Language Lessons

Tonight I sat in Korean class studying, well, Korean. We watched a tale about hungry kids and kind chefs giving them something to eat. Part of the narrative included one of the children looking over at the table and sort of imagining an alternate, more happy life, with a mother and a father and siblings with laughter and joy and all those fuzzy warm feelings.

First I thought, why does the happy successful narrative always have to have one mother and one father? Then I thought to myself, why am I learning Korean?

The two questions may seem like they might have different answers, but in my head, they are connected. I realized today that I'm not learning languages just for the hell of it, just because I think it'll make me more worldly or more employable or any of that jazz. I'm learning languages for me.

I will admit my initial reason to learn Japanese was because I felt so much regret over my elementary school Japanese teacher dieing suddenly one day that I felt obliged to learn about the culture and language. So I did, I went on exchange and I learned a ton about Japan, and I learned it well. But the story didn't end there.

As an adult living in Japan now, I've realized that life is a strange ride of unexpected emotions and feelings that we can't ever really predict nor can we ever fully control. So although I want to learn languages because I genuinely like them, I've come to realize something even deeper about myself.

Sexuality and gender are deeply entrenched in my existence, especially how I express them, how I think about them, and what I do with them. Whereas I believe sexuality and gender are my two main passions (I also have about a million hobbies), language itself is the medium I use to express these passions.

Today I realized that my learning of languages is my attempt at expressing myself to as many people as possible so that they can better understand me. Not a one sided street of course, it's also so I can understand them. And better yet, it's so that we can understand each other and grow together while respecting our differences and bonding over common goals and dreams.

That's what I think language is doing for me. Because as much as I love experiencing cultures and languages through food, it is the desire to talk and discuss sexuality and gender in these languages that really drives me.

The more I study, the more I realize the great similarities between all cultures. We all want to express ourselves, we all want to communicate, we all want to use some sort of linguistic communication to express the thoughts and feelings in our hearts and minds.

Therefore, I've realized that I like to talk and especially write about sexuality and gender. I think language is my way of confronting my own gender and sexuality issues, or rather using language to grow from them. The more I learn in multiple languages, the more I gravitate towards learning how that culture and language expresses gender and sexuality. I look at cues, I look at norms, what is ostracized, what isn't, and why. Then I come to realize that everyone basically just likes what they like, and we can never hide from our true selves. Try as we might, the mind and soul have ways of expressing themselves even in the most restrictive of circumstances. I think that language can be one of the catalysts that can bring us closer as people and teach us how to better love each other for who we are. So I keep pushing, and I keep learning languages.