Language Barriers

I've been in the Philippines for six weeks now. It's raining all the time, so no beach, but I still love it. These really are my people. There's more of a mutual understanding between people than in the US. Majority of the people also speak English, but sometimes I'm left without a way to communicate. That becomes extremely frustrating, I usually don't do this, but I recommend the book, "A Man Without Words" I don't recall the author, but it's about a man born deaf that was never taught sign language. He had no way to communicate, but still survived for twenty some years until he learned to sign. It is the first assigned book that I truly enjoyed. I'm picking up bits and pieces of Tagalog, but it's hard. A lot harder than people claim. Immersion is doing very little. I guess I'm a little biased though.

I have a hard time learning new languages, because I simply love English so much. How can I spend time on another language when I can still learn something new about English every day? Especially American slang, it seems so juvenile and uneducated, but it's how my generation can communicate to just my generation. It's weird, but the way English (any language) can be adapted to different people is so beautiful. I guess, to me learning a language is falling in love. You can fall in love any given amount of times, and you actually can be in love with more than one person at a time. Yet, there's something about that first love, you never really want to let go. Like in language you can learn any amount of languages, and you can actively and fluently speak more than one language at a time. Yet that first language you learn, you hold on to very strongly, even if you're never around  it anymore.