"neo is very good with languages!"
31/03/2024
the itch to learn new languages has been a constant companion since my childhood, and it is one that feels so satisfying to scratch. portuguese is my native tongue, and nowadays i spend most of my time immersed in english, but the position of "third language" has had many contenders over the years. this post is a chronicle of precisely how each target-language came into my life, more so than it is an account of how i approached learning each of them to varying degrees of success.
the title is something i've heard a lot from others, and it does give me a sense of pride, although i cannot claim to have necessarily retained any proficiency in most languages i've been interested in.
だいいっしょう：にほんご
as a kid that grew up in brazil in the 2000's, japanese media has been in my life as far as i can remember; there would always be some popular animes on the TV, public or pay, and if you were lucky you even knew people who knew what a manga was. as the force of nature that it is, Dragon Ball Z was my introduction to mangas, and even if it wasn't my first anime watched, it was the first that really made a strong impact in my life. in a few years' time, however, a new giant emerged and took over as the most popular anime that every kid was into: Naruto. with better computers and internet, i was able to discover a whole world of anime piracy, downloading subbed, uncensored episodes from the web and binge-watching them. the place i got all my naruto stuff from also had a few pages dedicated to teaching a little about the Japanese language, as the series features magic ninjas and japanese terms pop up everywhere.
such was, i believe, my first foray into language learning (if we ignore english, since that was always just there). i had at that time a DS lite (crimson, a true beauty, my first portable, i still own it!), a flashcard to play pirated games with, and a newfound interest in learning japanese. so i downloaded "my japanese coach" and proceeded to learned the kana, some words, perhaps even some kanji. i must have been something like 10 years old? this early interest in the basics of japanese would, years later, give me a big headstart when i decided to actually study the language.
chapitre deux: français
not long after my first contact with japanese, i also became curious about French. there were two main forces behind this. first, the game Dofus and the anime Wakfu (the game was still in its alpha stages). i played dofus with my school friends and in portuguese, naturally, but i somehow learned of the animation being produced by the developers, and since it was very new and obscure, i watched it in french. i understood little, but had fun nonetheless with what i could gather from it. second, and one that is very dear to me, The Little Prince. i feel like i've always known about this book, but it was only when my school took us to see a theatre adaptation of it that i became perpetually infatuated with it. whether it was an accurate retelling or not matters little, because i was so moved by the story (and i'm sure i was the only kid who felt that way), that i immediately read the book and sought out the original version. i ended up also finding on youtube an old audiobook (an upload of a cd-rom multimedia adaptation), and a musical, both in french. and of course, i downloaded "my french coach" for the DS.
Kapitel drei: Deutsch
the third character in my roster of foreign language interests was German. this time the driving factor was music, and specifically the band that changed everything: Rammstein! i first learned of this band in 2010 through the songs "Sonne" and "Du hast", but only in mid 2012 did it find its way back into my life, swiftly and absolutely earning their place as my favourite band of all-time. my history with rammstein is indeed worthy of its own post. anyway, there were other german groups that i listened to around the same time (most of them in the NDH genre), but for simplicity let's just consider the fiery giants. in contrast to more mainstream pop music, rammstein's lyrics always read like they told a story, with creative wordplay and rhymes and a near spoken-word vocal style (especially in their earlier work). that all is to say, rammstein's lyrics gave me a wealth of material to dissect and learn the language with. i'd spend hours on rammstein fansites reading the translated lyrics to all their songs, absorbing the vocabulary and grammar.
of course, i also employed other methods to supplement my studies, such as books for self-learning, defunct online learning platforms, and even a pirated copy of rosetta stone. it was the first time i seriously invested resources into learning a new thing just for fun. years later, in 2015, i actually studied at a german language school for a semestre, but decided not to continue. it's probably safe to say i learned most of my german by myself, and music played a huge role in that.
interlude: latviešu valoda + gaeilge
so far, all of my target-languages have been quite mainstream, but in the period between 2014 to early 2016, two decidedly more obscure candidates appeared in my radar. the first was the comeback of Latvian, to which i was first introduced years earlier when i was into Hetalia — well, questionable as that series may be, it basically kickstarted my interest in countries and geography. the language caught my attention again thanks to a more honourable influence, the great artist siins, of whom i am a long-time fan! i used as learning tools a pretty old website which i can sadly no longer find, and a scanned pdf of a self-teaching book which i partially printed out.
