Zero Edge's blog: "just appreciate it"

Hi my name is Joker and I arrived in America with only two languages that I only knew how to speak fluently. In 11 years that I have been here I started picking up different languages. My purpose is to find connections and make contact with different cultures that’s why I wanted to learn them. I’m not showing it off as trade skills but I want to understand people’s culture and not act ignorant in front of them. Here are the languages I learned, hope you can keep up!

Nagsasalita na ako ng Tagalog nung bata pa ako at marunong na ako magsulat sa buong buhay ko. Kaya hindi ko nakakalimutan magsalita dahil yun ang pinaguusapan namin sa bahay.

J'ai étudié le français en 7e et 8e année. Là j'ai continué de étudiant de première année de année dans les écoles secondaires et arrêté. Aujourd'hui je ne parle pas beaucoup de cela, mais même alors je peux encore comprendre ce que la personne est de me dire en français.

Español fue más interesante como la mayoría de las palabras en Tagalo provino de la lengua propia. Luego de nuevo recogí el lenguaje rápidamente aunque no suficiente fluidez sigo entienden lo que diría porque refleja tan bien que he entendido lo que la gente diciendo.

English wasn’t that hard either as I started learning how to speak it when I was only 3 years old. I started reading magazines, newspapers and books by then. I thought it was hard but it wasn’t.

After high school I started picking up other languages quickly. Starting off with German, I learned how to speak some of the formalities and numbers fairly quick. However, my French teacher told me that German like French is part of the Romance languages so some of the words have similarities so I was able to pick up more words.

Few months later, I wanted to learn how to speak Japanese because of my mom’s side. I knew of course konichiwa, konbanwa then I started picking up verbs from it. After that I started to develop sentences from just watching their animations and drama shows. I rely on subtitles sometimes but even there’re discrepancies in between them. Sometimes I just rely with no subtitles because it’s better that way just to understand what they are saying than reading their lines.

I learned how to speak some Italian long time ago. My old art teach in middle school taught me how to speak some of it. He taught me how to say mr./mrs., hello, and goodbye. Today I learned some more when I played Warcraft when one of players I met was from Italy. She taught me ‘how are you,’ good/bad, and I love you. After that I played Assassin’s Creed 2 and since the settings in Italy I picked up a few more from the game. Of course curse words were involved so I learned that but I prefer the formalities over that. Another time that I picked up Italian was when I watched “Life is Beautiful” and one of my favorite lines in that film was, “Buon giorno principessa! Come stai! Last night I had a wonderful dream about you…”

I learned some Russian from some students that was in my medical school and they taught me the formalities once more. I learned how to say hi/hello, goodbye and what’s up. It’s a beautiful language and I would be more so happy to write it too.

Now comes Arabic, I played World of Warcraft for almost 6 years and I met a group of Kuwaitis who speak Farsi and with that I was intrigued with their words. Even the language itself that comes from your throat and your nose that is about to spit. It is very strong. I was able to understand again what they say and even they were shocked to hear me say to them in English what they were saying to each other. They taught me how to say the formalities and thank you.

Finally and recently, I met a Singaporean also from WoW that spoke Mandarin. I asked him how to say the formalities, I love you and best friend in that order. Soon after…well within five minutes of talking to him I picked up real quick. So now I tell him wok wo da han-hao ni su wo tsui yao hao da pan xiu which literally translates to “I’m good my best friend.” It’s not something that can be spoken fast because it will bring different meanings to the one you’re speaking to.

With that I learned about ten languages, though not all are fluent and written I am able to understand the context they are being used. I still want to learn how to speak other languages especially Latin and Celtic as they are one of the other oldest languages in the world.