Tetsu’s Road to Multilingualism (Part IV: 18-23 years-old)

I added three languages, Spanish, German, and Italian, to my list during this 5-year period, so the text is a little long. Please bear with me.

After high school, I went to Ottawa University for 1 year to do a what was called a Pre-science program in those days. My best friend Greg chose instead to go to Ecuador for an exchange program. A few months into my first session, I thought to myself, I wanna go visit Greg over Christmas! And while I’m there, I might as well learn Spanish!

Why not.

Learning Spanish Tetsu's way

This was about a month or so before departure. I decided I wanted to acquire at least a minimal set of vocabulary before going, so I bought myself a cheap language learning kit, which in those days contained a little booklet with some grammar and some phrases and sentences, and the audio part was provided, not in mp3s, not DVDs, not CDs, but in CASSETTES! Remember those? So for a few weeks, before going to sleep, I would read that little booklet, and then just before turning off the lights, I would put on one of the four cassettes and keep it playing all night. As if that’s not enough, I would put another cassette in my car and drive every passenger nuts (pun intended!). That’s right, when a bunch of us would go out to party, from other friends’ cars you would hear cool dance music coming through the sub-woofers, but from Tetsu’s car you would hear a nice nerdy voice “Me gusta comer manzanas…(Please repeat)…”. Yeah, chicks dig that.

That was it for the preparation phase, and I went to Ecuador, my first of numerous subsequent trips to Latin America. But I couldn’t converse. I avoid the word “speak” here, as I was in fact able to say enough words to impress people and to understand them to a certain level if they spoke really slowly and picked their vocabulary carefully. But that was not what I had in mind. After a whole month of “Me gusta comer manzanas…”, I thought I would be discussing world economy with the locals! Not even close.

I really thought I could do more, as I understood everything on those cassettes and thought I could respond perfectly to people. All they had to do was ask me if I liked apples! I guess I found out that textbooks or language learning kits are very good tools for the early phases of your learning in getting you accustomed to the language, but have very limited use for real conversation.

Despite my poor Spanish, Greg’s host family (familia Granja) and all their friends and extended family were extremely patient with me. They talked with me all the time and took me to so many fun places! I was literally able to feel my Spanish get better by the day! ...unless it was the alcohol. But I even had dreams in which I was conversing in Spanish completely fluently! And this feeling led to tremendous motivation, which can drive you to overcome any obstacle. Muchisimas gracias a mi familia Ecuatoriana!

Immediately upon my return to Ottawa, I joined the Ottawa-U Spanish club called S.A.L.S.A. (I forget what that stood for...) and partied in Spanish on a regular basis. Funny thing, the more I drank, the more I spoke Spanish (or Gibberish). (OK, so maybe it was the alcohol.) I made some very dear friends at S.A.L.S.A. with whom I still keep close contact. One of whom is Annie, who's been highly successful at raising a multilingual kid Diego! She contributes her great ideas here at my blog also (see comments in this post).

I have made many efforts throughout the subsequent years to maintain my Spanish, including university clubs or other public Spanish gatherings (e.g., currently I am part of the Spanish Meet-up in Tokyo), extensive traveling to Spanish-speaking countries (Spain, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Cuba, etc.), one advanced 3-week course (skipping beginners or intermediate courses), and even a few stints as Spanish interpreter.

Learning German and Italian

I cannot say that the same efforts were made for German and Italian, two other languages that I started learning during this period.

After my year at Ottawa-U, I transferred to McGill University in Montreal in the biology department. Yep, biology, nothing to do with languages. This was solely because I was aiming for med-school afterwards. However, once I fulfilled all the science course requirements, I used most of my elective credits on languages and on music courses. First year, first session (fall session), I took up German. Then the next summer, I took intermediate German in an exchange program organized by University of Victoria. The 6-week course itself took place in Kassel, Germany. But I must admit, I definitely don’t speak as much German as my A’s would suggest. The biggest reason? Most Germans spoke more English than I did German. I found it hard on my pride to start a conversation in German and they automatically switch over to English, and this would happen all the time. I know that they mean well, but it definitely didn’t help my German. With that experience, when people speak to me in a foreign language, I would always return the dialogue in the language spoken by the other person, even though it could take more time, or the contents of the discussion could suffer. If somewhere along the way, they give up and go into their native tongue, then I’ll adjust to them. But I will always honor their effort to speak by keeping the dialogue in their language of preference.

After the German course, I traveled around Europe for the rest of the summer. Among my stops was a few days in Italy. So why not learn some Italian? Again, why not. Upon entering Italy from Germany, I went straight to the bookstore and picked up a few pocket dictionaries. Immediately I talked to people on the streets. The best are the grandmas. They always had time and were eager to help a young lad. And the best part was that, unlike the Germans, Italians who spoke English were much harder to find. So I would ask where the station was, or where a certain park or other monuments were, etc. But of course, when people tried to explain the directions to me, it would often be too fast and too complicated and I would have to rely more on their body language than the spoken language. But if you ask again at the next street corner and repeat the exercise a few times, the same words come back, and expressions stick. And sometimes you even make friends. So the purpose of course is not really about finding out where the station is. I can read maps very well. It’s about communicating and maximizing use and expanding your vocabulary set.

Learning Italian was so much fun during my 10-day stay that I took up intermediate Italian (skipping beginners) at McGill upon my return to Montreal.

But after taking university courses in these two languages, I’ve confirmed one thing: I’m not very good at learning languages formally or academically. Don’t get me wrong, I got excellent grades for these courses. But I just didn’t like writing essays and going to the language labs to listen to those pointless tapes (I did enough of that for my Spanish). And as a result, I didn’t retain much.

Also, I found out something else. Originally, I thought one day I would also learn Russian and Arabic and God knows what else. But I started feeling that even with German and Italian, I was already spreading myself too thin. That’s when I decided that from that point on I would spend minimal energy on these and any additional languages and concentrate on truly mastering the 5 that I already knew much better, i.e., English, French, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish.