I have been constantly surrounded by foreign languages. Aside from being a San Diego native, thus having Spanish being spoken pretty much everywhere, my father was a language enthusiast. He was fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, as well as being conversational in German and Russian. Throughout my life he was talking with foreigners and trying to learn their language just a little at a time. He had a coworker from Germany, so he learned German from her, his hairdresser was Russian, so he learned Russian from her, his grandmother was Azoren, so he learned Portuguese from her, Spanish was everywhere since he also was a San Diego native, so he picked that up from people at restaurants, at school, or wherever he found them, and he learned French in College because he thought it would be fun. I picked up my father’s enthusiasm for language fairly recently. I spoke English exclusively for the majority of my life, but I have discovered that I love learning about languages and their respective cultures. I find it fascinating how other languages convey ideas through a completely different process than the one that I am used to. The first language that I started to learn as a foreign language was French. I have family in France, and I went there with my Grandmother (who is from France), and she told me that she would not speak to me in English for the duration of our stay in France. As a result, I learned French fairly quickly, especially the key phrases like, “Where is…” or ” I would like…”. That was many years ago, and my French has greatly deteriorated since I was there for 5 weeks with my Grandmother, but I believe that I would be able to survive well enough with the French I still have, though I know I would not be able to hold any type of meaningful conversation in French.  So far I have studied French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, and Japanese though I would not call myself fluent in any of these languages, but I am somewhat conversational in Portuguese because I practice often with my girlfriend who is Brazilian. I can count to a billion in all of the languages I have listed, and know some basic survival phrases in most of them, as well as being able to say thank you in at least 5 more languages. I imagine that I will continue to learn languages throughout my life, and I hope to be at least trilingual at some point in my life.

The first language that was exposed to me was Chinese. Being born in China, I learned to speak Cantonese from my family and slowly learned mandarin as well. Ever since I was little, my grandma would buy me poetry books in Chinese and made me memorize then recite it to her. Gradually, I learned how to read Chinese as well.

My first encounter with the English language was when I first arrived in America at the age of six. I still remember having to take a test in order to attend school, which required me to learn the alphabet and some basic vocabulary, which was quite hard since it was completely new to me. Every time we had new vocabulary quizzes, I would cry at home and not want to go to school because I felt that I was stupid. However, I was finally able to speak fluent English in the third grade. As I grew older, I developed a strong interest in other foreign languages, one of them being French. When I entered seventh grade, I picked French as one of my electives and quickly fell in love with the language. Then, in eighth grade I took Spanish, hoping to learn another language and continued on with it throughout high school. In the future, I hope to travel the world so hopefully these languages will be helpful to me.

In reality, in this class is basically when and where I actually started to pay attention to the English language and everything that is involved and combined together in order to have a conversation or simply express oneself verbally and in writing. For example, I had no idea that Charles Hockett was who stated that a true language would have all 13 features that he presented on his list, and if it doesn’t, then its mere communication. Neither did I know that there were 7,105 languages in the entire world and that 2,350 of those are languages that are at risk of disappearing. Something that I had never paid attention to was that Sign Language was also a language, I mean I knew it was a language because of its name but I had never acknowledged the fact that they use “sight and motion” the same way that we use “sound and hearing” for regular language. Also, I didn’t realize that there were three types of languages, Human language, Animal language and Programming language, I just never thought about it that way. Furthermore, I have indeed learned another language, actually my primary language is Spanish and I know how to write it and speak it, but have not analyzed each sound and place of articulation of each word, it just never crossed my mind, it was just something that I did without wondering how. I didn’t even do that for English, until I enrolled in this class; I just simply spoke it without paying attention if the place of articulation was the teeth, lips, tongue, lungs, nasal or throat. Moreover, in my house, the Spanish language has always been spoken ever since I remember, it wasn’t until about the time when I began Middle School when all you heard in my house was basically “Spanglish.” My sisters, brothers, cousins, family members and I, all of the sudden began to speak with both languages combined just because its a faster way to speak I guess, like if I’m speaking English and I’m having a conversation, I’ll just begin to substitute some English words with Spanish ones and even if the other person with whom I’m speaking doesn’t know Spanish, they understand what I say because they get it through context I guess. Unfortunately, it is now very hard to get rid of that habit because we have been doing it for so long. In regards to language ever being a burden to me, the answer is a resounding YES! Since Spanish is my primary language, it is sometimes frustrating that I wish I could express myself as I would in Spanish, but the words in English just don’t come out that powerfully. Especially on essays for school like argumentative or persuasive essays where I had a clear standing and point to prove but it was so hard for me to express myself with the same intensity as if I were writing in Spanish. Sometimes I would just write my essays and have the “Google Translator” tab opened on my computer and used it all the time, actually I still do sometimes. Overall, my experiences with the English have been interesting, I have learned many things. The language that I learned other than Spanish, which was my primary language, was English, and lastly yes, language has indeed been a burden for me at some point in my life.

