienced how rough it is to learn a language from scratch, but I do know that everything is possible if you give yourself a chance to overcome your difficulties.
Endeavors of a Millenial 