Thinking About Getting Into: Languages
At some point last summer, I had developed a routine that I had kept up, somewhat miraculously, for the span of at least six weeks, if not several months. Quarantined to my Brooklyn apartment, I was using my time to finally learn to speak foreign languages fluently. Before work, I went on Duolingo and completed lessons in Spanish, French, and eventually Italian. Later in the day, I practiced Japanese on LingoDeer. Eventually, I decided it was extremely embarrassing that I couldn’t speak Mandarin and downloaded both Chineasy and HelloChinese. At some point, Babbel was having a sale that it said was its best deal of the year, and so I splurged and got an annual subscription, telling myself that if I was willing to shell out enough for a year, I would almost certainly use it.
It hardly qualifies as a plot twist for me to tell you that I cannot fluently speak any of these languages at this point in time, and that, after a series of personal events spanning from late summer through early winter, I let the apps sit on my phone, untouched, until my data-filled device sent them into the Cloud. Their facades, arranged neatly in my “Languages” folder remained; a shop window of all the things I wanted for myself. But they were empty shells—to practice again, they’d need to be re-downloaded.
It does not take any kind of productivity expert to explain why, when you set your goals so abnormally high without any kind of set training schedule, instructor, or means of holding yourself accountable, you inevitably fail. But I like to think that my intentions were good, at least.
Last summer was not my first time chasing my language ambitions. Two years earlier, I had found comfort in the wake of my first media layoff by watching Terrace House in its then-entirety. I could not speak Japanese, so I was forced to read the subtitles, fully immersing myself in the show. I could not pick up my phone, as I often did with other programs, or half-watch while folding my laundry. I cannot get into meditation, in spite of the many times I have written about its benefits for whatever publication. Watching TV in a language I don’t speak is my next-best thing.
In spite of this, I decided that I should just learn Japanese. And by the time I was settled at my next job, I had learned, at the very least, to read one of the language’s alphabets, hiragana. I don’t remember when exactly I abandoned it, but I did, inevitably.
When I went to Mexico City in 2019, I scraped by on what I remembered from AP Spanish, a class that I excelled in…and proceeded to forget the vast majority of after I tested out of my college’s language requirement the following year. I spent more time on Duolingo after my trip than I had immediately preceding it. I was embarrassed by the mistakes I made: that I said diecicinco instead of quince, that my poor accent was also weighed down by a tone of apologia for my poor grammar. I should have prepared better. I should have spoken better, and so I approached language-learning again, with a fair measure of shame.
I am embarrassed to only speak one language, which puts me in a global minority: 40% of the world is monolingual, 43% is bilingual, and 13% is trilingual (at least, that’s what this website says). When I approached languages again last summer, it was with the sense of urgency that all the varied blog posts bid: working from home, like many others, I now had the gift of a little extra free time that might otherwise go to my commute. I’d better make use of it. Surely I would regret it if I didn’t.
I don’t have aspirations to move abroad, and while I do love to travel, I can’t realistically globe-trot in a way that would make the knowledge of several languages truly useful. But still, this was a part of myself that I wanted to improve: by speaking several languages, maybe I would finally feel like I have something to say.
I know that sounds sanctimonious, or despisedly banal, when here, I’ve already written several hundred words on a topic that is primarily of my own importance. I have written for a living for my entire professional career, but accompanying each byline, those I’m proud of and those I’d rather not auto-populate on my MuckRack, I’ve felt a desire that has varied in its level of desperation: That I might be able to come to some conclusion that no one has before, that I can put the puzzle pieces together that were otherwise seemingly eternally jumbled, that I could analyze the particular idiosyncrasies of modern life in a way that would make people say, “Wow, this.” Every time I’ve had a good idea that has resulted in a piece of content I’m happy to put my name to, I’ve thought: Well, that was it. My last idea.
Maybe now is a good time to say that I experienced my second media layoff in the early fall, and though I was extremely lucky to secure another position fairly quickly, I can’t say that the instability of this industry has made me any more confident or secure in this matter at hand. By winter, I’d abandoned all of my language dreams. I needed to focus on more important matters than putting my thoughts—which grew so jumbled and dense that my present felt like an escape room from which some inner Me, the one that was hopeful and ambitious and disciplined, was desperate to get out of—into pretty prose.
But I downloaded Pimsleur a few weeks ago. I was served an ad for it on Instagram and I figured, hey, this is one that I haven’t tried. I’m constantly listening to a podcast or audiobook to quiet my mind, so perhaps language-learning in an auditory method could be better suited for me. (I never really identified as what “type of learner” I was in elementary school, except that I probably wasn’t kinetic. But maybe my dance minor would disagree about that.) Shortly after, I got back on Duolingo and Babbel, though I’m nowhere near the rigor of my routine of last summer. Once a week, I listen to News in Slow Spanish.
I rarely speak aloud with any of the language apps; I’m too embarrassed of my own voice. But more often, lately, I’ve started to mouth or at least whisper the phrases I’m supposed to pronounce. I’ve realized that I have zero grasp on the French “r” but I have no problem with the same letter in Japanese. I can’t roll my tongue in Spanish as well as I used to. I understood French numbers fairly quickly, but I can’t help but feel like an asshole saying “quatre-vingt-dix-neuf” (but I guess…it is French).
I’ve watched enough polyglot TikTokers and YouTube videos to know that the next step for any language is to actually speak it, but this is the step that I struggle with the most. Surely, a teacher on any app is there to teach, but I worry that when I sign on, I’ll once again feel unable to put any of my thoughts or feelings into words. But maybe, a part of me—that is maybe the old Me—remembers that it’s okay to start a sentence without knowing where it will land. If what I want so desperately is to speak—in Spanish, French, Japanese, and any other language that I’m sure I’ll eventually add to my list—then surely I must have something to say.