Learning a New Language: Can a Friend Help?

March 09, 2025 by Jamie Valentine

My Love of Spanish

I love being bilingual. I speak English and Spanish, but there is so much more I want to learn. I come from a Mexican-American family with roots in both Mexico and the Netherlands in my extended family, so other languages were all around me. Growing up, I had cousins who came from the Netherlands and spoke Dutch, as well as family members who would cross over to visit from Mexico across the border to El Paso. In middle school, I loved speaking Spanish with my peers and learned it formally in class. It created some of the best experiences of my life, learning the slang and joining in on various jokes, and led to some great career opportunities in my life.

Now, as an adult, I see Spanish as an intrinsic part of my identity. I’ve moved away from El Paso to somewhere where there isn’t as much Spanish yet so much more lingual diversity than I have ever experienced. Hearing German, Arabic, and Mandarin fills me with immense curiosity in my new home. My happiest days though are when I get to help people at work by speaking Spanish. It reminds me that while language is a tool I use it is and can help bring people together. But there is only so many people I can reach and connect to with just English and Spanish. So, once again, I set out to learn a new language.

My Failures Learning a New Language

Eventually, I even tried venturing and failing to learn a new language: Japanese. I was obsessed with Anime in middle school, binging so many great shojo manga and watching many Shounen anime. It made me want to learn what was being said instead of just relying on subtitles. Though I know the people working in subtitling work hard, translation is a nuanced and difficult job. It’s sometimes impossible to translate cultural context onscreen when an audience is focused on digesting content quickly, which manga has more room to flush out. So I decided that I would learn Japanese!

Throughout high school and early college I got the study book, the Hiragana flashcards, the Katakana flash cards, vocab cards, and even a Genkouyoushi notebook* to practice writing characters. I’d watch a bunch of anime and listen to Japanese Vocaloid**, only ever remembering a few words here and there. But my goal was the same fluency I had with Spanish; my second language. It was distressing investing so much time on apps, cards and notebooks to barely making any progress. I thought about going finding a local Japanese learning club but found nothing in my new area. Formal classes? Far away and online only. While I had to tolerate online school during the pandemic, I don’t have to do that anymore. I find I thrive more in a classroom setting, but finding and paying for formal Japanese learning classes would be difficult. And the worst part of it all? I had no one to talk to. Of course, I had online chatbots, but it really takes the wind out of our sails when you’re just talking to yourself.

Again and Again

So I made a list of languages that I wanted to learn; those being Nahuatl, French, Korean, and (once again) Japanese. Learning Nahuatl is a part of my bucket list, I really want to learn at least one Indigenous language before I go out. French was the most practical option; I already knew one romance language, why not another? Korean was also very popular when I was in middle school with a large group of ‘Koreaboos’*** at my local very Hispanic middle school. But once again I circle back to Japanese. I mean, I got all the stuff to learn about it, but I’m still burnt out by it. I decided to stick to my break on learning Japanese.

I knew my friends had a passing interest in language learning, but being in your early twenties is hard, guys. We are all trying to make our place in the world and live very busy lives. In short, the girlies are struggling out there trying to find steady careers in cities far away from home. Making their own connects, one is getting married while the other is thinking about moving jobs. It felt wrong to ask them if they had any extra time in the limited 24 hours of the day to learn a new language. But then, I remembered one friend of mine is really into K-pop, so I asked her if she knew Korean or wanted to learn. She told me that she didn’t know Korean and that she thought she’d be bad at it. This inspired me because I was not going to let my friend feel down about herself, the same way I felt while learning Japanese. I did not ask any follow-up questions on her previous tries with the language, but I told her we could learn together and that I’d get on that real soon.

Soon

I looked up stuff about Korean on YouTube, got some flashcards, and a Hangeul trace notebook. As I practiced, I kept getting flashbacks from my struggles with learning Japanese. I pushed those thoughts away for my friend and for myself. I tried to remember as much as I could about Korea and about learning to speak Korean. It once again went back to middle school, so I cleansed my brain and thought back on those tumultuous years. I knew of various girls who learned Korean so fast, through various online websites and listening to so much Korean music. At the time, I was out there half-heartedly trying to learn Japanese at the time, formally learning Spanish, and learning the language of music by being a band nerd to focus on what my (self-called) ‘Koreaboo’ classmates were doing. Now would be the perfect time to learn Korean.

I’ve formulated a plan based on some of what I learned in my English classes, some study techniques I learned from elementary school, and that demon in my brain that likes to have things organizes a certain way. I will get back to whoever reads this with our hopeful progress. This time I will succeed.

Sincerely,

Jamie Valentine

Which one of these languages would you like to learn?

• Arabic
• Dutch
• French
• German

See All Options

Footnotes:

*Genkouyoushi notebook- a type of notebook used in Japan with has several columns containing squares, some iterations have these squares divided into four. They are often used by learners of Japanese to practice character writing.

**Vocaloid- one of the first vocal synthesizing softwares made by Yamaha. Where vocalists would record their voice and users would buy the voice software to create their own songs. Popular in 2010s (Still around to this day with Vocaloid6 software as of 2025)

***Koreaboo- people who are obsessed with everything about Korea from language to culture and everything else in-between.