My Language-Learning Journey Through Seven World Languages

As a kid, languages fascinated me. However, I never had much exposure to different languages, aside from French which remains a mandatory subject in all Canadian schools.

A trip through East Asian Languages

My language journey truly began through my excursions into Thai and Japanese. The local library endorsed a language-learning online programme which included Thai, and Japanese I took in a very simple class when I was in grade seven. I was still young, and it showed in my approach and passion for the languages I took up. Ultimately, I was never serious with these two languages, and today I know just about nothing about them. However, my perhaps foolish jaunt with East Asian tongues was far from over.

Chinese

Mandarin Chinese was the first language I tried to learn seriously, and remains without a doubt the hardest I've encountered. I studied for around a year on my own (for around half an hour a day), and afterwards I took a free course in Mandarin at a Francophone School once a week for another two years. Despite dedicating three years of my life to this language, my skill was never proficient and I never once held a conversation in Chinese. For the last year of learning, I held little passion for learning the language and merely continued to attend the classes out of habit.

Difficulty: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Mandarin Chinese (or any other variant of Chinese for that matter) is of great difficulty for English speakers. Enthusiasts are quick to remind that Chinese grammar is easy, while sentence structure is not far off from that of English. Despite this, Mandarin is about as foreign a language from English as one can imagine, in multiple other ways. Mandarin is tonal, which means not just 'singing' the language, but also that a language-learner must be able to hear the difference between said tones (it's worse in Cantonese, Mandarin only has four tones + one neutral tone). Chinese characters are infamous for how hard they are, and they live up to the hype. Every Chinese character is probably better thought of as an idea, rather than a letter, meaning that on top of actually remembering the characters keen learners must also rethink the way sentences are to carry information. In the end, I struggled to remember the new words I learnt, as they increasingly began to blend together for me (to the untuned ear, Chinese words and characters will sound very alike without much diversity, that is why it is essential to get your tones straight!)

I have run into Anglophones online who became skilled in Chinese, but it took them 10 years with their heads in a book, in addition to immersion in China.

First explorations into European languages

Spanish

In high school, I was required to take a foreign language due to my programme. French scared me, because I presumed it would be at an advanced level considering all of the students who took it their entire school career. Therefore, I opted to take Spanish with a Yugoslavian teacher who had merely spent some time in Argentina, rather than the intimidating French class with the teacher from Quebec (which I ended up taking anyways by mistake). Coming out of a difficult three years of Chinese, I became engrossed in the Spanish language (there is overlap between most of my language studies, I should mention). Soon, the Spanish classes (and learning basic holiday words without even practising speaking) wasn't enough to quench my language thirst, so I started an account on Duolingo (I despise this site, but it will be a running theme from now on). I took Spanish all four years of high school and completed the Duolingo course, yet I only ever had one proper conversation in the language with a university student coming back from a language immersion in Spain. Spanish was the first language I felt I had some degree of competence in, although it has been years since I took the language seriously and now my skills have degraded somewhat.

Difficulty: 🟊🟊☆☆☆☆

Spanish is certainly an easy language for English speakers to pick up, and I remember making quick progress with my learning. My biggest problems with the language was the verb conjugations (which I believe to be somewhat more difficult than other Romance languages, even just conceptualising the need to so many conjugations!) but also waning passion for the language and the culture behind it. I was interested in Latin America for some time, but the interest wasn't meant to be. When learning a language, you should have a certain degree of curiosity and appreciation for the culture behind the language, if you want to have the most success and enjoyment in learning your language of choice.

My language patterns get messier from here, but they follow trends.

A taste of the Subcontinent

Hindi

I actually began learning Hindi after Nepali (which I will get to in a second). Essentially, I found more tools to learning Hindi than Nepali, I was watching through some of the Bollywood films at this time and I picked up some of the language, and I had a mild interest in India (which I had inherited from childhood). Hindi and Nepali are quite different languages, but since their structure is related and the cultures behind them similar, learning one unlocks doors to the other. I never got to be anywhere near 'fluent' in Hindi, but I have carried out some conversation in the tongue, and to this day I understand basic spoken phrases.

Difficulty: 🟊🟊🟊🟊☆☆

Hindi is quite foreign to English and many European languages (while still being related via Proto Indo-European). I didn't find what I learnt to be terribly hard by any means, although grammar can be a challenge at times. I have a hard time phrasing this, but being of a much different culture to English cultures, the way people say certain things in Hindi can be a lot different to that of English, and that is probably the hardest part of Hindi as a whole. I will get to the script when talking about Nepali.

Nepali

The Nepali language has been a great journey in and of itself. Nepali is a language which I got to encounter much more organically than other languages, and most of my learnings were through actually talking to Nepalese people rather than classes or a silly online programme. Along the way, I made Nepalese friends and I dated a Nepali girl for a while, which was a big incentive to learn more. I braced myself for a challenge, figured out the grammar myself (and later confirmed it via a helpful online blog dedicated to the language), and continued to use new phrases and vocabulary when I had the chance. This culminated in a grand old trip to Nepal which I have written about before. I did get a little fatigued from so much constant exposure to Nepali, and I haven't touched it much since the trip, but I'm really happy with what I achieved and I imagine I'll pick up the language again one day, should I decide to go back to Nepal one day.

