Tetsu’s Road to Multilingualism (Part III: 13-18 years-old)

I had a choice between Australia and Canada. Each had its pros and cons. In Australia, I would live with my father’s friend/business acquaintance, apparently a very rich man living on a ranch with his own helicopter. In Canada, I would live with my aunt (my father’s little sister). Oh, minor detail, I would have to learn French as this would be in Quebec.
I chose Quebec.



My aunt’s family consisted of her husband, a Quebecer whom she met in Taiwan when he was carrying out missionary work there, 3 children (two girls older than me and one boy younger than me), and a huge St-Bernard called Benji.

I arrived about 2 weeks before school started and my cousins helped me absorb as much French as possible before classes would begin. Despite their great efforts however, my first day at my new high school would still turn out to be an integral reenactment of the first day at my new American kindergarten described in the previous post. Everybody spoke gibberish.

In a round of self-introductions, I would get my own turn to speak gibberish. I challenge you to introduce yourself in front of the whole class with a set of vocabulary that consisted essentially of “oui”, “non”, “je m’appelle Tetsu”, and “j’aime la poutine”. Gotta be creative.

But doing that little speech in French was only the tip of the language iceberg in comparison to studying all the subjects (math, geography, social studies, religion, etc.) in French! Anyway, my best subjects were, not surprisingly, English and math. But I very clearly remember my first grade in French language: 70%. Definitely not my best, but not too shabby for 2 months of learning, eh? Soon Mme Vadnais, the French language teacher was telling students in other classes: “You should all be ashamed of yourself and learn from Tetsu in Class 1H!” And before you know it, I would have complete strangers come up to say hi to me, no thanks to my exotic charms, but actually to some nerdiness. In fact, yes, some people called me a “bollé”. But since I didn’t really know that they were calling me a nerd, I waved back with a smile.

At this school, thankfully again, there was another cute girl who played the same role as Rachel did for me (see previous post). Her name was Katia. One of those people whose name fits perfectly with the person. Sweet. Every time she sees me, she would say “Tetsu~!” with such a cute melody that the whole class picked up on it immediately. Katia says “Tetsu~!”. Class says “Tetsu~!”. Well, let’s just say I’m glad people learned my name rather quickly.

You know, coming out of this high school after 5 years (in Quebec, high school is 5 years, not 6), I really have minimal recollection of hardship, even in the first year. Of course, doing social studies is boring enough as it is without it having to be in French. But in reality I wasn’t doing that much studying anyway, as I was wayyy too busy enjoying all sorts of new experiences with my friends: hockey, skiing, snowboarding, soccer, trips, games, parties, etc.

In retrospect, carrying out these fun activities with my friends allowed me to improve my French more than any language course could possibly accomplish! Do you see where I’m going with this? I don’t first learn how to speak a new language perfectly, and then go out to make friends using that language. I do what I love to do and pick up the language, and friends, while I’m at it. Please remember this point, as it will be the foundation of my language theory: Contextual Language Acquisition Philosophy (CLAP), which I will cover in later posts.

Finally, high school is a fragile period in the time of adolescents. Given that I was thousands of miles away from my parents, I feel extremely fortunate to have been surrounded by great people in those days, including my best friend Greg, who is also an accomplished linguist in his own right. I am also glad to have reconnected with many other friends from those good ol’ days on Facebook.

Thanks to all these great people, I have turned out all right.

Haven’t I?