The Choice of Second Languages

I can remember, as a missionary in and around San Jose, California, people asking my companion and I how we learned Spanish, or, occasionally, where we learned Spanish. It always made me feel good (even though I realized that their surprise at our abilities was due more to extremely low expectations on their part than to any particular Spanish-speaking prowess on my part). What I can’t remember is if anyone ever asked us why we learned Spanish.

I’ve certainly never had anyone ask me why I learned English. I love the English language. It’s rich and lovely, but I can hardly say that I chose it. A first language is almost a matter of survival. My young brain learned it mostly instinctively. How I use my first language, how much I choose to embrace it and learn its history and nuances, these are choices. English will always be part of me, something that I love, part of my identity, but I didn’t choose to learn it in the first place, not really.

A second language, unlike a first language, reflects a person’s choices, and as a person’s choices are crucial to their identity in a way that the things they do not control cannot be, a second language must be more telling than a first. With a second language, you can ask why, and there will be an answer that that person owns.

I’m not sure what I might have told someone had they asked me why I learned Spanish. So that I could talk to them, maybe. Or because it was the language that I was assigned when I received my mission call. What choices does speaking Spanish reflect for me? The casual choice to take a couple Spanish classes in high school. The choice to serve a mission, something that I wondered about and struggled with for months. The sometimes excruciating choice to stay on a mission. The amount of time I chose to spend on Duolingo as a missionary. The people that I chose to talk to about their lives and about Jesus Christ. Now, a year after coming home, I speak Spanish because I chose to take another Spanish class, because I chose to watch Soy Luna over the summer, because I choose to maintain friendships with people I met on my mission.

My older sister studied Korean for several years. She discovered k-pop, and then k-dramas her freshman year of college. Korean culture swiftly became one of her passions. People ask her why all the time. It’s an interaction that I’ve seen over and over, one that often makes me cringe. Her love of Korean will come up in conversation, followed promptly by the question “Oh, did you serve a mission there?” followed by her answer “No, I didn’t serve a mission. I just really love it.” “Oh…That’s cool.”

Some people, to their credit, respond more enthusiastically. But I’ll never understand the hesitancy of those who don’t. She studied Korean because she fell in love with it. How do they fail to recognize what is so obvious to me, that choosing to learn something out of a passion for it is so much cooler than learning something that was handed to you or forced on you? She fully and completely chose Korean, in a way that I can never claim I chose to learn Spanish.

I fell hard for k-dramas, thanks to my sister’s influence. In the midst of my k-drama mania, a woman started coming to my and my sister’s ward. She attended regularly, and was always quiet and alone. As a quiet and easily intimidated person, she seemed like the perfect friend. I tried to talk to her several times, but nothing ever stuck. One day she said something that reminded me of a k-drama I was watching, and, with nothing else more relevant to say, I mentioned it. She lit up, and we started talking about k-dramas. That conversation became the first step in a delightful friendship. I don’t watch k-dramas as much as I used to, but I still choose

to whip out my k-drama knowledge whenever it seems useful. K-dramas make you instant friends, and I love them for it.

In some ways, I chose k-dramas more than I chose Spanish. I loved them and I immersed myself in them. Why did I love them? The romance, the gorgeous filming, the new things I learned, the style, all of these things appealed to me (and still do), but there was more to it. I have a lot of happy memories of k-dramas, but they also represent a darker time of my life, choices that I made as I struggled. For a long time, as I drowned in mental illness that I couldn’t understand, k-dramas became a numbing device for me. That is why I watched so many, why I managed to become such a big fan so quickly. I chose to watch, and I chose not to feel. Those choices are a part of my journey too, a part of who I am today.

I don’t listen to music much, so I never got very into k-pop, but my younger sisters followed in our older sister's footsteps and came to love it. I can remember my younger sister explaining to me that she listened to k-pop while doing her math homework, because it turned her math homework into a happy thing. I was very impressed by this, as high school math homework had normally been more of a desperate thing for me. I watched as k-pop became a balm to my older sister as she and I trudged together through months of loneliness and mental illness. She lit up when she talked about it, and followed it with interest. I will always love k-pop for that.

My fluency in k-pop is about akin to someone who studied up in a language to visit a foreign country, or picked up some basic slang from their friends. Just from being around my sisters, I’ve picked up enough to hold a pretty good conversation with a k-pop fan, even pretend to be a fan myself, if I’m not being scrutinized too closely. I never chose to fully embrace k-pop, and what I learned, I learned by immersion, much the way that we learn a first language. But I still see my choices reflected in my k-pop knowledge. I choose to spend time with my sisters, to listen as they tell me about what they are excited about or interested in. I choose to love and respect k-pop, and feel irritated and defensive when people make fun of it. And I choose to use my k-pop knowledge. Just like k-dramas, k-pop can make instant connections where connection looked like it wouldn’t happen. I milk my k-pop knowledge for everything it’s worth in social situations, and it has served me well.

I can see two ways, how my choice of second languages reveals who I was and what I wanted and needed when I made those choices, and how those choices have made me who I am today. Some of those choices seemed random or coincidental, like my sister’s choice to love Korean must have felt to her. But looking back, and thinking of the reasons that I made those choices, the people that those choices connected me to, and the challenges they helped me to face, they don’t feel random or coincidental. They feel intrinsic to me, to who I was then and to who I am now.