the second of these less-known TL's was Irish. i'm afraid that, unlike the previous languages, i don't have a detailed recollection of how Irish came into my life, but it probably went something like this: "oh the irish accent in english is really cute" → "ireland seems like a nice and endearing country" → "haha the celtic languages look funny, but i'm kinda interested in irish..." → "wait, irish is endangered?? i simply must learn it now." my twitter archive reveals i was aware of irish as early as january 2014, which means that my affinity for irish predated and followed my latvian phase.
an important event in my life was the London trip in mid 2015, which deserves its own post. there i got to meet two lovely irish boys who were both pleasantly surprised to hear i was interested in Gaeilge. they told me they do study their country's original language at school, but that the system is so bad, few people actually speak it, and thus their language is disappearing; connecting with them really moved me and made me feel even more committed to studying it. and i did, for a time! i had a couple of books for self-studying which i bought during my London stay, but the main tool was Duolingo. i've been a long-time on-and-off duolingo user, and at that time the irish tree was still so small, i actually completed it within a few months (i think the original tree is now less than half of the entire course). ireland is a place that attracts me deeply, and even after many yers i still feel the calling of gaeilge from time to time.
第四章：日本語
Japanese never really disappeared from my life. even as i dedicated myself mostly to german, i was still consuming plenty of japanese media, and i had friends who were also passionate about the language, ensuring it would never stray too far outside my radar. so it was that in late 2016, my first year in university, i decided to pick up some japanese teaching books and study in my free time. the timeline coincides with the japanese release of Persona 5, which brought with it streamers who played through the game while providing english translations; i believe this is what first motivated me to learn the language. i brushed up on my kana, learned a few kanji and practiced some basic sentences, but sadly i hit a wall that made me pause my efforts for the time being.
in january 2017, another super influential game dropped: New Danganronpa V3. i remember well its release, as the original version came out several months before the localisation, and thus a similar situation to P5 arose: western fans impatiently waiting for spoilers and translations. i was a huge fan of the series and had a copy of the game, so i was able to experience the story firsthand while it was still very fresh. i was in a weird position of having to machine translate with my phone every bit of dialogue and UI, but also being able to read the kana, recognise some phrases and correlate kanji with sound. this ability to parse the original text, combined with understanding the gist of things with context, allowed me to absorb a lot of vocabulary very quickly, to the point that i needed the machine translation less and less.
simultaneously, i was also reading a lot of meta commentary on tumblr, specifically by user oumakokichi aka Hope! i initially approached him with an interest in quotes from the game, and somehow got an idea to transcribe certain significant moments in the game, so that my new friend could translate them and share with the community. by typing out the japanese text, i reasoned, i was helping the translation effort by making the content directly accessible (as opposed to having to slowly go through someone else's video). we collabed to bring a lot of scenes to the western fanbase before full translations started going around. and this experience was the push i needed to finally plunge into learning japanese, for real this time.
i started the japanese course at Kumon in april 2017 and impressed my sensei by how fast and efficiently i progressed through the levels. i'm a big fan of their method, as it really worked for me whereas the traditional classroom style of the german school failed to grip me. i powered through the lessons at the beginning, but as the content got harder, the frequency of homeworks naturally got lower. i was continuing at a steady pace until 2020, when the pandemic forced the school to simply hand out a bunch of homework to be done over a long period, and returned all at once. this honestly killed my momentum, even though ironically it was also the time i was most immersed with the language. i had achieved proficiency level N3 and was really proud of being at a good enough level to translate things for other people and interact directly with fanartists on twitter in japanese.
my pace never recovered: homework batches of entire months were being done the weekend before the return date; online meeting invitations were ignored; more and more mistakes slipped into my homeworks. yet through the laziness and loss of motivation, i persevered, until i finally completed the japanese course in april of 2022, after five years. i could have continued with the "kokugo" course (jpn for jpn speakers), but towards the end i had already shifted gears into my current TL. so i visited the japanese school one last time to get my certificate and hug my sensei goodbye for the foreseeable future. (the building it was located in has been demolished, making place for one of many new buildings being constructed in the city.) my hard-earned japanese knowledge, a major source of pride for me, thus quickly faded away, like a sand castle that is undone by a wave after the picture is taken.
