Krupa Padhy uncovers how we really learn foreign languages – in a dual challenge involving both Portuguese and Mandarin.
There was a time when my oversized hardback Collins Roberts French dictionary took pride of place on my bookshelf of my student accommodation. I owned an edition from the late 1980s, almost 1,000 pages long, handed down from my elder brothers. It travelled with me to Paris in the early 2000s, taking up half the space of my little case as a non-negotiable.
It was a sad day when a decade later, bursting at the seams of our one-bed flat with two babies, I decided it had to go. It had gathered dust since leaving university but had equally screamed that I had once been serious about language-learning.
Multilingualism has always been a part of my fabric. I was born into a Gujarati-speaking household, my Indian-origin parents having immigrated to the UK from Tanzania in the 1970s. My reading and writing skills were topped up with lessons at the local temple every Saturday as a kid. In 1995, Zee TV arrived in the UK on cable network, and I became hooked on watching cheesy Hindi serials every evening with the subtitles on. I took French to degree level and headed for my year abroad to Paris. Finally, a tinge of Spanish came to me after a few terms of evening classes. All these languages (bar the holiday-Spanish) have taken time and commitment.
Understandably maybe, I've reacted reluctantly to the countless advertisements on my Instagram feed promising to teach me a language in 30 days (if not sooner) by giving up less than 30 minutes a day.