Gather No Moss

I love learning languages. Back in the day, while I was working for the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, I helped setup a tour called “Science in American Life.” Working at the Museum of American History, I interacted with visitors from all across the world. From Argentina to Zaire, and I found that before I could really get to presenting my work, the exhibit and the cool activities we had for children, I had to create a connection between me and my “audience.”

And to do this, I learned how to say “I’m hungry” in a bunch of languages. Last count, I clocked in about 30 different languages. Whenever I meet someone, I ask where they’re from. And if it’s one of the languages I’m familliar with, I practice my little piece of their culture. I say “I’m hungry” in Burmese, Gaelic or Slovenian, and the conversation starts.

People love it when you take the effort to speak their language. Even if it’s something so simple as “I’m hungry.”

I speak English, Vietnamese, French and Japanese, so learning languages has always come pretty easy. I’m moving to Thailand in a couple weeks, so went looking out on the Internet for ways to learn Thai.

I found Open Culture to be of great help. They’ve got a bunch of podcasts for 20 different languages. There’s a Thai podcast, and I’ve downloaded it to listen to OVER and OVER again in the car, in the subway and before I go to sleep. For me, the key to learning a language is repetition repetition REPETITION. Sorta like how most people get to Carnegie Hall.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 5:11 am and is filed under Life Hacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.