I know a lot of the globe can communicate in English and that perhaps make us lazier than most nations to learn a new language. That’s not an excuse not to even try. Perhaps growing up in a household where my parents would switch into Yoruba mid sentence, even though it wasn’t my mum’s native tongue, made me appreciate the power of being able to converse in other languages and puts me in a slightly more unique position, but whatever it is, I’ve always wished I could understand more languages.
When I finished university, I had no real plans. My friends had all signed up to graduate schemes, or had already secured full time employment. Me? I have no idea where my head was but the end of my final year caught me by surprise and I ended up staying on to do a one month CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course at my university. I loved every second of it. The days were long and intensive and within the first week, we were spending our afternoons teaching undergrads and postgraduate international students English as part of our certification.
At the end of the CELTA course, my tutors advised us that they had teaching placements available at their sister universities in Spain, China and somewhere else I no longer recall. China stood out as it was the furthest one geographically and culturally. I jumped at the chance of going out there. One of the course participants alongside me was a wonderful woman named Tian Miao. She’d come over as part of a cultural exchange from one of our partner universities in China and inspired me to go and see where she lived.
I spent a year teaching English in Northern China and learned so much about myself. I made some wonderful friends and learned enough Chinese to order food, haggle in the markets or give basic directions to the cab driver at 2am after a heavy night to get me safely back to my apartment. Being immersed in the culture made picking up a new language so much easier.
Which is why I reached out to Rosetta Stone and asked if both myself and Princess could try out their language learning platform. Princess and I are both quite visual learners and whilst I would love to take her to Asia for a few months, it’s not possible at the moment. The Rosetta Stone method is a very immersive way of learning languages. Princess chose to learn Korean as she is infatuated by K-pop and Korean movies at the moment, whilst I decided to brush up on my Mandarin, which after 10 years of nearly no use, was next to non-existent.
Most of our learning is carried out online from a desktop or laptop but we also make use of the app for learning on the go. I find it very intuitive and can easily sit down at the dining table and cover an hour. I find it harder to use the app, which I’d thought I’d use daily on the commute. You need to repeat words in order to pass the lessons and I feel pretty self conscious talking to myself on the train so end up skipping all of the speaking bits and thus, failing the module which was pretty frustrating.
You can play games online with other learners and speak to native speakers of the language you’ve chosen. I’ve not made use of those features yet but definitely plan to.
I want to think I’m raising my kids to be good world citizens and understand that there is so much more to the world than their village or our country. Luckily, they are naturally curious and want to know a bit about just everything which makes my job as their parent and guide that much easier. Knowing other languages opens up a whole new way of looking at the world. I’d love for them to be fluent in many languages, but even if they have an appreciation for a few others, then I’ll know I’ve done my job.
What about Yoruba? Will I learn my native tongue? I hope so! It’s on my list to do. Perhaps when I finally get to go on the trip I’ve promised myself to visit Nigeria, it will be the catalyst I need to start that language journey. But for now it’s me, Rosetta Stone and Mandarin!
Have you learned any other languages? What methods did you use?
That’s soo cool. I’d love to go to a country and completely immerse myself in a new culture for even a few months. I remember hearing a young black girl (maybe early 20s)talking to a group on Chinese people on a bus in Peckham once and was sooo impressed I promised myself I’d learn a language from that neck of of the woods.
I’m currently learning Japanese with LingoDeer which is really helpful and teaching the kids random Japanese words they can use daily. I’d love to go Japan at some point.
I made a Japanese R&B play list on soundcloud to help me get used to hearing words and their stuff is really good like I found proper chilled 90s vibe Japanese R&B (who knew that even existed?!)
But mandarin and Korean are on my LingoDeer list already for me to learn at some point. I figured they’d be easy to grasp once I’ve learned Japanese. I’d love to be able to speak a load of different languages
Ooh so I’d not heard of Lingodeer but will check it out now. Japanese is on our list too! I’d love to spend a good year living and travelling around Asia with the kids. There’s just soooo much to see and experience!