A Weekend That Changed My Life: How I Began Learning a Language

When I first started learning a new language, a common question I got asked a lot was, "Why did you decide to learn Chinese?" Why would I take on what a lot of people consider to be one of the hardest languages in the world? Why would I decide at this point in my life to learn a new language? Do I have plans to use it? What really am I hoping to gain from this?

The reason I began learning a new language is not the same reason that I am still learning. As most people know, I volunteer with HOBY and now get the honor of helping out at the DC seminar. In 2015 I had a group that forever changed my life. During our first time together we did an icebreaker called "hot seat" where everybody spends one minute getting asked any questions that the group can come up with. Each time a new student was in the middle, one of the questions continually came from another student asking, "What languages do you speak?" As each kid came through the middle, they all mentioned at least one other language that they spoke. Finally, when the student who kept asking everyone else about languages had his moment in the middle I instantly threw the question at him, "What languages do you speak?" to which he listed off about five languages. As we went through the weekend, languages seemed to come up multiple times. Our groups count-off was done in multiple languages, and I was forced to say my number in English.

I remember going home that night following the weekend. It was so amazing to see all of these high school students that actually could use a language that they had learned, but it also had me feeling a tad embarrassed. I spent four years learning Spanish but never felt confident saying anything. To put myself further down, somehow I ended up watching Inglorious Basterds that night where multiple languages are used. I didn't pay much attention to the movie but was instead focused on all of the languages.

It hit me that not being able to speak more than one language was limiting me. I told myself that to stay competitive in the job market, I needed to have another language that I could speak or soon I would be left behind. I found some online quiz that was to determine what language would be best for me to learn and it told me German. Instantly I was like, "No, that's no fun!" and kept trying to find a language that I thought would be impressive to learn. My goal was not to find a language to speak at that moment, but one that would be useful ten years down the road. Somehow, this put me looking at Mandarin Chinese as I felt that would be exceptionally useful in 2025. I downloaded Rosetta Stone and started working my way through the program.

Goal setting is something I've had success and failure with. I knew the instant excitement I had for learning a new language would fade. Most people set goals at one time in the year: New Year's. The statistics are not very promising for taking on new challenges as people get discouraged and slowly stop doing the goal they had set out to go for. I wanted to make sure this wasn't me. I emailed those students who inspired me and told them my plan. I wanted them to hold me accountable. As I started learning words and phrases, I kept preparing for the moment when one of them saw me and asked how my Chinese was so that I could respond and say I was making it work.

The email I sent back on June 2nd, 2015 in hopes of being held accountable for my actions.

This was a ten year goal in the making. I knew from the start that this was a very long shot of working. I didn't have plans of actually using the language for a while; like I could really be able to use it anytime soon, anyways. I read blogs, books, articles, and watched videos to try to get myself ahead. I felt good that I could say some things and understand how the language worked, but most of that was just something I kept to myself. It wasn't until I tried using Chinese that I suddenly felt a rush of excitement. That rush has been mentioned before but more than anything, it was fun! It was a way to see the work I had put in finally be put to use.

A few of those students I still hear from. The ones that I do, they all know what I'm up to. One of them was actually able to help me get over one of my fears this summer and we went to a Chinese Speaking Meetup group in DC. Another has helped me with my Arabic if I get frustrated. I was so happy to get to talk to another a few weeks ago that I hadn't talked to for over a year, but she remembered that goal I said to them.

Now, I don't learn the language for the same reason.  My end goal isn't to be able to use a language for work; my goal is to be able to communicate with people. There are 7.4 billion people in the world, each one with their own unique story, and less than 400 million of them speak English. Now, I'm learning languages to be able to meet as many of those people as possible.

In honor of this experience that really got me going down this path, here is a video of me trying to explain in short how it all happened in the language that got me on going.

Until next time.