Life as a Polyglot of Four Languages
By: Jinyoung Jang
Tags: Childhood, Chinese, Language, Polyglot, Thai

Living in a interconnected, globalized world, more and more people are likely to adopt a language other than his or her mother tongue. English has become a norm over non-Western continents, and the second, third, or the n-th language can be easily learned and trained through the internet, self-learnable text books or schools right at the city you live in. According to Google search, 40% of the people in the world are monolingual, 43% are bilingual, and 17% know more than two languages, those who can be called “polyglots”. Roughly, more than half of the globe can understand at least two languages, although the level of proficiency would be different. Literacy in three languages is also quite common in the instance of third culture kids whose family, school, and the country he or she lives in each use different languages, thus learning to understand all three languages due to the environment.

Let me tell you my story of becoming a polyglot.

I grew up in a Korean family but in a totally exotic place of Thailand, not at all like Korea. My parents were missionaries who came to Thailand 27 years ago, when my sister was just one year old and I was not even born yet. Born in Bangkok in a warm December of 1994, this was the start of my life.

The earliest memory I have in my childhood was church. My dad planted a church in an old condo which was also our home. I still remember what it looked like, even though I was not yet kindergarten age. Maybe I was five or six. I don’t remember what floor, but we had to use the worn out elevator to go up to where the church was. The elevator often malfunctioned, so I remember I was always frightened to take it. The church had an “L”-shaped corridor where one room was the bedroom where my sister and I watched video tapes like Teletubbies, another room was something like an office or meeting room, and finally the room for worship services. My sister and I were some of the youngest around the church, and we always played with older kids and teenagers who chased me around saying how adorable and cute I was (because I was only five or six!). The church was for the local people, so most of them were Thai. Being around with Thai people, my sister and I could speak Thai just like anyone our age. Yet, my mother tongue was Korean, which mother tought us as babies and at early age. So that was how I started out, bilingual at young age.

I soon got to the age for school. My parents decided I should go to an international school rather than a local one. I did not even know one bit of English at that time, so I was put in the ESL class for kindergarten. Day by day my ears were hearing English and one day, when we were playing vocab cards in ESL class, I remember clearly how I suddenly started to speak up in English, just like American accent. The English teacher looked very proud of me, and that’s how I passed ESL.

Since my elementary years, I learned every subject in English. I was in the American curriculum, so most teachers where from the US or Canada. I adopted the American accent which follows until today. I can also follow Thai English accent for fun, if I want to.

Mother let me study Korean through some textbooks and internet courses, and I think they really helped me sustain my own language. I could speak Korean with no problem, but writing Korean was hard for me even until university.

In fifth grade, my friend’s mother asked if I want to learn Chinese with that friend. My mother consented and so did I. It was a Taiwanese teacher and she taught us the Chinese alphabet pronunciation in “pinyin” which was Chinese phonetics. My friend gave up the class quite soon, but I continued to learn one to one with the teacher. She taught me traditional characters after I mastered pinyin. But then, she had to go back to her country, so mom found another teacher for me. She was an old Taiwanese women who taught me “zhuyin” which were pronunciation symbols that look quite complicated, but I memeorized them all soon. However, I didn’t use them for so long that I forgot it now. The teacher also taught me traditional characters, but once I got into highschool I had to learn simplified characters, and now I am used to the most common simplified and pinyin.

In 11th grade, junior year, I took the HSK level 5 test and passed. I was so thankful to have that certificate for my application for university.

I was accepted to Seoul National University for the college of humanities. In my second year, I majored in Chinese Language and Literature. There, I realized how low my level was in Chinese. I learned so much from university, but I still couldn’t be as fluent as I wanted to be.

Today, I still study Chinese and plan to take the HSK level 6 soon.

For my Thai to not deteriorate, I meet a Thai friend once a month and talk with her in Thai.

Actually learning many languages could make it all mediocre. I needed to work hard to not forget amd keep on using Thai, Chinese and even Korean and English! That is why I have a vocab notebook for all four languages. I should keep reading as well, but I am not really engaged in reading.

I would rather write a lot, though reading is also very important.

Being a polyglot is a great privilege. However I must overcome mediocrity and really be fluent. That is a real polyglot.