Cafe Catalina

Just recently, I had a realization: I badly wanted to be a polyglot.

This came to me one day when I was browsing through language forums. I was shocked to learn how many people speak 3, 4, 5 or more languages fluently. Many of them were even self taught. Wow. Just wow. Now I am inspired and so pumped up to go on my own journey to become a polyglot.

Being able to speak different languages really appealed to me since I was a kid.

I remember browsing through my parents’ old Spanish textbooks. The words fascinated me even though I did not know what they meant.

Fast forward to 1995. Our school, University of Santo Tomas, played a big part during the World Youth Day that time. I was a high school student at UST Education High School and a lot of foreign delegates were going to be housed at the UST Central Seminary. Also, many activities were to be held on campus so there were lots of chances to mingle with delegates as I was also a participant.

Weeks before, I memorized all the sentences in the Spanish phrasebook I owned. I felt really confident that I’d be able to hold some basic conversations with people during WYD.

At the end of one activity, a girl came up to me and started babbling away in Spanish, pointing at my Hello Kitty bag. I knew she meant my bag is cute and she was asking where I got it.

I froze and told her in perfect English “This is not mine”.

FAIL.
FAIL.
FAIL.

That day, I promised myself I’d go to a proper school one day and really learn the language.

Fast forward again to 2000. It was my summer vacation from university. As with all my summers, I was bored to death. I thought I’d enroll in a Japanese language class at the Nihongo Center Foundation after I saw an ad in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

It was serendipity from Day 1.

I remember that day clearly, as if it were yesterday. I remember how Alfred-sensei greeted the class when he entered the room. I remember where I sat. Who was sitting in front of me, behind me, beside me. How the book smelled. What number my Mongol pencil was. Everything.

It was the best fun I’ve had in a long time. I finished Elementary 1 Japanese with top marks. I was number 2 in my class. The number 1 student was Gail-san, who was also my classmate in the Japanese teacher training course (many years after Elem 1). ^_^

After Elementary 1-4, I went on to Intermediate 1-4 and Advanced 1-2. I took the 2nd level of the JLPT 日本語能力試験 and thankfully, I passed. After which, the school principal asked me if I would be interested in becoming a teacher. Of course I said yes!

After finishing the course, I taught for a couple of years at Nihongo Center Manila and Makati. But my day job got in the way (haha) so I had to stop teaching for a while. It was really one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had. 🙂

I also enrolled in a basic Spanish course at Instituto Cervantes but I dropped out because I felt the class was not engaging enough. I thought we were being spoon fed most of the time and that frustrated me. I wanted to be able to formulate my own sentences, like what we did in Japanese class. Study a grammar point, then make a simple sentence using the vocabulary we learned. It wasn’t for me at that time so I stopped attending classes. My sister finished it, though.

After that, I enrolled in Goethe Institut. Somehow, I have a bit of an affinity with the German language because my favorite anime at that time was “Weiss Kreuz”, which used a lot of German words and names. Haha.

I loved that class! Our teacher, Sir Glenn Garfield Ang, really knew his stuff and he knew how to teach in a fun way. We had songs that were not annoying because they were not folksy types…we listened to Nena! You know, 99 Luftballoons? (He has a Nena fansite too ^_^)

My grade at the end of the first course was Sehr Gut and it pushed me to keep on enrolling. Unfortunately, I stopped at the end of the 3rd module because I had schedule conflicts with my teaching job.

In 2012, I got into a Godfather phase and decided that I wanted to learn Italian. I could not find a decent school then so I got a Living Language Platinum set and studied on my own. But that was not meant to be because early this year, I enrolled with Arol in a basic French course at Alliance Francaise. I never thought I’d study French. I’ve always thought it would be a tough language to learn. But I was wrong. It was fun! Our teacher, Sir Amiel Mingay, is cool. I love it when he says “Go, girl” 😛

Again, I could not enrol in the 2nd module after finishing the 1st module. Seeing a pattern here?

Well, I decided I’m going to take it easy with French while I study hard for my N1 JLPT exam in December. Right now, I am reviewing all my level 2 stuff (Kanji, vocabs and grammar) before I tackle the N1 materials.

I also plan to enrol in the N1 review class at Nihongo Center Foundation in Manila…Ogata-sensei, we will meet again! ^____^

I was his student in a prior N1 review class. I didn’t pass on my first attempt because I lacked so many vocabs and Kanji. So now I am starting really early in my review. Hopefully, I can give an N1 certificate to Ogata-sensei to hang up in the classroom ^_~ (He collects these things, haha).

So far, here are the languages I know:
– Filipino – native
– English – native
– Japanese – N2 proficiency level

Below are the languages I want to learn in the short to medium term:
– French
– Italian
– German
– Spanish

And these are the languages I might study after I’ve become fluent in the above:
– Thai
– Hindi

To help me move forward with French, I recently signed up for the Ten Week Journey at Everydaylanguagelearner.com

It is a free email course that provides tips, tricks and tools to help you move forward. It also gives you the much-needed motivation to stay on track and keep going.

So for the first week of the journey, here are my ” reflections” 🙂

My ten week journey in French – week 1

1. How would knowing another language positively affect your life?

Knowing Japanese has opened up a whole new world for me. It sounds cliche but it’s true. Better career opportunities. Chances to discover a new country and culture. New foreign friends. J-doramas. J-music. Don’t even get me started on Fukuyama Masaharu. :p

I expect that it will be the same with French. Only on a much larger scale because there are more French-speaking countries and people. Whereas there is only one Japanese-speaking country in the world 🙂

2. How would knowing another language positively affect the lives of others?

All my future children will be multilinguals. Haha.

Well aside from that, my present (and future) clients will benefit from the additional language that I have. Currently, I only provide services in Japanese (translation, product research, inventory management and more).

3. How much time each day would you be willing to give to learning another language?

My aim is to study with Assimil New French with Ease for the recommended 30 minutes a day. I want to finish the entire course. After that, I might take the DELF exam to gauge how much I know. Then I will decide if I need to enrol at Alliance again or continue with my self study (using the next Assimil course).

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