4.5장: 한국어
before i move on to the latest chapter my language learning journey, i give a shoutout to Korean. somewhere in the middle of the japanese phase, i got into a couple of korean dramas and naturally became interested in, at the very least, learning the charming korean alphabet. so i had a brief stint with the language, using apps and printed-out pds to learn the writing, a few words, and basic grammar points. i didn't go very far with this one, but i still felt it was worth mentioning, since i can in fact read the alphabet (despite not really understanding what i'm reading).
chapitre cinq: québécois, TABARNAK
ben, j'ai pensé écrire ce chapitre en Français, donc il y aura peut-être des erreurs. c'est une drôle d'ironie comme, quand j'étais jeune, l'allemand était "ma langue" alors que le français était "celle de ma soeur", et maintenant qu'elle a déménagé en Suisse et que je regarde vers le Canada, c'est un peu comme si on a échangé de place. comment est-ce que je suis revenue à cette langue, qui pendant longtemps ne m'intéressait pas et que j'ai même considérée avec un certain dédain? c'est une histoire d'amitié, de drame, de sympathie et, surtout, d'amour.
j'ai fait la connaissance de mon chum à la fin de 2021 sur Final Fantasy XIV. il était le raid leader de notre nouvelle "static", et j'ai vite remarqué que lui et ses amis parlaient anglais avec un accent; lorsque j'ai demandé d'où ils venaient, ils ont répondu "l'est du canada". cette réponse m'a un peu surprise: je les avais déjà entendu communiquer dans une autre langue pendant le raid, mais pour mon oreille inexercée, je n'aurais jamais deviné qu'il s'agissait du français! en tout cas, malgré le fait qu'on jouait ensemble plusieurs heures par semaine, il m'a pris du temps pour avoir le courage d'interagir avec ces nouveaux amis.
un point important c'est que, quelques mois plus tôt, j'avais changé le nom de famille à mon WoL pour un nom français, Lévesque, en considérant uniquement le sens (bishop, en l'honneur de mon bon ami Jim). j'avais aussi pris connaissance de l'existence du Québec, et souscrit aux headcanons amusants selons lesquels le pays fictif Ishgard ressemblait un peu au QC. alors un jour, en attendant le début du raid, j'ai décidé de regarder le stream du leader et de lui demander "comment prononces-tu le nom de famille à Harrow?". la réponse qui a littéralement changé le cours de ma vie... "LEVAIK". pour moi qui ne savait rien des particularités du français québécois, cette prononciation drôle m'a donné la curiosité d'apprendre plus sur le dialecte et, par conséquent, sur la province.
lorsque je me rapprochais de mes nouveaux amis, en apprenant sur leur langue et leur culture, j'ai commencé à être contrarié par le méchant "quebec bashing" pratiqué par les anglo-canadiens ignorants de mon ancienne FC. m'étant fait des amis avec plusieurs gentils québécois, la façon dont mon ancien groupe insultait le Québec et son peuple m'a profondément perturbée, et cela est l'une des raisons pourquoi je suis entrée en conflit avec eux, jusqu'à ce qu'ils m'excluent par force de leurs cercles.
à ce moment-là, j'étais déjà dans un relation avec mon chum, et l'incident, bien que traumatisant, m'a rapprochée de lui et de ses amis. je me trouvais passionnée par la cause de la souveraineté du Québec, sympathisant de la même façon dont j'étais enchantée par l'irlande. et la langue étant un élément majeur de l'identité québécoise, j'ai vite décidé d'apprendre le français pour de vrai, en utilisant plusieurs ressources plus l'expertise des francophones pour améliorer ma connaissance préexistante. je m'ai surpris moi même ainsi que d'autres gens avec mon progrès très rapide pendant si peu de temps, vu que je suis capable de parler avec la famille à mon chum, de comprendre quand les amis jasent entre eux, et même d'écrire cet article en français (ben, avec l'internet pour être sûre de mes mots...).
l'accent, qui jadis étais si distinct que je ne pouvais même pas identifier la langue, et les amusants sacres, sont les raisons principales pour lesquelles je suis tombée en amour avec ce dialecte. en effet, je ne suis toujours pas attirée par le français de France, que je comprends beaucoup moins que celui du QC, mais au moins je ne me moque pas de la langue comme le monde sur internet aiment faire. donc, je considère le Québécois séparément dans ma liste de langues-cibles. ma relation va bien, et mes études à l'université finissent bientôt, faque je regarde vers le Québec pour l'avenir. chaque fois que j'y vais, ma maîtrise du français devient plus fort, tout comme mon amour por la Belle Provice et son peuple, qui m'ont si gentillement accueilli.
