Brief Introduction

I was born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada. Growing up in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada, we did speak Mandarin at home, but speaking a language only at home does not make one fluent (defined as not having to think for a long time before we speak). The topics at home are usually limited; for example, we would discuss food, but we, like most households, did not discuss politics or medicine, or other higher-level academic subjects.

Thus, although I knew the basics, I was lacking vocabulary. I only later became fluent when I took the following steps.

1. Total Immersion

• The best way to become fluent in any language is to speak and listen to it all the time. Therefore, you have to move to a country where that language is the lingua franca and participate in daily life where you are forced to speak and listen to it. Later on, as an adult, I actually moved to Taiwan and lived there for a few years. Only then did my Mandarin improves.

2. Watching Films/TV shows and Listening to Musician Target Language

• Barring total immersion (because picking up and moving to a new country is not feasible for everyone), the next best way to acquire a new language is to watch tv shows/films and listen to music in the target language. Doing all this ensures you’re getting authenticity because all kind of mass media is produced by native speakers. I picked up lots of sayings/aphorisms when I started to watch classic Chinese films and listen to pop songs.

3 Find a regular language exchange partner

• It’s said that language ability is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it’ll become. The reverse is also true: the less you use it, the weaker, it’ll get. This is why if you can’t live in a country where the target language is the mother tongue, then the least you should do is to find a language exchange partner. There are plenty of websites online that facilitate such an exchange. I myself, to this day, continue to improve my own level of Chinese by chatting with language exchange partners that I found online to maintain my own level of fluency. Main takeaway lesson: what you get out of it is directly proportional to what you put into it.

My Personal Journey: How to Acquire Fluency in Any Tongue

This is the story of how I gained fluency in my ancestral/heritage languages of Cantonese and Mandarin even though I spent most of my life growing up in Canada. This is not meant to be a guide, just my personal story.

I was born in HK to an HK father and a Taiwanese-Canadian mother. We left for Canada when I was 1. The language in the house was a mix of Cantonese, Taiwanese Mandarin, and English. At many times, it was just plain confusing, but luckily, young children can absorb languages like a sponge, so I was able to keep them all straight in my head.

I was also sent to a Chinese school every Saturday for 3.5 hours each time. This lasted 10 years. Going to Chinese school was enough to learn reading and writing, but once Chinese school was over, a lack of practice caused my grasp of Chinese literacy to become slippery. My Taiwanese friend later tested me: my recognition was better than my writing, but I was still able to write 75% of a given oral sentence.

So now, you see I have a foundation in the language, meaning I know the basics, but I later realized that foundation does not equal fluency.

Why? Because there’s only so much you can pick up in a school and at home. Unless you discuss every topic under the sun in a weekly class and at home, there’s no way you would be completely fluent.

So now, I realized I was capable of basic day-to-day interactions but was still falling well short of complete fluency. (I realized I was not completely fluent when I, at age 18, turned on Canto/Mandarin TV news at random and understood only half of the content). I wasn’t able to debate anyone entirely in Chinese without resorting to some English for some vocab I didn’t know.

I was at the level of a 12-year-old, but I wanted to be at the level of an adult.

For English speakers, the following analogy might be apt: it was like I knew what a dog was, but had no idea what a canine was.

Then came a time when I had graduated from university but had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. The job market in Vancouver had been bad and I was sitting at home, depressed that after sending out 100 resumes, I had very few interviews lined up and zero job offers.

So to pass the time and to distract me from my troubles, I ended up on YouTube. The algorithms recommended old HK movies from the 1980s/1990s, such as A Chinese Ghost Story and the Swordsman.

I started watching more and more.

I was hooked. There was something very uniquely Chinese about those films, so seeped in Chinese culture, lore, history, and Taoist and Buddhist philosophy. It made me want to explore it some more.

I soaked up unique higher-level expressions and aphorisms from historical period films in popular HK cinema and as I did, my level of Chinese improved greatly.

Around the same time, I began to listen to Cantopop and Taiwanese pop, which further solidified my grasp of Chinese.

At that point, I began to understand the importance of a mother country with a strong seductive culture. Such a seductive culture could lure back all its nationals (and others) to the motherland.

Likewise, I could understand the ability of K-pop and K-drama to make people want to learn Korean, even if they’re not Korean.

It was at this time in my mid-20s that I decided I was sick of same-old Canada (especially after sending out resumes for 6 months and getting no response).

I decided to leave Canada and move back to the motherland: first HK and then Taiwan.

At first, it was a total culture and language shock, but as I used the languages more and more, it felt more natural to me. The more I spoke the target languages, the more my speech became more authentic and colloquial. I eventually learned to think in Canto and Mandarin. I was finally at the level of an adult.

I’ve been living in Asia for the past 6 years and the longer I stay, the more I feel at home and the less I can adapt to life back in the West. In fact, I realized that I want to spend the rest of my life in Asia, a place where I fit in and have a sense of belonging. Asia feels like home now. I don’t think I could ever re-adjust to life in the West.

To wrap up, I attribute my progress to two things: becoming immersed in the popular media of the target languages and living in a place where the target languages are native languages and spoken everywhere every day. Hence, I got lots of practice.

Anyway, I hope my story could be useful to those who wished they were more fluent in any tongue. As a teacher, I would encourage you by saying it’s never too late to learn a language. When there’s a will, there’s away.

Published by Jason C.