Friday, January 29, 2016

I speak five languages!?!

During the times when I'm not thinking about anything in particular, I sometimes have these odd realizations. Today it was that Japanese is my fifth language.

My native language is Cebuano. Although technically a dialect, it's the language I first learned to speak as a child. It's what we spoke at home. My second language is English since it's the primary medium of instruction in school. Plus, all the TV shows I watched growing up were in English. I remember memorizing the commercials and reciting along every time they came on. Then we had Chinese class from kindergarten up until high school. I never really learned to speak Chinese though, just some words and common sentences. I got by with memorizing the answers on the exams year after year. Still, you could say Chinese is my third language. In elementary we were introduced to Filipino a.k.a. Tagalog, our national language. Ironically, I found that to be the most difficult subject in school. Until now I speak broken Tagalog at best. But broken or not, it's still my fourth language. 

And now I'm studying Japanese, my fifth language. This time I'm learning it because I want to, not because it's required by the school. So now can I say that I speak five languages?

But no, wait... I studied Spanish for one semester in college and got a flat 1.0 (perfect grade). Then I speak six languages?! Hahaha! #justhavingfun

2 comments:

  1. Then I guess you could say Japanese is my 8th language... My mother tongues are Spanish and Galician, I started learning English when I was 3, so I'm pretty fluent already, when I was 10 we started also learning French at school, I'm not really fluent at it, but I can understand most texts and slow conversations. Then I learnt Italian, I studied it for 4 days, took a B2 (online) test and passed it with just 1 mistake, I had no troubles for understanding italian when I traveled there. Then portuguese... it's really similar to my two mother tongues, I understand it perfectly, but have big troubles for not using my mother tongues' words mixed with portuguese. A year ago or so I started studying Swedish, my level is pretty basic, but I know how to ask people if they could write down what they are saying, what makes it a lot easier to understand. And well, I've been trying to learn japanese for a long time, but never really got into it, now I'm motivated into it and I started using Pimsleur while I slowly learn the kanas ^^

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