Languages you speak!

When I was younger, I thought it was fun to learn new languages. I remember that when I was still living in Virginia, my oldest brother taught me the french alphabet and I could recite this even when I entered into the first grade. When I was getting into the fifth grade, I started learning Japanese and eventually I started learning all sorts of languages including Farsi, Hebrew, and Dutch. I could never understand why people have such a hard time learning languages because it has always been something that seems to come naturally to me, but then again, I enjoy doing it.

It seems like one of the problems that people have is the dedication which people have when it comes to learning a new language. People always are asking me how I am able to learn so many languages and keep them straight. The first key is this. LOVE THE LANGUAGE YOU ARE LEARNING! I don't mean just love the language in general, you have to want to learn the language almost more than speaking English. It has to be something that you want to keep up every day for the rest of your life, and believe me, if you don't, you'll lose it. 

This is easier said then done. I know people that try month by month to learn a new language and never get past the present tense, which is easy if you are speaking Chinese, but generally you'll want to know more than that. This is because they get discouraged along the way and don't have much incentive. People mention that you need to immerse yourself in the language, but that's not what does it, it's the fact that your mind registers that you need to learn this new language to survive. Sometimes it's not that extreme, in fact, most of the time it's not. Regardless, you need that urgency. It has to be something that you wake up thinking about in order to really learn it. 

It seems easy to just talk about, and perhaps you can even feel the desire growing inside you to learn a new language because you have the desire, but how are going to go about learning it? This is normally where people stumble. There are so many ways to go out and learn a language that it can be confusing. Are you going to buy those little books, Rosetta Stone, or some other random method? Most likely you'll run through many of these before you get to one that suits your need. 

Let me say this, the first, new language is always the hardest. Learning your mother tongue is easy because it's how you were raised and you didn't really think about it. A new language requires you to adopt a new process of thinking, especially if the grammar and structure is different entirely. This is the main point that people struggle with. You need to realize that it's not English and there isn't a good reason why the language is spoken like that. It might be intuitive, but generally a language will not be intuitive. 

So, people ask me my process because it's just easy for me to learn a language. Most commonly, I give the same answer that people should find out their own method, but they don't like this answer. My method starts out with what we do when we're younger. You need things, but you don't know what items are called. So, two ways to start. Learn the verbs, or learn the nouns. Don't worry about the grammar. You'll get so confused by grammatical structures that you'll give up. Simple things like food items is a good place to start because they are things that you see every day. If you can make connections, it will be easier. 

To talk about connections for a moment, you need them. It helps you to form a process in your mind for your brain to trace. If you learn a whole bunch of random words, you'll most likely forget a majority of them once you stop studying, unless it stands out for some reason. One of the key things that I do when I'm first starting to learn a language is to find someone who is able to speak the language. This is how I learned Spanish while living in Amsterdam! There are hundreds of people walking around who speak Spanish willing to talk to you just because they're bored. I would ask them how to pronounce something and during these conversations a friendship would develop. This is a great life resource.

After you learn verbs and nouns, start to learn some tenses. Start with the present tense of course, then the past tense for story telling, then the future tense to what your plans are. If you can make the connections with your life, the language will come all the easier. You just need to speak.

Which brings me to the most important parts of learning a language. SPEAK! Nothing bothers me more than when people want to learn and don't speak. Your tongue will never get used to the motion and you'll sound ridiculous. Even if it's to yourself, you need to speak. What I do is I read books in other languages out-loud in order to practice. It's good practice and if you're familiar with the book, it's simple. 

That's my advice for learning a language. Once you get comfortable and start finding people who speak the language, it will develop itself.