Difficulty: 🟊🟊🟊🟊☆☆

The grammar of Nepali was more complicated than that of Hindi, I found. There are many words and phrases which represent concepts that do not exist in English, at least in the same way, as well as words which do not mean anything but are added to emphasise a particular meaning that one wants to express, called nipat (Hindi has this, but seemingly to a lesser degree). Learning the Devanagari script used by both Hindi and Nepali was incredibly rewarding, and one of my favourite learning experiences. Learning a new script can take a couple months to get really comfortable with, however, and so this makes Hindi and Nepali slightly more challenging languages.

Intermission

Welsh

It is spring, 2020. Everyone is stuck at home in what turns out to be one of the most boring major events to shape society in the last century. Meanwhile, I am reading about endangered or simply less popular languages in Europe, especially the Celtic languages. At this point, I was feeling a gap in life due to having to having no language that I wanted to study for the first time in several years. I decided to learn Welsh casually via Duolingo (which I vow only to use when I'm in the mood to learn a language casually). It was a neat experience, although I never got far nor did I expect to get far in Welsh. I essentially played through the programme until I got to the mutations section and then learning casually wasn't exactly an option anymore.

Difficulty: 🟊🟊🟊☆☆☆

Welsh (and other Celtic tongues) are made difficult through both their sounds/writing and also the mutations, which remains a bizarre thing to me. Welsh has a difficult orthography, with such words as nh'wn or dydd, but Welsh orthography remains one of my favourites, along with Polish (a language I do not know in the slightest), especially the double L 'Ll' sound. Welsh grammar is Verb-Subject-Object, unlike any other language I've studied. ("Ate Tom an apple", as opposed to English/Chinese/Spanish SVO "Tom ate an apple" or Hindi/Nepali SOV "Tom an apple ate.") I still do not understand Welsh mutations, but sometimes the initial consonant can change from, say a hard 'C' sound to a hard 'G' sound (Cymraeg, Y Gymraeg are both the same word, one means 'Welsh language' and the other means 'the Welsh language'.

Romance, and the past, present and future

Italian

Italian remains a language which I think very highly of, although I haven't studied for a couple years. In my opinion, Italian is the only Romance language which lives up to all the hype it gets, and I find it to be one of the most beautiful Romance languages along with severely underrated Romanian. I borrowed a book on Italian in between learning Nepali (I've been fatigued by the language twice), and stuck my head in it for about a month. In the end I stopped learning Italian when I realised I had little reason to learn it at that point in time, and when I could not find Italian content to watch nor any Italian songs I particularly liked (recommendations are welcome), and my love of Italian food and Peroni beer just wasn't sufficient. I have a huge respect for Italy and when I inevitably go visit someday I have promised myself I will study more Italian.

Difficulty: 🟊🟊☆☆☆☆

I do not have much of value to comment, difficulty wise. Italian words resemble their French cousins in many ways, although the pronunciation is heaps different. Italian orthography in general is unique and the language times stress in a way I haven't seen from many other European languages (hence the stereotypical Italian accent).

French

After much thought and consideration, French has become my current language of study since later summertime. French has always been somewhere in the background of my life, waiting for me to encounter it. French is a language of great importance in my family and to my ancestry (although I could have been of Estonian-Canadian stock and I likely wouldn't learn Estonian, so it isn't exactly consequential). I have been working at the language in conventional and unconventional ways, while trying to grow my vocabulary/grammar and practise speaking, listening, reading and writing. I am trying to discover French content and music (Stromae is an obvious place to start but from there it becomes more difficult) and I hope to reach French speakers soon and develop my skills + confidence. Despite living in a bilingual country, I am far removed from French-speaking Canada and the best place to hear French remains Banff during summer, where the Quebecois congregate in large numbers.

Difficulty: 🟊🟊☆☆☆☆

French has strengths and weaknesses in terms of difficulty, I've found. On one hand, written French and spoken French are very different, while words such as noir and noix sound identical. On the other hand, French verb conjugation is nowhere near the confusion I had with Spanish verbs, although I am not at such a high level of French after half a year of study.

Seven languages later, am I a polyglot? Am I actually fluent in any of these languages?

No, I am not a polyglot, nor will I ever call myself one. I find the idea of the polyglot to be overdone and completely subjective, not to take away from the amazing accomplishments of some of the most dedicated language learners. The phenomenon of the polyglot is best used to described people who maintain their skills in a variety of languages, no matter how high or low those skills are, to be able to pull out any of their learned languages on a dime (this requires hours of practice alone). I do not currently maintain my skill in Spanish, or Nepali, should I want to continue with those languages in future I will need to do review in order to get back to my former level.

The definition of fluent is subjective, but I would argue that I have never personally been fluent in a language, because I've never had to be fluent. The language I achieved the most skill in was Nepali--especially informal or casual language--and that was the sole language I spoke in during my month in Nepal. However, I am satisfied with what I have achieved, that is the reason I put languages to rest after all. Maybe if I lived in Europe which seems an ideal playground for a language fan and I dream I could more easily immerse myself in a great deal of languages (and call myself fluent in one or another), but in this massive Anglophone bubble I live in, I have never had a great chance to attain fluency in any other language but English. For now, I will keep working away at languages until I attain satisfaction in my achievements.