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| My New Best Friend! |
Languages are a crazy thing. If you are religious, then you will be familiar with the story about the Tower of Babel. Can you imagine what it would be like if no one could understand each other? What chaos would ensue! It's such an amazing and beautiful thing that we have so many different languages in this world, and it's even more wonderful how humans find ways of communicating with those who we cannot initially speak with. Just a few hundred years ago, before the age of the printing press, very few people were literate in all the world. Now, literacy is a key component used to measure success and happiness around the world (see the Human Development Index, for example).
Aside from such an astounding change the world has gone through in such a short time, on a more personal level it's also crazy to me that I can't seem to truly pick up a second language. I can't help but think that if my parents were fluent in some language like Spanish or French, I would have been able to pick those languages up in a breeze growing up. On one hand, I think it has to do with the the fact that the increasingly fast paced and interconnected media we are exposed to which, to some degree, helps us run our lives; my generation and those after me seem to want everything in short sound bites (see this great NY Times Article: Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction). When our minds learn to function this way, when society teaches and conditions us to live distracted lives, it becomes difficult to focus enough to study a language enough to learn it fluently. After all, those who I know speak foreign languages the best are Returned Missionaries, people who devoted 2 years of their lives to nothing but studying the language and religion with no distractions to impede their learning. On the other hand, I am painfully shy at speaking other languages. I am always afraid that I am saying something wrong. I can't seem to get over that mental barrier. Even if I know how to say something I am called upon to speak in front of a class, I will all of a sudden forget everything I know and struggle to reach into my memory for the right thing to say.
As someone with a passion for cities, traveling, and geography, doesn't it seem like learning languages would be a natural thing for me to be able to do? Especially having two multilingual parents. It came so easy for both of my parents. For me, I have taken 4 years of Spanish in high school, one semester of French in college, and now one semester of Thai. If I can't learn anything here, I'm not sure what else I can do until I graduate for good and travel around on my own. I really wish I could have studied abroad in undergrad. It's what I had always looked forward to most about college, but it seemed more worth it to graduate early, at least at the time. In this globalized world, it seems that in order to succeed, one must be fluent in multiple languages. All my friends who are getting great, well-paid jobs know Spanish or Russian and other awesome languages. Hopefully I can finally grasp this language which I am at least familiar with hearing on a daily basis. I'm doing well so far, so wish me luck! As a "white" person, I can finally claim to be Asian once I learn Thai :)
good luck tippe!
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