The world is becoming smaller and more globalized, realizing this, we have set out to retake the Tower of Babel.

One of our peers, Meg Collier, studied abroad and was put in an environment where her native language wasn’t spoken.

Over the course of her time there, she learned to pick up and understand the things people were saying to her even if she couldn’t respond in that language. She ended up learning a lot more in a shorter amount of time by being immersed in the place where that language was spoken.

Growing up in a myriad of environments has resulted in me, Brian Lab, having a very dynamic view of the world, specifically its languages and cultures. My mother is Thai/Chinese, and my father is American. Originally I lived in Maryland, then moved to Taiwan, with several trips to Thailand in between, before finally settling down in Hawaii. My first language was Thai, but unfortunately I have forgotten nearly all of it, and am left with only the ability to understand some conversation. My perspective on English is pretty varied as well, as I both have the Continental “Proper” English Dialect and the Hawaiian Pidgin English Dialect. As for foreign languages, I learned a small amount of Mandarin while I was in Taiwan, and am currently taking Chinese courses here in college. My strongest foreign language, however, has to be Japanese. I took Japanese for 3 consecutive years in Hawaii (5 years total) and did a homestay/exchange trip in Japan. In addition to these, I plan to learn Cantonese, Chaozhou, and Korean in the future, along with improving the other languages that I’ve learned. So, as you might have guessed, I enjoy learning languages.

Foreign languages are a relatively new interest for me, Jonathan Moore. I originally wanted to learn Japanese because of anime (animated cartoons) and manga (Japanese comics) which I still have an interest in but I set my eyes on a quest for knowledge. What better language to access knowledge than learning Chinese? I knew that modern Chinese wouldn’t lead me to the original sources of documents like the Dao De Jing but it was necessary to get there. So I took Chinese 101 twice at a local community college and ended up with an A the second time I took it. I then followed it up with Chinese 102 which I also got an A in. So I figured I had a knack for languages at least with some assistance from a tutor. I got sort of shafted because I had used the language classes to boost my GPA but Palomar (the community college I went to) stopped their Chinese program so I completely forgot everything except how to say my name. Learning languages has always been hard but through perseverance I believe I can overcome any hurdle including age.

I, Miki Watanabe, started to study English when I started middle school. I joined the ESS(English Speaking Society) club for six years in both middle school and high school, and that is where I found my interests in learning foreign languages. When I was 16, I experienced my first study abroad in the U.S. I went to a private high school in Austin, Texas for a year as an exchange student and throughout the year, had a lot of opportunities to speak and listen to English, in class and even on weekends with my host family. Although it has been several years since I started to learn English, it is still hard for me to handle. Studying a second language is fun, but it takes time and it can be really hard at the same time. Since this is my second time to study abroad, I hope that by the end of the year, I can see some improvement in my English.

As a second generation American, there is the common expectation of to retaining the language and heritage of the country your parents came from. For me, Bryant Bernardo, it was retaining Tagalog and the Filipino traditions. Growing up in Paradise Valley for the first five years of my life, learning and retaining Tagalog was not much of a problem. However, upon moving to Chula Vista and starting kindergarten, the amount of Tagalog I knew diminished due to me being more exposed to English. Upon entering middle school, I soon began to hear more Spanish being spoken among my peers, eventually I was able to pick up some of the Spanish used here such as “no mames guey” or “simon guey” as well as picking up the profanity, but that’s a given for any language. In my sophomore year of high school I was able to travel to Spain, where I was exposed to a different Spanish. It was a fun experience but trying to communicate was terrible, however, this bump in the road served as a catalyst for me to learn Español. At the level I am now, I can survive in TJ. In my senior year, I traveled to China, and there I made friends whom I still keep in contact with; they constantly expose me to Chinese so I decided to take Chinese here at State. This knack for wanting to know what others are saying is probably what drove me to learn Spanish and Chinese, start speaking Tagalog again, major in linguistics and become a polyglot… and eventually retake the Tower of Babel.