Petting my Pet Peeve

Betcha that many of you out there don't know that as a language learner, I have a pet peeve. And unfortunately, alot of people outside the language learning world do often end up petting my pet peeve unintentionally.  And ironically, their comments to me were often times meant as a compliment so taking that into account, I have to let it go and understand that they meant well.

But what bothers me as a language learner is when I am talking to people about being fluent in a language, I will get a comment like "Oh, you're just naturally good at languages."  Yes and no. This is something that I would like to explain.  Yes, there are some people who naturally pick up languages faster than others. It is possible to not study at all and go to a country and pick up the language. But even if you plan on doing that, you have to commit to spending time with the locals and with people that don't speak your native tongue.

And the part that many people don't get is that I am where I am because of commitment. While in Canada, I had the option of choosing to do many other things but I chose to be with my spanish grammar books and my audio lessons. When it came to movies, I chose spanish language films instead of the latest hollywood blockbuster. When I was in Argentina, I chose to go to church events and cell group on thursday where there were no english speakers.

Although there are some of you out there that would be able to go to a country without much study and pick up the language, understand that there are many levels of fluency. If you do your homework right and commit time to studying, you will have a so much more enriching experience and will be able to engage in a deeper level of conversation with the locals than you ever dreamed of.  You'll be able to get more done and any problems that may arise you'll be able to solve them faster. And trust me, there were several occasions in my early days where I ran into some problematic situations that would have cost me several hours more of my time if I did not know the language as well as I did.

I think people almost get this idea that me having natural language speaking abilities, that I just woke up one morning and foreign words starting popping out of my mouth. Well every so often I do get up on the wrong side of the bed and the words that pop out of my mouth are alot closer to foul than foreign LOL  But my point is that it all boils down to choice. It's not up to fate whether you succeed or fail as a language learner.

On that note, I also want to balance it out by saying that commitment is one part of it and the other part is finding the appropriate resources and methods of teaching and learning. Don't even get me started on how much marketing junk there is out there claiming to get you speaking a foreign language in your sleep. If you're reading this and you've been one of those who has spent hours studying and learning and you haven't had success, don't take this blog the wrong way. It is likely that you just haven't been paired up with the right resources.  Which is why I continually Rocket Languages and their products as well the website "How to Learn Any Language" is an excellent resource that I highly recommend.

Buenas suerte!  Good luck!