Good morning! In this post, I’ll share my experience in learning languages. Keep in mind that I was born in 1997 and that I started learning languages at a young age compared to many.
My first language (outside of English) is Spanish, which I started learning on June 15, 2008 after listening to and enjoying Mexican music from television. When I first started learning, if I wanted to say certain things that I hadn’t learned yet, I’d use Google Translate, which was absolutely horrid at the time. However, when actually learning the language, basically the only way that I had to learn Spanish was through a set of 3 cassettes, which I still have and a picture of the case will be shown below. I bought my first 2 Mexican CDs, Almas Gemelas by El Trono de México and Las Románticas de Pancho Barraza, on December 26, 2008. In 2011 I bought a DVD that is the first Mexican movie I’ve ever watched, Tacos al Carbón (1971). Overall I’ve been learning the language on and off, but for obvious reasons I know more of Spanish now than I know any other language that I’m learning. From November-December 2017 I went to computer classes to obtain my GED, during which time there were several days that I’ve practiced my Spanish with a Guatemalan woman who was also going for her GED, and also in February 2018 when my brother and I went to computer classes to obtain our CRCs. From Fall 2019-Fall 2020 I was a student at the University of Arkansas at Monticello and my major was Modern Languages, which requires Spanish, French and some Latin, and I was stoked to take classes in Spanish and Japanese. Since 2016 I have used Duolingo some to refresh my memory. The most recently that I have practiced my Spanish was at a Mexican restaurant a few weeks ago, but before then it had been a long time since the last time that I had practiced, so I had forgotten the Spanish word for steak (I was ordering food for my family, and that wasn’t for me).
My second language is Japanese, which I started learning on September 28, 2009 after going to the UAM bookstore and Mom telling me to look around for something that would interest me, and what I got was a Japanese chart (which I no longer have). In 2009, all that I really had to learn was some basic words and phrases, which I had taught a couple of those to my parents, though in hindsight I taught one of those phrases incorrectly. My parents bought me a pocket Japanese dictionary (which I still have) in 2012, during October of which I learned Hiragana and Katakana to the degree of complete memorization, as well as a few kanji and a few more phrases. This little knowledge didn’t make me good at Japanese, and you can tell that in my first Japanese video. Starting at the end of 2013, I watched some videos on potential languages to learn, and as a result I learned some basic words and phrases in many of those languages, but none of them stuck with me. In 2016 I started using Memrise and Duolingo, the latter of which at the time didn’t have Japanese. Since then, I have become friends with Japanese people online and have taken classes in Japanese. Now I use a DS software called My Japanese Coach on my 3DS to refresh my memory and learn words and phrases that I didn’t know before in Japanese.
My third language is Brazilian Portuguese, which I have been learning on and off since May 2021, both for practice with Brazilian streamers (shoutout to Marcotonio, who is the main one, even though he speaks English and Japanese as well) and because for a while I was considering moving to Brazil. Just as with Spanish, I’ve been learning it on and off, and am currently taking a break from actually learning it.
As much as I love learning languages in general, my favorite language is Japanese.
