2.1.07
learning languages through listening
As you all know (or none at all), I’ve been seriously hooked on the latest "soap" dramas and movies of the East side, I mean, Asia. Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, HK, you name it. I’m not sure how I got sucked into this, but a part of it was from stumbling across a site called D-addicts.com. They have all the latest dramas with English subtitles, forums, fansubs, and info wiki sites. It’s a torrent site so you must download Bittorrent or some other torrent client in order to download the files. It’s a great site!
Anyways, so I’ve seen quite a few dramas. Maybe too many. At first I was just watching them because of the sappy love stories and romance, but the more I watched (esp the Japanese ones), the more I became immersed in the language and culture. I was never interested in Japanese ppl/culture before this. How ignorant of me! But I don’t think I can become fluent from watching, but I think we as musicians, with our acute hearing and listening skills, we have a strong ability to learn a language fairly quickly. I remember when I was little, my favorite way to relax with family was watching soap-operas or the old-fashioned martial arts type dramas. Just listening to the script and watching the Chinese subtitles helped me understand Mandarin at a faster rate. Now look where I am!
For me, I’m happy with just being able to understand what people are saying, although speaking is a whole other ballgame for me. Some people can learn the language more by conversing, but I prefer to be passive and just listen. It just goes to show that people have various ways of learning and it’s all very interesting. How do you learn a new language?
