In total, there are over 7,000 languages spoken worldwide. However, the actual number is constantly fluctuating, with new ones being discovered and others dying out all the time. In the United States alone there are around 430 spoken languages; the most prominent ones are English, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Arabic. This diversity means that there is an abundance of languages to learn and become fluent in.
Caleb Brown (12) has taken an interest in learning languages. Currently, he is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. He is also learning Italian. Brown learned Spanish through school and got a five on his Advanced Placement (AP) exam. Afterwards, he continued with Spanish and started teaching himself Portuguese. He enjoys being able to speak to a variety of people and the act of learning them is fun for him; he hopes to travel abroad in college.
“[Learning multiple languages is] still very beneficial because it can set you up for a lifetime of not only understanding how to speak more languages, but also understanding your own language better,” Brown said.
Leslie Thornton, a Spanish teacher at White Station High School, has also taken to learning languages. She is fluent in Spanish, English and Portuguese and is learning Japanese and Korean. At first, her journey of language was out of necessity. She grew up in Mexico, where universities are specialized — meaning that you have to know exactly what you want to do when you graduate from high school. Thornton had no idea. She ended up following her sister, who had moved to Indiana, in hopes of learning English and figuring out what she wanted to do. It wasn’t until later that she fell in love with learning languages such as Japanese.
“I came to Indiana [from Mexico and] I was the only Hispanic in the 400-population high school,” Thornton said. ”[There were only around fifty other people of color, and] it was all-white population. Nobody spoke to me in English. I [had] to translate everything [through a dictionary].”
On the other hand, Amanda Forasteros learned new languages in college instead of in high school. She was encouraged by her father because he thought it would be beneficial when applying for jobs. Additionally, she also had an affinity for travel and thought it would boost those experiences. Now, years later, she’s fluent in Spanish and English and is making progress on German and Portuguese. This proficiency was achieved by years of immersion classes, traveling abroad and spending time in multiple Spanish-speaking countries such as Spain and Mexico. She also gets the chance to use her Spanish daily as a social worker in a hospital.
“I have seen people all over the globe,” Forasteros said. “I am countlessly underestimated because people don’t think I speak Spanish well because of the color of my skin. [However], I am more confident because I took a risk to be bad at something for a long time.”
The variations between languages first took place as people split apart and needed a way to communicate to each other. A prime example of this is with Romance languages — Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian — all of which originated from Latin. Distance and time allowed Latin to be broken apart. Spanish and Portuguese, for example, have different grammar rules and pronunciations of similar words, Spanish being more “phonetically correct” — meaning the words sound closer to how they are spelled — than Portuguese. Culture can also account for variations that cause the creation of idiomatic expressions and slang.
“In fact, there’s a lot of nuances that are lost if you don’t know how to speak like a native,” Brown said. “Like … there’s a lot of things we say in English that we don’t think might be strange to non-English speakers.”
When learning languages, there are four main skills to master — writing, reading, speaking and listening. On average, it’s easier for people to learn writing and reading skills.
“Writing is the easiest to develop because there’s no gap in between what you hear [pronounced] being said and what is written on your paper,” Brown said. “Like, you see a word, you see the verb endings on the conjugation chart, and you can visually think of that and transcribe that onto your paper.”
On the other end of the scale, speaking and listening often bring trouble to new language speakers. A lot of this difficulty is because our brains cannot control the speed at which the information is coming to us and we cannot see it. We have to visualize it for ourselves and that requirement can be challenging often. Additionally, many people feel a level of anxiety around those skills. People have a tendency to want to be good at the new things they try rather than being willing to make mistakes. Therefore, being patient with yourself is really where one’s strength lies when learning a new language.
“Give yourself permission to be bad at something and maybe a little cringe,” Forasteros said. “Any time a person speaks to me in English with an accent, [and] knowing it isn’t their first language, I think it is an act of bravery. And truly the beauty of language is that we still understand one another.”
This fear is common among new speakers because overall people have a tendency to overthink. However, in order to progress, it’s important to learn to get over this anxiety because speaking with people is one of the best ways to improve. Finding people that are trustworthy that speak both your first language and the one you are learning can cause huge improvements in the way you communicate.
“I’m very extroverted when it comes to language, not when it comes to people, when it comes to language, so I just want to [talk to people and learn from them],” Thornton said.
Talking with people is one strategy for learning a language. Others include doing Duolingo (or other online programs), looking over articles and listening to music in that language. Just as when studying anything else, methods for vocabulary memorization may differ between individuals.
“I really like the technique that Duolingo uses, which is sounds and letters first and then words,” Thornton said. “And then I went to Japan last summer, and I just took pictures of material, and I started googling them. I get storybooks. I get newspapers, and then I start writing. And I follow people from Japan on Instagram.”
However, the most important strategy for learning is choosing a language you care about. This will keep you motivated to keep studying when anxiety hits or when you don’t understand something. Wanting to travel somewhere that speaks the language, knowing people that speak it or just having a love for that culture can contribute to this love of language.
“There’s no bigger technique and no better technique to learn a language than love,” Thornton said.