même si je dépends toujours de l'anglais por communiquer avec mon chum et amis, je continuerai à consacrer beaucoup de temps au français, jusqu'à ce que je n'ai plus besoin de ce soutien. je ne peux pas appeler le Québec "mon pays" et ne pas parler la langue! peut-être je utiliserai ce blog pour la pratiquer davantage.
for the english text, click here
well, i thought i'd write this chapter in french, so there may be some mistakes. it's a funny irony how, when i was younger, german was "my" language while french was "my sister's", and now that she moved to switzerland and that i look towards canada, it's like we swapped places. how did i come back to this language, that for long didn't interest me and which i even regarded with some disdain? it's a story of friendship, drama, sympathy and, above all, love.
i first got acquainted with my now-boyfriend in late 2021, through Final Fantasy XIV. he was the raid leader of our newly formed "static", and i quickly noticed he and his friends spoke english with an accent; when asked where they were from, they answered "east of canada". that surprised me, as i had heard them communicate in another language during raid, but my untrained ear would never have guessed it was french! despite us playing together for several hours each week, though, it took a while for me to have courage to interact with these new buddies.
an important fact is that, a few months earlier, i had picked a french surname for my WoL based solely on the meaning (bishop, in honour of my good friend Jim). i had also become acquainted with the existence of Québec, and subscribed to the fun headcanons that the fictional Ishgard resembled QC. so one day, while waiting for us to start the raid, i decided to look at the leader's stream and ask "how do you pronounce Harrow's last name?". the answer that, quite literally, changed the course of my life... "LEVAIK". to me, who knew nothing about the particularities of québec french, this surprising pronounciation gave me the curiosity to learn more about the dialect and by extension the province.
as i got closer to my new friends from QC, getting to learn about their language and culture, i started resenting the nasty "quebec bashing" done by the ignorant anglo-canadians in my former guild. having befriended several québecois, the way my former group insulted québec and its people deeply disturbed me, and it's one of the reasons i got into conflict with them, until they forcefully removed me from their circles.
at that point, i was already in a relationship with my boyfriend and the incident, while traumatic, brought me closer to him and his friends. i became passionate about the matter of québec sovereignity, sympathising with it similarly to how i was enamoured with ireland. and with the language being a major characteristic of québécois identity, i quickly decided to learn french in earnest, using a wealth of resources plus the expertise of native speakers to build upon my pre-existing knowledge. i've surprised myself and others with how much progress i've made in such a short time, as i'm able to speak with my partner's family, understand my friends' banter and even write this post in french (using the internet to double-check, of course).
the accent, originally so distinct i couldn't even identify the language, and the famous sacres are a big reason i've fallen in love with this dialect. indeed, i'm still not a fan of french from France, and i understand it way less than that of QC (although i don't shit on it like people on the internet like to do), hence why i consider Québécois its own thing in my list of target-languages. with my relationship going strong and my university studies finishing soon, i look towards Québec for my future. every time i visit, my proficiency in french increases and so does my love for the belle province and its people, who so kindly took me in.
while i'm still reliant on english to communicate with my partner and friends, i will continue dedicating myself to french until i have no more need of those crutches. i cannot call Québec "my country" and not speak its language! maybe i will even use this blog to practice more.
epilogue: the real TL was the friends we made along the way
i believe there is really only enough place in my brain for three languages. each time i picked up a new one, the previous one faded away, regardless of how much effort i put into it. this makes me sad, as i would very much like to revisit each one of them. you know, just for fun, not worrying whether i'll ever get to talk with a native speaker, or whether there is any practical benefit to knowing them. to me, being interested in languages is intimately linked with discovering new media, making new friends, exploring new places; it is cause and consequence, hence why this article focused more on the circumstances which led me to each TL than the actual experience of learning them. i will never claim to speak all languages, as learning even just one is a life-long process that requires a type of commitment i cannot give out equally. but i can say that the fascination with them has shaped who i am in several ways, each attempted TL etching a permanent mark in my history.