I’ll be honest. Languages are hard, really hard. They’re something I’ve struggled with my entire life. My mom always thought it was important to keep us somewhat connected to her side of the family in some way, so she tried to teach us Spanish for years throughout our childhood, and even into our high school years. My siblings retained bits and pieces of the Spanish, and went on to pick up at least basic levels of other languages with relative ease.
Me? Not so much. I’ve forgotten basically all the Spanish I learned, and am just fumbling my way through Korean. I can read pretty well in Korean, and my writing is decent for my level, but my speaking and listening? For lack of a better way of saying it, I suck.
Part of the problem is my lack of practice and immersion, but I’m also simply not used to thinking in another language. Mentally, I’ve never had to switch my thinking patterns around before. Where in English I would say “I’m studying biology at the library,” I would say “[I’m] library biology studying (도서관에서 생물학을 공부해요) ” in Korean. It’s almost a complete reversal from my usual way of processing language.
Another reason for my weak and slow verbal skills is that when I speak Korean, I have to picture the sentence being constructed. As I say each word, I have a mental image of the words and their markers falling into place.
It sounds cool, but when it’s actually happening and you’re trying to speak, it slows you down a lot. I cannot progress with what I’m saying if I cannot picture the hangul for what I’m trying to say. It’s why when I’m asked to say something on the spot in class, I panic and sit there stammering, completely unable to do anything but fumble my way through whatever basic task I’ve been given.
It’s discouraging, and in every class I make some mistake that even I should know better than to make by now. I wind up wanting to curl up and cry most days.
I’ve been very lucky, I wound up with a really kind professor. Sure, we all joke about how cruel he is because he assigns us 200 slides for one quiz sometimes, but ultimately he’s probably one of the best professors I’ve had. He allows us to completely sidetrack the lecture with random questions about couple holidays or constant teasing about his love life, and is usually willing to give us extra help or half-marks on tests and quizzes. Despite us completely butchering his language, he still treats us with kindness and patience.
If there’s one thing learning Korean has taught me, it’s that you can’t always get things right on the first try (or the second, third, fourth). Some things take time, lots of dedication, practice, and kind friends and teachers to help you along.
So yes, some things are really hard, and we spend more hours than we’d like to admit curled up in bed, crying or angry and frustrated. Sometimes we want to walk away and give up because we haven’t overcome the obstacle in front of us. But all that matters is that we make progress. It can be very slow progress, but making it is what matters. Once you see yourself making progress, you’ll realize that’s reason enough to not give up.