Filo mum, never really learned tagalog. English background speaking through and through. But I tend to be an aural learner, and I picked up basic Japanese by living there for a bit and researching in my spare time. The problem is I'd pick up words in different places, and from different people, so not only did I get it wrong every couple of sentences but I'd mix up words, gendered language, and dialects. Reading in another language is way too fucking hard, but spoken I seem to have a pretty good gift of emulation.
I tend to be pretty social when I have an opportunity, and I have a pretty good eye for environmental context and body language. Tagalog continues to confound me, because tagalog isn't just tagalog but expertly weaves a combination of other languages if it saves time.
Most of the time, I don't really give a shit and I'd keep talking. Because confidence. OPf course inevitably I probably looked like a massive tit to the natives. But I suppose it's better to look like a massive tit compared to a nervous tit. And hey, deep down everybody knows you can't get decent at a language without direct practice and being afraid of making the occasional mistake. So I imagine to other people I sounded precisely like a gaijin who thinks they can speak Japanese, and doesn't even know where they are or where they're going. Which pretty much describes me as per usual, so I can't complain.
Usually I'd tutor, practice afterwards, research on my own, go out, drink, and if people could still understand me by the end of the night, I considered that a win. Rinse and repeat for the 4 months I was there.
I was thinking of doing the same in Germany. I've always wanted to learn German, mainly because every German tourist I run into seems to be the most affable person on Earth. So I might take 6 months off to do that. Extended sabbatical.
I tend to be pretty social when I have an opportunity, and I have a pretty good eye for environmental context and body language. Tagalog continues to confound me, because tagalog isn't just tagalog but expertly weaves a combination of other languages if it saves time.
Most of the time, I don't really give a shit and I'd keep talking. Because confidence. OPf course inevitably I probably looked like a massive tit to the natives. But I suppose it's better to look like a massive tit compared to a nervous tit. And hey, deep down everybody knows you can't get decent at a language without direct practice and being afraid of making the occasional mistake. So I imagine to other people I sounded precisely like a gaijin who thinks they can speak Japanese, and doesn't even know where they are or where they're going. Which pretty much describes me as per usual, so I can't complain.
Usually I'd tutor, practice afterwards, research on my own, go out, drink, and if people could still understand me by the end of the night, I considered that a win. Rinse and repeat for the 4 months I was there.
I was thinking of doing the same in Germany. I've always wanted to learn German, mainly because every German tourist I run into seems to be the most affable person on Earth. So I might take 6 months off to do that. Extended sabbatical.