I am approaching fifty, but attending an introductory language class kinda makes me feel like I’m in kindergarten again. We count in unison, ask each other our names and ages, play games identifying colours, and get stickers for good work. 

I also have the least interesting origin story of the bunch, I’ve concluded. Everyone else seems to have a much better reason to be learning a challenging new language than my “I just decided to learn something new” one day reply. 

One guy has family in Japan and he’s trying to learn how to talk to his grandmother. He already seems to know quite a lot and jumps to answer almost every question before my brain can even start to do the back and forth translation and get words to my mouth.

Another guy is trying to immigrate there and wants some basic proficiency under his belt before he leaves. He spent the break yesterday getting help from the teaching assistant proofreading an email he needed to send about his immigration process or something—I only half listened from across the room.

I was chatting with another dude after class and he had apparently grown up in Japan because his parents were working there when he was very young, and was fluent in Japanese at one point. There were recordings of himself speaking as a kid and he decided he wanted to be able to understand what his younger self was saying so… language classes.

And me. Just interested. Lifelong learner, I reply. I dabble—I am just in a phase. Will I still be poking at this in a year? It would seem a bit of a waste, otherwise, right?

In a month or so we’ll be in Japan. Immersed. 

I’ve got a few basic phrases locked into my brain, but the daily drilling of new ones goes in fits and starts and I’m not as consistent as I need to be with the effort. Also, my brain is not as young and spongelike as it used to be. In one ear and out the other, is how the phrase goes.  I can say it twenty times in class and seem to have it just right, but then—out of context, perhaps—I can’t seem to latch back onto it again.

Learning languages is not for everyone. It seems like some people just get it—or at least they are faking it way better than I am. I persevere, but am humbled by the effort.