Delightful and Challenging Language Learning

This week in language learning, I continued my Pimsleur, Innovative Language, Fluent Fiction, and Duolingo, and also enjoyed watching some foreign language films in Spanish, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Watching language films while learning them is definitely a delightful and enriching experience, but for me, it’s a very humbling one to see how little I actually know at this point, especially in Japanese and Vietnamese, which I just started in the fall. But knowing that also gives me a sense of excitement that there’s so much more to unravel.

The most challenging aspect so far is learning Hiragana, but I also think that the characters are so beautiful that I’d like to make oil pastel drawings of them. Hiragana and Katakana each have 46 basic characters, with Hiragana using rounded characters to express native Japanese words and grammar, and Katakana using angular characters that mainly represent borrowed words. Kanji, a complex character system from Chinese, is also used in Japan, with over 50,000 characters, of which 2,000 to 3,000 are commonly used and of which 3,000 to 4,000 are used by the most highly educated Japanese people. Knowing the 2,136 jōyō (daily use) Kanji is considered as the basic standard. But, before I even think about learning another character set, I need to learn my Hiragana.

Having a mix of enjoyable and challenging learning paths definitely keeps things interesting and helps with consistency, so I’m going to stick with this plan for a while. One thing is certain, over the past few months I have developed a deeper admiration for multi-lingual people, because learning a language is not easy! I don’t know if I’ll ever reach fluency, but I do love learning what I can. For now, I’m signing off to tackle some Saturday tasks and chores and enjoy some foreign films for this week. Nos vemos, jaa mata, and hẹn gặp lại!