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

Photo credit: everydaylanguagelearner.com
Photo credit: everydaylanguagelearner.com

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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  1. I am currently enrolled in Alliance. I saved up for almost a year for the tuition. I’m using Pimsleur and Duolingo on the side. I’m not going to finish the rest of my remaining classes. I’m not sure if they changed their teaching method but the book we are using is all in French and we had to do charades most of the time in order to decipher the instructions. With the other materials, I am able to integrate the listening and speaking with the reading and writing. I didn’t sign up just to go over an activity book.

  2. I am currently enrolled in Alliance. I saved up for almost a year for the tuition. I’m using Pimsleur and Duolingo on the side. I’m not going to finish the rest of my remaining classes. I’m not sure if they changed their teaching method but the book we are using is all in French and we had to do charades most of the time in order to decipher the instructions. With the other materials, I am able to integrate the listening and speaking with the reading and writing. I didn’t sign up just to go over an activity book.

  3. I am currently enrolled in Alliance. I saved up for almost a year for the tuition. I’m using Pimsleur and Duolingo on the side. I’m not going to finish the rest of my remaining classes. I’m not sure if they changed their teaching method but the book we are using is all in French and we had to do charades most of the time in order to decipher the instructions. With the other materials, I am able to integrate the listening and speaking with the reading and writing. I didn’t sign up just to go over an activity book.

  4. I am currently enrolled in Alliance. I saved up for almost a year for the tuition. I’m using Pimsleur and Duolingo on the side. I’m not going to finish the rest of my remaining classes. I’m not sure if they changed their teaching method but the book we are using is all in French and we had to do charades most of the time in order to decipher the instructions. With the other materials, I am able to integrate the listening and speaking with the reading and writing. I didn’t sign up just to go over an activity book.

  5. Hi! I am also fascinated by those languages and I’m planning on enrolling this June. Though I’m still deciding between Japanese or Korean.. but I think I’m leaning more on Japanese. I believe your insights about these matters can be really helpful for me. 🙂

    1. Hello Camille! 🙂 Good for you! To determine which to study first, think of your interests (J-pop over K-pop, for example). Also, think of what you want to do with your language in the future. You can always study the 2nd one later, right? Just post here if you have other questions and I will try to help. Good luck!

  6. I think learning Japanese is something that many of us have an interest in following. People believe they can succeed using listening to music. Thus there’s interest in ways to immerse passively. These are good times.

  7. Cat-san~! Hello hello~ ^^
    Wow. You are admirable. *O* I hope you get to master them!
    As much as I’d like to learn other languages (Spanish, Latin, Chinese~ xD), I told myself that I’ll seriously learn Japanese this year. I’ll be returning as a student this year so I thought I’ll inquire at my school for Japanese classes. It is still quite costly (not to mention tight sched for the next sem ><) for me to enroll.
    I'm thinking of self-studying instead. Do you have any recommended books for studying Japanese? While Kanji is obviously hard, I'm also having trouble in grammar. ^^;; But I'm not sure what resources should I choose. Would it be Genki? Minna no Nihongo? Japanese Demystified?
    Before, I inquired at NCF Manila about the classes and the e-learning course. Is the e-learning recommended? :O
    Sorry if this has become a tl;dr comment. ^^;;;

    1. Hello Elaine-san ^_^
      For self study, I would think that Genki or Minna will be OK to cover everything: kana, reading, writing, grammar, listening, Kanji. Just make sure you get the complete Minna set that includes the audio CDs.
      I don’t have any feedback on the Nihongo Center e-learning course so I cannot comment. As for other learning programs like Rosetta Stone, Assimil, and Living Language, I have not used any of them for Japanese but I am having good progress on Assimil French and I think it’s a good program overall.
      がんばってください!^_^

      1. Thank you! ^_^
        I have been reading good reviews about Assimil Japanese. Might try it after Minna. Thanks again! ^_^

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