Knocking down language barriers.

So, I wanted to keep my promise on these next entries being related to the identity keywords I put down in my first entry. This'll be about language.

I'm Black-Honduran, emphasis on Black. My father's a native speaker, so he speaks fluent Spanish. But, we don't have a good relationship, and he left pretty early. So, I got no Spanish at home. That said, my elementary school didn't have language courses either, so my first thirteen to fourteen years were spent without any multilingual ability.

My neighborhood has been becoming more and more Latino since the seventies, according to my mother. It's to the point that by the time I was born, I'd say at least 65% of the residents spoke Spanish. A similar percentage of my friends were also Latino. Anyway, I liked all of my friends-- we'd play baseball at the vacant lot across the street and ride our bikes and play Nintendo and sneak into abandoned buildings. Y'know, normal kid stuff. But, what definitely marred my friendships was that they would start having conversations in Spanish as soon as a big enough group of Spanish-speakers got around. Maybe excluding me wasn't the direct goal, but it was a necessary by-product. It really bothered me-- that they were laughing and having fun in a language I didn't understand. What if they were laughing at me? And, why are they speaking in Spanish anyway, when we all speak English? Etc.

I don't think it characterizes all Black-Latino friendships, but it definitely was a problem for me. So, when I started high school, my first goal was to start learning Spanish. And I did that for four years-- my Spanish is good for school Spanish, I guess. I don't really practice anymore, since I don't take Spanish in college, but every now and then I'll read some Google News Colombia/Cuba, or I'll take out a Spanish book, just to remember words.

I can't really explain why I started Japanese. I think I was being a little dramatic when I was describing my decision to learn Spanish-- it's also just the most common choice made, generally. Also, the other choices were French and Latin-- both of which I had no interest in-- so Spanish was the logical thing to do. But I didn't actually like my Spanish learning experience very much. Freshman year Spanish was fun, if only because the material was relatively easy, but once I moved into a higher class the following year, I started to dislike the class. There was too much work; my teacher was very critical, and I made really simple mistakes all of the time. The feelings just grew stronger my junior and senior year. I think what really intensified everything was my frustration over having so little choice over what to learn-- Spanish class was annoying, and you needed three years of a single language to graduate. So, there'd have been no way to switch into French or Latin, even if I had wanted to.

My sophomore year, though, some kids from Okayama Hakuryo, a high school in Japan, came to my school in a student exchange program. I really thought they were magical beings, like unicorns. I remember having my first conversation with Kohei, who was in some classes with me, and thinking he was just really amazing and funny. Suddenly, I wanted to go to Japan. And to go to Japan, you obviously need to speak Japanese. Honestly, I'm really bad with details, so everything just blurs together. I was a big Dragon Ball Z fan beforehand, so I wouldn't say my interest in anime/manga came as a consequence. But, after they left, I came to the conclusion that the only way to speak Japanese would be to completely Japan-itize my life. No more American music, no more American television. It was Jpop and Jrock all of the time, anime, manga, etc. That lasted at least until my senior year, when I discovered Simple Life.

Anyway, I eventually did manage to go to Japan in my sophomore year of high school, though there was a lot of red tape and funding problems. Essentially, I had to beg a lot of people to buy my plane/train tickets, but 'I can charm the rattle off a rattlesnake.' Being there was definitely one of the best times of my life-- everything was so new to me, and while there's a definite ignorance[black boy in Japan, what?], I really enjoyed everything. Brought a lot of stuff back. And, if anything, it just made me work harder at my Japanese.

Wow, this is a thick entry.

Flash forward to now, and I'm a college sophomore taking Chinese and Japanese. Chinese is and was a complete accident-- I was trying to be ambitious when I was picking classes in my first semester, freshman year. Something about "Intensive Elementary Chinese 1-2" just seemed...really intense, y'know? So, along with Japanese 1 class[since I'd had no formal exposure to Japanese, the department head thought it would be best to start from scratch and pick up basics properly], I did Chinese. Oh man, that class was annoying-- I thought coming from high school, where classes were pretty much every day anyway, there wouldn't be a major difference between taking classes five times a week in high school and six times a week in college. Big mistake. The pace was completely different-- we were apparently learning one year of Chinese in one semester. So, double the pace of a normal Chinese class, which is hard enough as it is. Anyway, I did another intensive Chinese class the following semester, so now that I'm going into my second semester, I can talk about stuff like the Monica Lewinsky scandal and environmental protection in Chinese.[or, supposed to be able to, anyway] Like, what? I can't even talk about that in English.

So, definitely not doing Chinese next semester, as it's only going to get harder. I still want to learn Chinese and all, if only because I've come so far, but I don't think a classroom setting is right for me. Just like with Spanish.

Japanese, though, is a blast. Man, I could do Japanese eight times a day, seven days a week, and I'd still enjoy myself. Maybe. Point is, three times a week is fine and dandy.

And, that is the medium-long version of my Spanish/Japanese/Chinese experience. Overall, I think my paranoia as a child led me to really like languages, or at least breaking down language barriers. Nowadays, I just really like communication and linguistics, which is where my philosophical interest comes in, I guess.

I'd like to master as many languages as possible, German being next hopefully, or Arabic. Or Hindi. Or Hausa.

So many languages, so little time.