Breaking the language barrier by Tim Doner.

He was featured in a New York Times

article called, “Adventures of a teenage polyglot” which featured his passion for learning foreign
languages. He loved the fact that language learning was getting gaining more attention. And as
he spent more time in the media spotlight, the focus of his story began to shift. He’s always been
interested in talking about the why and the how, why he was learning foreign languages, and
how he did it, instead, it turned into a bit of a circus, in which media shows wanted to
sensationalize his story. It highlighted two pretty major problems in the way his story was
covered. On a personal level, he felt that language learning was now becoming like a bit of a
task, almost, and it felt like something that suddenly had to be rigidly organized. Something that
had to be compartmentalized, rationalized, and expressed in a concrete number. As opposed to
what he’d always done, which was just learning languages for the fun of it. Learning to
communicate with people, and learning about foreign cultures. And on a bigger level, it’s
cheapened what it meant to speak a language or to know a language. He imparted and conveyed
that knowing a language is a lot more than knowing a couple of words out of a dictionary. It’s a
lot more than asking someone where the bathroom is, or telling them the time of day. So, I have
mentioned in his article “Adventures of a teenage polyglot”, polyglot means a person who knows
and is able to use several languages. So, Tim Doner was a child actor before he learned any
languages. He had a bit of talent for speaking accents. He had an idea of the basics of how to
break down sound, how to pick up a foreign accent, and foreign speech patterns. He was in third
grade when he learned how to speak French which is just another subject in school and couldn’t
even converse or communicate fluently with anybody. In seventh grade, he learned Latin which
is of course a dead language. So, as he grew up, he started having an interest in learning more
languages. And as he started communicating with native speakers, he started to understand a lot
more. After that, he started learning Arabic and found out that he could read and write the
language without a problem, and learned the basics of the formal language, and it turned the fact
that he could really pursue languages as a hobby. Suddenly, language learning had gone into the
wide world after he uploaded his video speaking the language, Arabic. So, he had a community
of speakers to interact with, and essentially had a teacher or conversation partners for any
language that he wanted to do. That is his way of reaching out to the world. But, as he was
learning all these languages, he faced a number of obstacles. So, number one, he had no idea
how to teach himself. He has his own ways of learning, in fact, he experimented with methods
like memorizing the vocabulary of a language, and it made language learning a much more
interactive experience and it made it something that he can remember much better. A lot of
people would ask him if you’re studying so many languages at the same time, how do you not
confuse them? So, what he did, would memorize vocabulary in batches of sounds that were
similar. It was part of overcoming one of his obstacles in language learning. So, he pointed out
why would you study a lot of languages when you live in New York. In fact, he lived in New
York his entire life, and encountering all that linguistic diversity, he found out that he had
language learners in New York. From the quote Nelson Mandela, “If you talk to a man in a
language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his
heart.” There’s an enormous connection between language and culture. It is significant to
understand the culture to get. It’s interesting we think about the fact that most linguists believe
language doesn’t inherently affect the way you think. There’s a real tie between language and
culture, there’s so much language can tell you about one culture’s mindset. This emphasized the
importance of any language, as any day or week, the death of a language, and the loss of its
folklore, its history, and its mythology. Just attending to some language learning, opens up your
mind to the idea, that language in its sense, in essence, represents a cultural worldview.
Therefore, translation is like this. You can translate words easily, but you can’t quite translate
meaning. This examines the potential of both languages while assisting individuals in
understanding the relationship between them. It is a natural and necessary practice because
foreign words are encountered frequently in everyday settings and must be translated. For me, I
was fond of watching anime which has the language of Japanese and KDramas from Korea,
literally. It was really difficult to understand their language while watching without a subtitle. It
will be so confusing when it comes to that. The longer I’ve watched these series or even movies,
I’ve learned from the Japanese tradition that when they greet someone and when someone is
leaving, Japanese people typically bow. When bowing in front of other people, bows indicate
greater respect. And there’s just so much more to learn when we learn not just their language but
also their culture and traditions. And that will translation takes place. Translation builds bridges
between cultures. The translation is fantastic at engaging ‘both parts of your brain; your native
and target languages. Your linguistic skills are strengthened because it compels you to get used
to shifting between your languages at any time and which also enhances language learning.