🌈How learning languages makes me happy

Putting inexplicable feelings for languages to words

From a long time ago, I could sense a special connection between me and languages (regardless of how horrible a few first years of our relationship was). Learning language has proved to have many benefits such as improving memory, boosting creativity, making new friends, expanding perspective and understanding, job opportunity,…..

But let’s put all those universally recognized benefits aside for another discussion. In this article, I want to tell you more about how I get pure joy and fulfillment out of learning multiple foreign languages.

The beauty of words

A few months ago, my friend and I had a discussion about “What is the most beautiful word in English to each of us?”. For me, I have a collection of my favorite English words, some of which are passion, inspire, creativity, compassion, caress,……. But if I had to choose only one, it would be “inspire”. The word stems from Latin verb inspirare which means to breathe or blow into. When something inspires you, it blows a new breathe of ideas or wisdom into your inner world, which in turn bring the hidden treasures within yourself to life. It’s such a beautiful way to illustrate the reciprocity of give and take.

My friend’s favorite one is “embrace”. I didn’t notice how mellow the word sounds to me until hearing my friend say it separately from a full sentence. It gives me a feeling that I’m being hugged gently and affectionately. Besides the literal meaning, embrace could also be used in a figurative sense. To embrace an idea means that your brain gives it a hug to show its acceptance and welcoming attitude towards something new.

I still remember how enthusiastic the conversation made me feel. It was a wake-up call that uncovered my dormant interest in language and words. This time, instead of being hesitant, I choose to lean towards my true calling and let it lead me through an excitingly mysterious adventure.

A true sense of purpose

It’s safe to say that language is one of my vocation that once ignited in my heart is difficult to extinguished. It’s a rare purpose that comes from my intrinsic value, not the one that’s implanted in my mind by the society. During my high school years, I often sneakily pick up some Korean in my free time while in fact, those time should have been devoted to improving my current languages such as Chinese and English. My insatiable curiosity expand to many other foreign languages making it natural for me to spend hours binging polyglot youtube videos, gravitate towards a new language every now and then without the intention to truly master any one of them.

My ultimate goal is obviously not mastering every language I choose to learn. In fact, it makes more sense to say that I want to know as many languages as possible, to a certain level that allows me to comfortably make friends with the native speakers through conversations conducted in their languages.

I might not have a perfect career-oriented answer to the question “What do you want to do when you grow up?”. But a more general, life-long pursuit of knowledge like “I want to immerse myself in the land of languages and explore different cultures” always feels right to say out loud as it has been instinctively programmed inside me.

Learning languages is such a tool for me to get grounded amidst all the turbulence and confusion in my 20s. At least I know I’m doing something productive and meaningful in my life, instead of sitting idle with all the anxiety and overthinking hovering over my mind.

A friend to sooth my loneliness

For me, languages are not just soulless objects. I’d rather think of them like companions that pull me through some tough times. Each language I learn has a unique personalities: English is a wise mentor that guide me to many new land of knowledge, Chinese is one of those annoying relatives that I always want to cut off but never actually can, Korean is a cute but complex friend who takes you forever to get to know her, Italian is more like an attractive guy whose voice is enough to make me fall in love,…

But they all have one thing in common: they all comes to my life to show me that “Hey, the world is much bigger than the size you shrink it into inside your head. There are so much more potential and possibility waiting for you to fulfill.” and then let me watch the abundance and diversity of the world reveal itself to me each time I get to know a new language.

The joy from drawing connection

It’s a common knowledge that languages in the same group such as Romance language (Italian, French, Spain,….) or Asian languages (Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese,…..) share lots of similarities. There are three words that have almost exactly the same pronunciation and meanings in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese respectively, which is the verb to prepare: 准备 (zhǔnbèi) - 준비(junbi) - chuẩn bị. I bet that the Romance group would have even more linguistic patterns in common. But currently, Italian is the first and only Romance language I get to know so I’m very excited to keep exploring.

The more languages I learn, the more connection I can draw among them, not only the languages in the same group but also the ones that are supposed to be far from correlated. For example, in Vietnamese, there’re many loanwords from various languages around the world. After starting learning Italian recently, I discovered that the word pho mai in Vietnamese stems from formaggio in Italian (the one that I have never paid enough attention to realize before).

Korean has an incredible amount of vocabulary that either come or modified from English. Although it makes the process much easier, to be honest, that annoyed me a little bit at first. Since every new language learner has the mentality to conquer a completely new land of knowledge, figuring out at the very first lesson that orange juice in Korean is 오렌지 주스 (olenji juiseu) or ice-cream is 아이스크림 (aiseukeulim) kind of took away the joy of brand-new discovery.

Spotting the shared linguistic patterns while learning multiple languages strengthens my creative and thinking muscles. I also take this as my personal pleasure in the learning journey to know that no matter how irrelevant some languages may seem to be, I will be able to draw some similarities among them.

I love learning languages because of all the inherent satisfaction it brings me. The abundance of intrinsic motivation is what keep us going when the extrinsic measure of success is constantly putting pressure on us.

Many will find it unnecessary to share their intrinsic forces to do something publicly. I was not an exception. I used to believe that since the topic is so personal and variable, it’d be better to keep it to yourself. However, sometimes, we doubt our own motives because it doesn’t seem as ambitious or practical as the extrinsic motivation people often openly talk about . Once we don’t have faith in our own reason to pursue something, everything we do is definitely not genuinely driven from our heart. No wonder why it never lasts or feels fulfilling.

This newsletter would never exist had it not been for the generosity of other polyglots such as

Tanya Mozias

and Robin McPherson or the intriguing question from my best friend. They confirm to me that not everyone is learning a language with a practical purpose in their mind such as better job opportunities, immigration,… And the most wonderful thing is that I know I’m not the only one who has such emotional attachment to languages, which inspires me to recognize the beauty in the pursuit of new languages and bravely share it with others.

If you make it there, I hope that my words have some positive impact on you. Share with me what’s your real reason to learn a new language?