I have always had it inside me, it just took me twenty years to finally get it out and realize.
In junior high and high school, English and Spanish classes were fun and my grades always excellent, though I claimed to be a “scientific” mind and pursued scientific studies in high school and even further, with a technical degree in computer programming.
It took me years to even notice the hint there. I went to learn languages right away after high school. Languages to talk to machines, but they’re still languages.
I think I have always been fascinated by the underlying logical patterns in a language, and how it allows you to convey the same things in different ways. Both human and machine languages are built on the same structure, with blocks put up together to form a message that someone will understand.
Logic may be part of the beauty, but it is not everything. I suppose I just feel attracted to the idea of conveying a message to the most people possible, understanding and being understood. That is what I like. That, and the feeling of accomplishment you get through learning.
After learning how to talk to machines, I decided that I wanted to learn how to talk to humans, and therefore started a curriculum in foreign languages that brought me here, to Japan, to teach English. The whole new world human languages opened to me is far more complex and far more interesting than that of machines.
Human communication, when you think about it, is one of the most complex things in the universe. That is probably because our brains are one of the most complex things in the universe. Domesticating every aspect of a language is like diving deeper into your own brain. Mastering a language to the point at which you don’t go through a translation process in your head, but just think, feel, reason in that language, it all opens to you a wide range of new words to put on your emotions and describe the world around you.
I’ll share my experiences in learning, and also all those little things that make speaking foreign languages so deeply interesting. Those moments you want to say something in your mother tongue but your second or third languages has a word or expression that just “resonates” better with your feelings.
Thanks for reading. Write to you later!
Strong Curiosity 