The Seasons of My Languages

The Seasons of My Languages

            As of now, I mainly speak English, which is my second language but also the one I use most of the time. I also speak some Cantonese when I talk to my parents and relatives, though it deteriorated a lot because ever since I started learning English in kindergarten and first grade, my parents made me concentrate on learning English and never made me learn Chinese (Now that I think about it, my Chinese was never really that great to begin with: even before I started to learn English I would not understand 2/3 of the things I hear on the radio or on the dramas my parents watch). Then, one summer day before I started my first semester in LaGuardia, I was watching a Chinese drama with my uncle and cousins when I realized that I had absolutely no idea what they were saying, which made me realize that my Chinese really was deteriorating. That scared me because I was losing my native language and soon I might not be able to communicate with my relatives anymore. As a result, I am currently doing whatever it takes to re-learn Cantonese as well as to learn Mandarin on my own as well as with some help by my family and my friends. I also took Spanish classes from 6^th to 11^th Grade. I was not really that good with it because I was not really motivated to learn it plus I got overwhelmed a lot and now I have pretty much forgotten most of what I have learned. However, I am actually willing to re-learn it too. I kind of am “unofficially” learning Japanese and Korean mainly by watching a lot of anime and a few dramas and figuring out what is what by reading the subtitles, also by listening to a lot of Japanese and Korean songs and looking up translations of the lyrics. I am now also “rediscovering” Chinese songs and movies, and I am also learning some of the language from those. In short, I can read, write, and understand English perfectly and fluently, I can speak and understand some Cantonese and Mandarin plus write a little bit of Chinese (and is improving steadily), I used to be decent at reading, writing, speaking, and listening to Spanish because of school but I forgot almost everything after not taking a class or practicing it for years, I also understand a little bit of Japanese and Korean mainly because of anime, music, and dramas. In the future, I want to learn/re-learn and become at least “more than decent” in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.  

            One question that I always wonder about is if borders of countries disappear now and assuming that everyone in the world can easily travel to anywhere they want, would the world eventually end up speaking one specific language (say Hindi), one “hybrid” language that is a combination of all of the languages, or would everyone be able to speak every language? I also wonder about what other factors, other than things like genocide, can cause a language to die out? Watching science fiction movies also make me ask myself if aliens from across the galaxy came to Earth, how easy or how hard will it be to decipher their language, and could their grammar and sentence structuring be very similar to one of the languages humans speak on Earth? Another thing that I have always wondered about is something that my mom always tell me: Chinese people are smart because of the Chinese characters. She still have never explained to me if and why this is true, and I hope that this class can help me figure it out. As for the creation of languages, I have always thought that is like making music: if a caveman uttered something one day and it sounds good to everyone else, it will be used to describe that thing or action for the rest of history, or at least evolve until it does that.  

            Before reading the article, I underestimated just how much languages play a role in shaping people and how they think. I was surprised that language can affect what people think as masculine or feminine or neither. I was also surprised that the use of words such as forward, backwards, right, and left versus words like north, south, east, and west can tell about a person and how they think. The article also left me wondering if language also effects things like a country’s food and music because my high school music appreciation teacher was explaining how French food and music are “light and fluffy and delicate” whereas German food and music is “heavy and solid,” which makes me wonder if their spoken languages are like that as well.