Trying to be trilingual

The Story of You, Part 2.

Jay K.



[why are you keep taking picture of me? i'm mad]

Ep.16 Trying to be trilingual

So I am back. The last two episodes were honestly too long, so I will try to keep this one short. The school started three weeks ago, and this week we have National Day break (5 days break). October 1st 1949, the current People’s Republic of China was established. This holiday is one of the two biggest holidays in China (the other one is Lunar New Year). The break is usually a week long. Many Chinese people go back to their hometowns or travel during this break. Since I just got back from a long trip, I don’t feel like leaving Beijing so finally, I found time to write this essay!


[Chinese characters, there are so many of'em]

Many people will be curious what classes I’m taking here, so let me tell you guys: Chinese. I am taking two main Chinese courses—one is writing/reading and the other one is speaking. I am also taking two Chinese electives. I am taking Chinese writing and news paper reading classes. I am also taking Chinese Economy that is taught in English (yay!). Also, I’m auditing two political science courses. I honestly understand only 5% of what the professor says in class. I am taking these classes in order to take my major courses next semester for credits.

Last Friday, I had this 8am polisci class that I’m auditing. It was painful to wake up for the class but I did and went to class. And, I found out that there was no class on that day because the professor went on business trip. The professor told students the week before and only student who showed up were people who missed the last class. That just shows how bad my Chinese is. That’s just sad. My Chinese improved a lot a lot since I got here, but still not enough.



Many people (mostly Chinese people) ask me why I learn Chinese. I sometimes wonder why too. There are many reasons I think. I originally wanted to go study in China when I was in Korea. I also wanted to learn other language. I think Chinese is the pretty language (and I don’t think French is the most beautiful langue of the world). I started to like Chinese after I watched Zhang Ziyi’s House of Flying Daggers. She is so hot, and when she speaks Chinese it’s really pretty. Of course, Zhang Ziyi’s not the only reason why I learn Chinese.

When I came to the States, I took an ESL class and there were two Taiwanese kids in my class. We became really good friends and took a summer school together. We also did carpool that summer. They usually talked to each other in Chinese and of course I didn’t understand anything. Now I think that that made me want to study Chinese. It was curiosity and feeling of helplessness in communicating with people (which also made me to study English hard).

“Trying to be trilingual” implies that I claim myself as bilingual. I guess I can say that. I don’t claim that I am fluent in English but nowadays I feel comfortable using English (unless I’m interviewing in English). I still don’t know many vocabularies, but at least I can ask people what they mean and understand their explanations. For the most times, I don’t have problem in listening (unless they have heavy British/Indian/or any other accents). I want to achieve that point with my Chinese. That’s why I am here; leaving all my friends back home and living in a whole new world. I don’t know whether I can achieve it or not, at this point it’s not that promising. One year later, would I be comfortable using Chinese? Probably not.



My ultimate goal is to be able to speak five languages: Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. These are the languages used in six party talks. I also want to learn Spanish, French and Arab. Why learning languages? One thing I like about learning languages is that I can use it instantly. I learn some new words and new grammar structures and I can just use them in daily conversations. I can have a conversation with someone from a different country. That’s very fascinating. I love to study political science, but I can’t use them in real life (not yet). I can read some news and understand it better with knowledge I learned from PS157 but that’s about it. I even don’t want to talk about how useful Physics and Mathematics are. (They are useful in some ways).

Few days before, my tutor told me about “passive” and “active” words in learning foreign language. When you learn a new language, there are so many new words (obviously). There are words that you only know what they mean, but you don’t use on regular basis—regular basis I mean when you write or speak. These are called “passive” words. The “active” words are the words you naturally use on regular basis. Learning a new language is basically a process of changing “passive” words to “active” words. There are still so many English words that are on my “passive” words list.




I am trying hard to be trilingual. I am taking 6 classes in Chinese, it’s way over 20 units. However, I feel it’s still not enough. It’s very frustrating, but I try not to be. I know it takes time. I already experienced it once. It takes time.

Lately I am meeting a lot of Koreans. There are so many Koreans here. A half of my class is Korean and the other half is Japanese (there are some Europeans and Americans). I joined a Korean club too. I don’t know… I am preparing my return to Korea after college. I will talk more about it in the next episode, because I want to keep this one short as I promised earlier.