Keep repeating, it'll stick in your head eventually

Repetition is the mother of learning.

I don't know if that was ever said by anyone famous, but it's a phrase that's stuck in my head for years. If we repeat something often enough, we'll learn. Here's another version:

Practice makes perfect.

This truth applies to learning anything: language, skill, habit, schoolwork, geography, you name it. People say this to me often: "Oh, you're a linguist!" or "You have a natural flair for languages." Well, maybe or maybe not. If you asked any of my classmates from school, they'll laugh out loud in your face over that statement. One of my classmates told me her best memory of me in school was hiding a storybook inside my Chinese textbook and reading during Chinese class! Another classmate remarked recently, "Since when did you start speaking Malay?! You never took Malay in school! Now you're spouting Malay all over!"

They're both right. I was atrocious at anything other than English in school. I scraped through Chinese exams annually. I had a wonderful Taiwanese housewife who gave me a love for Chinese when I was 13 years old, but sadly, by that time, I was so far behind to be able to catch up and do well in Chinese.

I don't know when languages became easier for me, but I can honestly say that every language I've learned took hard work. Lots of repetition. Many, many nights of words floating in my head as I slept. Many mornings I woke up with foreign words running around in my mind, refusing to let me rest. This is why I firmly believe in the above two cliches. Repetition does allow for learning.

This is why I like this blog post Men need to hear things twice by my friend, Lloyd Estrada. He's talking about how men hear things and process them. Well, Lloyd and his wife, Dahl, are now fairly fluent Spanish speakers, having been at the language for a year now. Obviously, they had lots of repetition practice!

There is no substitute for plain hard work. Do you want to learn a language? Well, get moving!

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. (Chinese saying)

Happy learning a language!

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