time to become a polyglot

I began this year with three (very simplified) intentions: make money. make art. learn languages. this week, having found some spaciousness in me, I continued dipping my toe — albeit very slowly — into the wide ocean of languages. I decided to begin with the common romance languages: Spanish, Italian, and French. at the same time, to not do myself a great disservice and abandon Mandarin — that mother tongue with which I entered the world speaking first.

I recently read a quote by Adrienne Rich, referring to English —

“This is the oppressor’s language / yet I need it to talk to you”

I have always found it entirely arbitrary that I speak and write in English. it made me think of how, beyond any practical needs of communication, my deeper intention is understand different ways of thinking, being, relating to the world, to myself, to others. the world’s languages is nothing more than a system of sounds we make with our mouths, as attempts to make meaning. to give our inner motions significance to ourselves, and to communicate it to each other. but we speak already in so many other universal languages — with our bodies, with dance, with music, with colors and shapes and form, with facial expressions and non-verbal sounds.

I was lazy and studied advanced Mandarin in high school. after I delivered my high school commencement speech (in English), my Mandarin teacher came up to me and said, I hope you’ll be able to write like this, one day, in Mandarin. (the subject of Mandarin and my mixed feelings about it is a whole other pandora’s box, to be addressed in another entry.)

but, I never learned a single language from scratch — until I learned Mongolian, during a semester abroad in college. learning Mongolian meant learning an entirely new alphabet. but I discovered I was very good at it — perhaps because it is such a process-driven act, requiring good memory, abstraction of sound, and letting go of everything you knew, to begin again.

perhaps you’re wondering — since you’re in Japan, why don’t you learn Japanese?

I wondered this question too. simple answer is: I don’t feel like it. it was hard for me to learn French while in Paris — simply because of the pressures I put on myself to learn French, and learn it, quickly. (then again, France is uniquely unfriendly to non-French speakers). I want to approach learning languages from a place of love and desire and curiosity, rather than any need to “assimilate” or to “understand” or to feel “comfortable.” I want to learn Spanish so that I can read poetry. Italian, so that I can read listen to operas. French, so that I can watch French films. (for example.) Mandarin, so that I can finally, perhaps, relate to that ancient civilization from whence I came.

the day in which I want to read Japanese haikus in their original form, I will learn Japanese. and I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes… next year, or the year after. this might read as ridiculously lofty and self-confident to you, but I am dead serious when I say that I think I was meant to be a polyglot.

so I am beginning now. I downloaded some audio courses on the three romance languages. I am listening to Chinese podcasts everyday — old 1930s essays written in elegant prose, which I have to listen to three or four times to really understand. but it feels so good to me. I will write more on this process, once my entire foot is in that ocean.