Arsenio
Growing up in a Filipino family in Chicago, I had a strange pathway to learning languages. We grew up speaking English in the house, and given my father grew up in the States and my mother worked extensively here, it was a natural language to use in our house. We would watch shows in Tagalog from time to time, but I would only pick up bits and pieces. Me and my brothers learnt the piecemeal Spanish that most students gain growing up in CPS, but like most CPS students, that language remained peripheral in our minds as we grew.
My first true experience in learning a foreign language was with Chinese, and it truly opened up a world to me. I had chosen to learn it in high school for reasons of practicality and the increasing importance of China at the time, and as I learnt more about it I was able to connect more and more of my world. I was able to read and see the Chinese in literature that I came across, and exposure gained me further insight into the much broader world before me that I had yet to see. Specifically, I had found myself fascinated by Chinese history and politics, bringing me into reading Chinese books such as The Three Body Problem and the Tao Te Ching in Chinese. I have admittedly never stepped foot in China, but when I travelled to Japan I saw Chinese in the characters taken from Chinese. Characters like the numbers, like 家, or 日本, the influence of language continued to grow upon me. I took this as a call to learn some Japanese as well, or rather to gather what I could from the environment or from the media I saw. The image above was one where I was able to read a sign in Tokyo despite having only knowledge of Chinese and Tagalog at the time due to the overlap between Chinese and Japanese. I ended up ordering the larger (大) bowl of beef and eggs on behalf of my appetite. As of late, I’ve studied French as a minor at UIC, a truly enlightening experience. My aunt knew a fair bit of French, having considered retiring there for the architecture and love of country. When I visited her apartment she had secured in the 2me arrondissement, I remember falling in love with the food, but grasping with pointing at the menu for anything that wasn’t eggs and cheese, bread, or water. The want of food, of experiences yet had, drove me to learn the language.
Growing up travelling as my family does, language was a major barrier to true exposure of the cultures we visited. My parents sought to give me a worldly education, and we travelled to ensure that. I have travelled to Japan, the Philippines, France, Norway, and Sweden; all for months at a time, or however long my parents could have us stay. The many languages I saw pushed me to explore the world through language in addition to presence. As I continue to travel, I hope to exercise my language, and to truly gain a grasp of the people and the cultures. On my visit to Canada last year, I remember comprehending the French on signs and stores, and found it so fascinating to find a life that I had not known before. As I prepare to travel to Australia, France, and the Philippines this year, I’m preparing to exercise my language skills for at least one of the nations involved. Finally, as I look forward to education, learning multiple languages has allowed me to consider schools I’ve never truly considered before.