Why I Love Languages

I should probably begin my language journey by explaining why I love languages.

I have always loved languages though I'm not eloquent in formal writing and speech. In elementary school, I was always chosen for literary prizes for writing stories. In that same period, I worked hard to listen and repeat Chinese cassettes that my father forced us to do.

But, it wasn't until HS that I learned how good I was in language. Spanish and Latin were among my highest grades. I was tutoring other students in it shortly after. I was even teaching Korean classes to my friends during lunch.

In college, I took an advanced course of Japanese (a 5 credit class per semester for 3 semesters) which cemented my love for languages. I didn't continue Japanese for a 4th semester (though I wanted to) because of complications. But I did pass a placement in Korean to skip a continuous 4 semester language requirement at my university. But to fulfill classes, I did take a semester of Elementary German!

A chemistry professor once told me in freshman year, "I'm just lucky I'm good at what I'm interested in." I find that to be true in this case. I'm very good with languages and I love communicating to people. It's a blessing!

(It was hard getting here though. I spent my entire college career trudging through economics and some time after college in accounting. It was a very, very circuitous path!)

I mean, who can resist languages? There is something mesmerizing about the pictographs of the Chinese language. Its influence resounds in Korean and Japanese although the two have very distinct and unique languages of their own. The two follow strictly divided language between the polite and impolite. Korean has the most innovative alphabet in the world. Japanese uses 3 writing systems. Spanish is phonetic making it much, much easier to use than English. Somehow, all these quirks fascinate me and I would love to understand someone from halfway across the world!