My little frustrated dream

Day 44

Languages, a sort of hobby for me.  Learning languages has not always been something I wanted to do, but as I saw myself surrounded by so many different people and cultures, I kind of took an interest in them.  

Growing up in the Dominican Republic has, like everywhere else, its ups and downs.  In a city like Santo Domingo, which is the biggest and most important city of the country, the expats are almost non-existent, it would be very rare to meet someone who was not Dominican up to the point where if you were not from there, your nickname would be your country of origin.  Is a fairly common thing for us to do, and please note that we don't mean disrespect or any kind of ill sentiment, is just how we are and try to make things easier for us.

While I lived there, for all the people I met, very few were not Dominican.  In school we had Liu, el chino or the Chinese, while technically he was actually Taiwanese, Irayda, a Peruvian Dominican, Werner who was fully German and Gabriel Rengifo aka Venezuela, at home we had a Haitian employee called María and outside of that selected group, I never met anyone from any other nationality.

You see, for a country that thrives in tourism, the city of Santo Domingo lacks a lot of attraction for tourists, so taken from that point of view, if you don't live in the touristy areas and/or don't have to work with tourist on the regular, learning a language different that English is not something I looked forward to.

My dad, being my dad, had me on English classes from a very young age, at the Dominico-Americano and their program "playful learning" which was, in retrospective, a really nice program for kids to learn English, and by the time I was 14 years old I had already finished English classes. Afterwards, my dad being my dad, said "you are going to French school" and I dreaded that. One thing is to learn a language that could be technically useful for a lot of different things (like english) and another is to be pushed to learn a language that you think you will never use.

Traveling to France or Canada or any francophone country was not on the table, in my teenage years I couldn't really find any use for it, and I was totally uninterested in it.   The mentorship from my parents was simply not there, they just wanted me to go to French classes (at Alliance Francais du Santo Domingo) just for me to have an extracurricular activity but not really for my interests but for their interests, and in those rebellious years I was in, being forced into doing something I didn't want was just the perfect recipe for failure.  Long story short, I didn't finish French school.

But then it turns out, I ended living abroad, in the mostly Latino-flavored city that is Miami and it a very short time I started meeting lots of people from all over the place and I found very amazing how my Spanish was so different than every other Latin American country, at the same time, I met a lot of Caribbean people where they speak English (Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Caymans) and there accent was so different that the American English I was used to that really caught me off guard, but at the same time just like with Spanish, highlighted my interest in languages.

In the following years, I ended up working with Brazilians very closely and started to pick up Portuguese, I even took a 6-month beginners' class that mixed with my knowledge of Spanish made it sort of easy to pick it up and at least have basic conversations or understand it a little bit.  In the following years I saw myself in France, where I finally was able to practice what I learned in my teenage years, and I was surprised how much I remembered and was able to do during my time in France.  

As years went by, I became really good friend with Max, who happens to be German and a bit of a polyglot himself too, and not soon after that, I started working for this German company who had me travel to Germany a few times, and well, I started to take some beginners' classes online that didn't do great things but at least had me learn very basic stuff.

And well, nowadays I've been working for 2.5 years at this German company, and I get to talk to my colleagues on the regular and visit Germany at least once a year.  For the past few months, I've been taking German Duolingo classes, I know is not the best solution but at least I'm doing something I want to do.

If my parents would have asked me what I wanted to do or what language I was interested in, I probably would have said Japanese with how much I love Japanimation, videogames or technology but at the same time I know that then, even if I wanted to do it, and my parents agreed on putting me into the class, I would have said no anyways, and the main reason comes down to a simple thing: insecurity.

I know I would have been seen as the dork or nerd that study Japanese because of tech and videogames, and I did not want that, I had already a hard time fitting in, and as I said, mentorship was not something I had for myself. My older brothers were either too old (5, 8 or 15 years older than me) and I just didn't know better.

That's one thing I really regret not doing, because now days I get very excited when I understand things that are in different languages than the two I master.

Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, German.... why not Japanese or Italian too? 

The America, The Irish, The Dominican and The Serb hangout in Nuremeber, Germany