Rapid Language Learning 

I was struggling to figure out about what I should write. Although I am extremely opinionated and quite boastful of my own views there is always a slight confusion in my mind. It’s not that I have no views but there are just too many in my head for me to make a decision on which one would be best to talk about. Now, before I begin a ranting session about how it was hard for me to make a decision. Instead I will say the main reason I came to the decision of doing it about Language learning.  

Why should you care? 

This is exactly what I would have said to you a few years ago. I vividly remember when learning French and Spanish I honestly couldn’t care less. I was living in my whole world and was not in the slightest bit curious about other people’s lives, culture, how they lived and their purposes in life. Therefore, I didn’t care when learning French and Spanish which I intensely regret today. I wonder how fluent I would be if I did extra practice and how I missed my chance to become fluent in another language. 

See, I grew up in a trilingual household and spent my early years in a multi lingual country with many different languages all around me every day. See in Kenya which is where I’m originally from, everyone knows more than one language and it’s common for people to know more than 3 two. Maybe because I spent my early years there and moved to a country with largely one language I thought… I know more than the average here so it’s okay. I’m bilingual so, I’m doing okay. However, at least for me it became not okay. I started to really think about this when I made my first “true” friends. I call them true because I see those friends as friends whom I will always keep in touch with till I’m old. Anyways, those friends were all from several of backgrounds although they were all born in the UK. It was nice having friends from such diverse backgrounds but it also made me curious about their cultures as things they did at home sometimes varied from me. That was the first time I began to question English ignorance. By English ignorance I don’t mean British ignorance I mean the ignorance held by people who speak English as a first language.  

It made me question little things for example, when us English speakers go abroad and expect to find people who can speak English at our convenience, or how many European countries learn other European languages and know them fairly fluently and how most English speaking people probably only know “hello my name is …” It’s not really our fault though but it’s just sad to see English speakers lose out on this other world. When I started learning languages although I was already fluent in two it opened my eyes once again. It was like there was so much I didn’t know before. I regretted I didn’t start earlier. It may not be same for every person but for me it became a blessing and has now become one of my biggest interests. Even simple things like how others insult others in different languages and formal and informal forms of language that just made me so surprised. 

Anyways I’m drifting away from my point. Rapid Language Learning. If you are convinced I will help you through my own mistakes so you can avoid them in the future. There are a few simple things you need to know. 

1. 
   
   1.Don’t start a language if you aren’t interested in the culture – You won’t enjoy it trust me. A big part of language learning is having a goal. Watching the countries films and listening to their music, travelling there is a big part of language learning. Otherwise you’ll waste your time knowing this language you’ll never use in your life. 
   
   

2. 2.Try not to learn more than one at one time even if they are extremely different. You’ll find yourself mixing up words. Especially Spanish and Portuguese. 
   
   

3. 3.DON’T LEARN ROMANISATIONS- honestly I couldn’t say it enough. If you want to learn Romanisation then learn a European language. It may not seem like a problem at the start but later your pronunciation will be completely messed up. Especially in languages with very different character/writing systems. Not to mention how offensive it is also. Respect the languages you are learning 
   
   

4. 4.Take your time. Know every simple thing and understand how the language works before you move on. If you work too fast thinking you understand things such as grammar and pronunciation you are more bound to make mistakes. Grammar is never complicated if you are learning simple things like “I ate a potato” it starts to get complicated when you begin longer sentences “I ate a potato yesterday because I like and it was very good”. This is where things will get complicated and harder, slow down and understand how the grammar works first.
   
   

5. 5.Don’t give up. It will feel hard sometimes but think of how far you have come and continue. 
   
   

6. 6.This is probably the most important piece of advice. Forget about English when you are learning a language. Start as if you are a baby and don’t know anything. The rules that apply in English are most likely not going to work for the language you are about to learn. Also they may have more new rules. For examples some language don’t need you to use pronouns constantly so it may sound weird to use them. Whereas in English they are a necessity. E.g in English you have to say “she” went her. Whereas some languages you can remove the “she” as it’s often obvious by context. Don’t assume the rules that apply in English will be the same.  This also applies for languages with similar aspects such as Chinese and Korean. In Korean you learn characters that apply to each letter similar to English. You use them to make a word and sentence. This means if you know each character you can read anything without knowing what it means. Whereas in Chinese each character is unique to the word. This means you need to know every character to read it. 
   
   

7. 7.Practise speaking. You’ll feel awkward speaking if you are only writing how to write  
   
   

8. 8.Don’t feel embarrassed speaking and learning another language especially to native speakers. You learn from mistakes, it’s better to make them early and learn for life.