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.

Since I was born in China, I have quite some experience with different languages or shall I say dialects? Chinese is a language with many dialects so I grew up in a town that spoke one of those many dialects. Chinese has two mostly spoken dialects, Cantonese and mandarin. I grew up in a province where Cantonese was the main dialect spoken by everyone and also I watched a lot of Hong Kong television channels which were mainly in Cantonese so naturally I picked up on that as a second dialect. Then I attended a pre-school in China where I learned mandarin which became the third dialect I picked up on. After spending five years of my life in China I moved to America where I was exposed to a whole different language, English. I had learned some basic English in China by watching Disney movies and learning the alphabets at my pre-school but that was all. When I came to California I was put in the English Language Development class in first grade. I really don’t remember learning English to be a difficult task for me maybe because I came to America at such a young age. Being in this new English speaking environment, I learned to speak English pretty quickly and lost my accent. I’m really thankful for my parents for moving to America when I was so young, since it gave me more opportunities to be exposed to this new language. However I realized there’s also a downside to being exposed to a new language. After moving to Los Angeles I began to lose my mandarin speaking skills which is a shame because it’s the most spoken dialect in China but fortunately I am still able to understand it. Afraid that I won’t completely forget how to speak mandarin my parents sent me to a Chinese school where I learned how to read, write and speak it which did help me remember it. Then in middle school through high school I decided to challenge myself and took on Spanish. Up until now I have taken four years of Spanish but even after that I am still not confident enough to speak it. I remember my high school Spanish teacher told me something very interesting. She stated that people can only be able to produce sounds they have heard before a certain age, after that it will be very hard to learn. She said that to the class because everyone was having trouble rolling their “R.” She said that those who have not heard it before when they were young would have a hard time doing it but i don’t know if its true or not.

Two main languages are spoken in my household, Cantonese and a Chinese dialect that rarely anyone speaks even in China, the only people that I know of who speak this dialect are people from my hometown which is not very big. Occasionally I would speak English in my household but only to my little brother or cousins who were born in America. I don’t think I have ever experienced a time when language was a burden to me. In fact, knowing more than one language or being bilingual is an advantage because it gives me more opportunities to communicate with different people and understand them and this skill will become handy when I’m looking for a job in the future. However, there are times when I think being bilingual can be troublesome because I am always asked to translate letters in English for friends and family who don’t understand English and act as a translator, this can be a bit bothersome at times but I’m always happy to help anyone in need. Anyways this concludes most of my experiences with languages and I hope there will be more experiences to come.

