an untranslatable word

Growing up with multiple languages being spoken at home and school, I developed a fascination for words. I vividly remember during my teenage years browsing through my father's Chinese character dictionary because I thought it was fun. I would try to stump my father with words but never once did I succeed. That dictionary could temporarily lure me away from the clutches of television and video games that had gripped my life during those years. I can also recount my Spanish lessons with my caretaker for the first six years of my academic life. My brother, the caretaker's son, and I would all sit around the table and learn the words for body parts, colors, and numbers. Rojo. Ojos. Inero. We would repeat. They have since become words that I regularly pull from my vocabulary pool. 

My mother also had to learn Spanish since working in downtown L.A. required her to do so. I would always hear her on the phone talking, or rather, yelling in Spanish because somebody had taken a wrong order or had wrecked something. In middle school, I was sent to a Korean Language School every Saturday all the way up to my freshman year of high school. It was a painful ordeal only because I had to miss my Saturday morning cartoons. (X-men was on at the same time school started!) Soon after I stopped attending Korean classes, I began my long journey with Japanese. I continued learning Japanese in college and added Korean along the way. Unlike most college students though, I had to have classes everyday because that is just the way languages classes are. 

     

Now, somehow, my fascination for words has brought me to Korea. And of course I am trying to learn Korean. Trying that is. The other day, a taxi-driver told me that once I opened my mouth he could tell that I was a foreigner. What a way to encourage someone. And if that was not enough, I am trying really hard to get fluent in Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish! It is a massive, daunting task - I am not even sure if it is possible. But I guess I can only have fun through the process. Time will tell...