GOING abroad and learning another language is really a fun experience that one will surely cherish for a lifetime. If you have been born in Valencia, Spain, please go to other places that speak Catalan or Basque. Studying other dialects in your native country is fun indeed. If you go to other places beyond mainland Spain like the Balearic and the Canary archipelagoes, then it’s heartwarming to learn how the people there speak Spanish. Try to compare whether they have the same passion in speaking Spanish the way it is spoken in the mainland.
Try to read the books indigenous to those islands too. Try to research on whether they have prolific and productive authors. This may well be an experience worth enhancing. Of course, everybody knows that people have their day jobs so it’s nice to go there once in a while like during a weekend or on an extended holiday break. There are a few extended holiday breaks around especially if the holiday falls on a Friday. That was what happened on November 1 and 2, All Saints Day and All Souls Day respectively. Take that opportunity to study in a foreign land.
And by studying, I don’t mean formal studying. I mean studying in an atmosphere of actual learning through immersion. Try to befriend the locals in a particular place. You go to Mexico or Cuba or Puerto Rico, they speak the same Spanish yet they have their own unique vocabularies indigenous in that area. The twangs also differ. Try to study that and have a fun life. Once you have your own capital, how about establishing a language school as your own investment?
But first, you must immerse yourself on whether you want to really be a linguist as a pastime. If you’re on your two-week holiday break, try to spend it in a non-Spanish speaking country like Portugal. Portugal is just around the corner – at the same peninsula where you live, the Iberian Peninsula – yet people there speak another language. Then go beyond the Iberian Peninsula and look at the countries fronting the Mediterranean like Italy and France. More or less, they have the same culture such as yours although France is a little bit more liberated. But try to study the languages in those countries because they are definitely diverse. They may have the same origin – the Roman language – but the French and Italian languages are as different as they are.
French is said to be the most romantic language in the modern era. Try to find out why. Try to find out too by enrolling yourself in a French language school. A French language school may be located anywhere – whether in Nice or in Paris – but they offer the same programs. They want students to maximize their learning of the French language by using state-of-the-art technology such as language tapes and computerized lessons. You will also be paired with language partners so you can both tutor each other. So go out into the world and have fun learning languages.
START learning a second language while you’re still young. You’ll really have an advantage if you’re the son or the daughter of a diplomat. I first had a close encounter of another language when my father was assigned in Japan as a diplomat. I enrolled in an international school in Tokyo where my classmates are also sons and daughters of diplomats. I have Portuguese classmates, I have American classmates and I have Filipino classmates. Aside from learning the native Japanese language at the early age of seven, I was also exposed to the languages of my classmates such as Portuguese, English and Tagalog.
After that, I spent my elementary years in the Philippines. It was there that I was exposed to such tourist spots as Boracay and Siargao and Camiguin and even white water rafting and rappelling in Cagayan de Oro. I was also exposed not only with Tagalog words but other dialects of the republic such as Cebuano and Maranao. I was also exposed to unique Filipino delicacies such as roasted pork, fish paste, sweet rice cakes and chicken fetuses.
Then I spent my high school years in Thailand. I was again schooled in an international school in Thailand unlike the one I spent in Manila. In Thailand, I was studying in Bangkok. It was such a crowded city like Manila full of pollution. The real beauty in Thailand lies in the provinces. However, the most interesting place in Thailand that I have visited so far was Phuket. It was in Phuket that the movie The Beach was set. And it was really so wonderful and serene there even during nighttime that I was able to see glowing planktons all around me. In Thailand, I was able to learn their native language and eat their native delicacy which is frog.
In college, my father was assigned at the Spanish consulate in Quebec and it was there that I took my international degree in public relations. Because my English was relatively poor by then, they made me enroll in a refresher course before admitting to regular college. And because Quebec speaks French, I was able to learn the French language too. As part of my immersion in the degree that I took, I was able to go to Tahiti for a month. The capital of Tahiti is Papeete. I love being there, the beaches are cool although not as compelling as the one in Phuket. But I was also able to learn the languages of the people there which is French because Tahiti was a former French colony. Of course, I was able to learn three words in Tahiti, their really native language, because my stay there was just two weeks long. At least, it was memorable although at times, I was wary of tropical diseases such as malaria.
After graduating from the University of Montreal, I moved to Toronto and study for three academic semesters TOEFL or Teaching of English as a Foreign Language. After that, I’m ready to take on the world and apply my learning of English. And I’m Spanish. Now, do you see the relevance why learning a language is important?
IT’S nice to learn a second language as early as when you are young. If you are the son or the daughter of a diplomat, then your family may be placed in another country where the culture is definitely different from your home country. When I was in second grade, I was forced to go to Japan and transfer my schooling there. Even though I was enrolled in an international school, I was privileged to have learned Niponggo and the Japanese characters. They were pretty daunting at first but later on, I have come to adjust to learn the language. Besides, Hollywood movies such as Lost in Translation are my mere inspiration to move on learning the new language. At first, I honestly cried and cried of being awkward playing with my Japanese friends but soon, I slowly found out that they were a nice bunch.
After Japan, I was sent to the Philippines or more accurately, my father was. There was nothing else to do as both my parents had decided not to be in my native Spain while my father was busy abroad. There in the Philippines, I learned how to say a few Tagalog words and even some vocabularies in their regional dialects such as Cebuano and Maranao. I also learned some Higaonon words which were spoken by people who had really retained their native ways. After our family’s Philippine stint, I was sent to Thailand and I had really had a jolly good time there learning Thai and also eating Thai delicacies such as frogs. That was a bit similar to the exotic food that I have tasted in the Philippines such as fish paste, whole roasted pork (which they treated as the Thanksgiving turkey), sweet rice cakes and chicken fetuses.
My whole Asian soiree was really a success. I had a jolly good time learning how to raft in the Philippines, I had experienced swimming and even skinny dipping with glowing planktons all around me in the nighttime beach in Phuket, I had experienced deep sea diving in Palawan, and I had experienced eating rice balls at McDonald’s outlets in Tokyo. After my father’s stint in Asia, he was moved to Paris. It was there in Paris where I experienced a very relaxed world. Everybody was moving at his or her own pace and nobody was there to annoy or disturb you. Everybody was busy yet appeared calm in their affairs. Everybody was speaking French of course and it was another struggle for me. I took it as a challenge because they said that French people are the most intellectual persons in the world.
They also said that French is the most romantic language in the world. This is not just a metaphor I believe because French derives from the Roman language of old. French dining is where I also had passion on even if the restaurants here sometimes have very expensive menus laid out. There was even one joke circulating here that if you can’t pronounce the menu, you certainly can’t afford it. That was a decades-old expression but it still rings a bell in these modern times. Yet alone, my experience in France was not limited to the hustle and bustle of the city life. It was there in the Mediterranean coastlines of France that I experienced serenity with the simple fishermen around me.