My interest in languages began when I lived in the Philippines. I grew up in a province not too far from the capital and despite the majority of the population speaking in Tagalog, I was exposed to a lot of foreign languages at an early age. For example, I grew up watching anime which exposed me to Japanese. Since cable TV wasn’t prominent in the Philippines back then, anime was the only c thing closest to children’s cartoons. 80% of the video games I played were imports from Japan and Korea, and most of them weren’t even been translated so I played through them in a completely different language. Telenovelas which were considered to be a pastime exclusively for adults introduced Chinovelas (Chinese/Taiwanese Dramas) and Koreanovelas (Korean Dramas) to teenagers. They became insanely popular spawning a huge interest in Korean/Chinese/Japanese music, fashion, culture, and especially language. I remember watching MYX (a Filipino music show similar to Mtv) and the top ten charts would play a few Filipino songs,  some Britney Spears or Avril Lavigne, and at the very top were the boy bands from Taiwan and Korean. Basically, because I was exposed to so many different languages as a child, my interest in them only grew. I took Spanish classes in High School for three years and I’m now currently taking Korean.

My very first experience with learning a foreign language, however, was in an English class. English was the very first foreign language I learned because it was a mandatory subject everyone was required to take in school. I remember one of the main school policies was that no one was allowed to speak in Tagalog on campus (except in Wika – filipino literature, and Civics class). Nevertheless, all the students including the teachers never followed this rule. The only time we practiced it was whenever the principal was near. As a student, I was never really fond of English because it meant longer school hours (English was a two hour long class) and more homework. I also did not understand the importance of English back then because everyone, including my family, simply communicated in Tagalog. However, I’m really grateful that my school had put so much emphasis on English because it’s been a very useful skill to have. Though I wouldn’t call it a burden, sometimes my accent makes me very self-conscious whenever I’m speaking with a native English speaker. Since I learned English in the Philippines, the pronunciations are very different. For example, I can’t say words with an [ɪ] sound naturally. I would actually have to consciously process it in my brain if I want to say the word the “right” way. If I do not, I end up saying ‘keel’ instead of ‘kill’ or ‘beet’ instead of ‘bit’. I’m quite confident whenever I’m writing an essay for an English class, for example, but as soon as it becomes an oral assignment, It becomes a difficult task for me. I once took a public speaking class in high school, and although I aced the class, I stuttered a lot during my presentations. When I mispronounce a word, I would stop what I’m saying and correct myself but then I would have lost my train of thought which will then result in gurgling a bunch of random words. Other than that, language is fun!

Languages play an important part in everyday human interactions. It can help and hinder the level of communication we experience. It conveys how we feel, what we are thinking and what we want to say to other people. We can modify our language to meet our situation and it is our responsibility as senders to make sure other people receive our messages. We use other gestures with our hands and other triggers to help others understand us as another form of communication; we want to leave no room for misunderstandings.

I speak two languages, making me bilingual. I can speak both English and Spanish. I grew up with both of my parents who were native speakers of the Spanish language and who had to learn English so I acquired the languages over time just as they did. All of my grandparents were native speakers of Spanish as well, so I would have a hard time understanding them when I was younger, and now that they have passed away I find it harder and harder to find chances to use the language since everyone I know speaks English. I feel like I’m losing my grasp on what was important in the past. It’s true what they say: If you don’t use it, you lose it. Sad, but true, I see it fading away from me everyday.

In school it helped plenty to know a different language, especially in my foreign languages classes. I knew the basics and enough to move up several levels after that. I passed my AP test, and I was really proud of that accomplishment. Although I didn’t experience any burdens in high school, I could see how hard it was for some other people. The non-native speakers of Spanish would come to me for help and all the native speakers still had trouble getting the spelling and rules correctly because they weren’t used to writing it or reading the language. I was never exposed to any reading or writing prior to classes, so I learned as I went along, however it didn’t seem like a challenge to me while I was there.

Outside of school, it usually helped speaking Spanish as well, just because English and Spanish are pretty common languages in California. Most people would assume by looking at me, that I am Mexican and that I do speak Spanish, and they’d be right. I often would find people, (mostly native Spanish speakers) asking me things in Spanish before I even opened my mouth to prove to them that I do indeed, speak English. I do not take that as good or bad, just interesting. However, I do think it is better to have an answer than to tell them I don’t speak their language and having them kind of, sorta, understanding me.

I have found that, so far, learning another language other than English has not hindered my ability to communicate. I find it far more helpful if anything. I feel like it is beneficial and opens up my world to new conversations I wouldn’t have, had I not been exposed to that language early on in life. I have become more culturally diverse and have come to understand that these two languages make up some part of my identity as a whole.

Growing up in a diverse and metropolitan city, I could say that San Francisco has exposed me to so much growing up in a way that nobody could understand. Although, it was living in the Mission District my whole life that shaped me to be the way I am today. The Mission is a heavy populated Latino neighborhood filled with different Latino cultures that really shows the history of the city, for it is the oldest established neighborhood in the little 7 mile by 7 mile area. I lived at home with my family, half being Filipino and the other half of European descent. My grandmother would always try speaking to me in Tagalog so that I could pick it up, but unfortunately that didn’t work for me. Starting pre school at a very young age, my parents put me in a Spanish immersion school. Little did I know this would change my life forever and how I look at things from a global and cultural perspective. I was in that school for 7 years of my early life, majority of the time speaking a language different to what was known at home. At some point, I was more fluent in Spanish than English! Imagine that… communication sometimes became a barrier at home since I couldn’t always find the words to express myself with to communicate with my parents. Words would always come into my mind in Spanish but could barely come out in English. Not only was this a problem at home, but when I moved on to middle school where barely anybody spoke Spanish and all my classes were in English, grades became a concern, for I would be speaking in a way which native English speakers would consider “backwards”. On the other hand, language has become my passion. I love learning new languages and experiencing different cultures. Traveling has taken a huge impact on my life. I can say I have visited well over 20 countries in my short 17 years of life and plan to go to many more. I remember vacationing in the Dominican Republic one time and there were many French people there that I was friends with, yet, we weren’t able to properly communicate. I remember we always did hand signals and even spoke a tiny bit in Spanish to try and see if we could understand each other, and believe it or not, it worked! But because of this experience, it inspired me to learn French and how to speak other languages, and ever since that day, I have done so. Everywhere you go, you can find an influence and in my eyes, the best way to educate yourself is by traveling and looking at things in different perspectives.

Julia McGonigal, Drew Gasparini

Blog 1

In the suburban neighborhood I grew up in, I was mainly exposed to Spanish and Hispanic culture. Both of my parents worked growing up, and because of this I spent an abundance of time with my nanny, Carmen, who hailed from Tijuana, Mexico. I can remember speaking to Carmen in Spanish in early elementary school. For me, Spanish and English came hand in hand, and both resonated as one language in my developing brain. When my Nanny came to pick me up from school the conversation went a little something like this:

Carmen: ¡Hola Chica! ¿Còmo estuvo tu dìa?

Julia: Bien, gracias, extraño mi madre.

Carmen: Tu mamá vendrá por ti a las tres de la tarde.

Even though I understood the words coming from Carmen’s mouth, I didn’t quite understand why she was saying them to me. Why was this woman who I spent so much time with speaking to me in a language different than my own mother or father? For a while during my childhood I was completely fluent in Spanish. Unfortunately, I lost much of this skill during my middle school years. Looking back, I try not to think of it as a burden but I do think that Carmen and the Spanish language left its mark on me. I always felt like I was constantly flipping a light switch on and off between Spanish and English. Carmen and my parents. Mexico and America. I felt connected to her through Spanish because this was the only language I could really communicate my emotions and ideas to her in, and hers to me.

I was raised in a big Italian family where everyone was extremely close and our culture was always present.  At the forefront were my grandparents and great grandparents speaking Italian amongst themselves while the rest of us went about the house in chaos.  I spent a lot of time sitting with my older relatives, just listening to them and slowly developing an understanding of their foreign, mysterious words.  I was able to learn some of the language through our family gatherings, but unfortunately my knowledge of Italian never spread beyond that. Later on in middle school and high school I took Spanish. Now I am now able to understand most of the Spanish I hear on a daily basis, but am less able to respond.  Working at McDonald’s, it was definitely a burden to not be able to comfortably communicate with my coworkers when they didn’t speak English, instead using makeshift Spanish to get my point across.