(speaking in foreign language)
- Mmm, tortilla.
(laughs) (upbeat music)
Hi, my name is Jenny,
and today I'm going to be trying to identify
different languages from around Asia.
I'm first-generation American.
My dad is from India and my mom is from the Philippines.
I've heard their languages.
Yeah, I'm a little bit nervous
because there's literally thousands of languages in Asia.
My strategy for trying to identify the languages
is gonna be, try to maybe think
what area it's gonna be from,
and then try to narrow it down to there.
So let's see if you guys can beat my score.
All right, I'm ready to go
on an auditory journey to Asia!
(calming music)
(speaking in foreign language)
- I have a feeling I know what this is.
It sounds like Japanese.
I don't even know how to explain it,
but it's just like the tones.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Okay, now I don't think it's Japanese anymore.
It could be a Chinese language.
Can you say another like, couple phrases again?
(speaking in foreign language)
- Oh man, I'm just getting really thrown off now. (laughs)
Could you say like, "Hello, my name is,"
what your name is and then like, "I like to cook?"
(speaking in foreign language)
- Okay, I think it's Mandarin.
That's my final answer.
Ah, so what language were you speaking?
- I was speaking Mandarin.
- Yes!
(both women laugh)
- Good job.
- You grew up in Taiwan, right?
- Yeah, in Taiwan, the official language is Mandarin.
That's what they teach in school.
But at home, sometimes you also speak Taiwanese,
which is a dialect.
One side of my grandparents speak Taiwanese,
and the other side speaks Mandarin strictly.
So, I grew up with like, you know, bilingual.
- So, what language do you dream in?
- I don't know, it's a good question.
I definitely know that I count in Mandarin still.
Can you teach me how to say bye?
(speaking in foreign language)
All right.
(speaking in foreign language)
(both women laugh)
- All right, so, so far I'm one for one,
and I'm feeling pretty good about it.
(upbeat music)
(speaking in foreign language)
- This doesn't sound like anything I've heard before.
(speaking in foreign language)
- It sounds really complex.
(speaking in foreign language)
- I think it's a language that I don't hear often,
but I do think maybe it is still like,
a pretty major language.
At first I thought it sounded like
almost a mix of like, an Indian language or dialect,
but also it, there was parts of it
that sounded similar to Chinese, to me.
So like, maybe somewhere around those areas.
So like, I'm thinking maybe like Thailand or Malaysia.
So I'm not a hundred percent sure,
but I wanna guess Thai.
- The language I was speaking was Vietnamese.
- Oh, I was regionally close.
I've heard Michelle speak Vietnamese
on the phone in the past
but it's a much different experience when you're blindfolded
and actually actively listening
rather than just hearing someone in the background
on the phone.
Did you grow up speaking Vietnamese?
- So, I've spoken and understood Vietnamese
from a very young age, basically my entire life.
I generally say that I speak at a third grade level.
My parents left Vietnam in the seventies during the war
and first landed in Belgium
and then came to America in the eighties,
San Diego specifically.
So growing up, I was around a lot of people
who spoke Vietnamese, English, Spanish,
and even maybe even a little bit of French.
- What's your favorite thing about
speaking multiple languages?
- My favorite thing about being bilingual
is that it gives us the ability to understand
and sort of, be a part of this entirely separate culture
from our own.
In a way I think that language sort of,
binds us to our ancestry and our history
no matter where we end up in the world.
It sort of maps out the path that our family has taken
throughout the years.
- Okay, so, so far I've got one out of two.
I hope you guys aren't disappointed, Michelle.
I do feel like I was kind of regionally close
on that last one.
So, I'm feeling good about the next one.
(upbeat music)
(speaking in foreign language)
- Oh! I recognize this one.
In your language, can you tell me your favorite foods?
(speaking in foreign language)
- Oh, okay, I know that one.
(laughs)
Yes, this one sounds really familiar to me,
but even though I don't understand the language,
like I can kind of recognize some words here and there.
Can you tell me about your family?
(speaking in foreign language)
- Okay, I definitely think this is Tagalog.
All right, let's see.
- The language I'm speaking is Tagalog.
- Yay!
(laughs)
So what other languages do you speak?
- Well, I also speak Italian,
fluently. - Oh, cool!
I speak Kapampangan, which is the dialect
that my family knows and speak me with sometimes.
- There's so many languages and dialects in the Philippines.
- There is 170 that I know of.
- Can you teach me how to say, "My favorite food is"?
(speaking in foreign language)
- And then, your favorite dish.
- I totally forgot already.
(laughs)
Thank you.
(speaking in foreign language)
So I've heard a lot of Tagalog growing up.
Pretty much every holiday,
and also my mom loves to talk to her sisters on the phone,
very loudly, so I can hear them.
Right, so two out of three.
That's pretty good.
I'm feeling good about it.
(calming music)
Hello?
(speaking in foreign language)
Yeah.
What did you have for lunch today?
(speaking in foreign language)
Mmm, tortilla. (laughs)
Tell me a little bit about your childhood and your language.
(speaking in foreign language)
This is Japanese, for sure.
At first I thought maybe Korean,
but it definitely has like, the, I guess sharp-ish
kind of sounds of Japanese.
I also think I got a little bit of a sound
of a place she mentioned, and that sounded like Tokyo to me.
Let's see who we've got.
Ah! (laughs)
- The language I was speaking was Japanese.
- I knew it.
So did you grow up bilingual?
- Yeah, yeah.
So my mom made it a point to just speak to me in Japanese
as much as she could
since my dad doesn't speak Japanese
and I was mostly raised in the States.
So she was like,
the only Japanese source I would have really had.
When I was really little,
we would spend chunks of time in Japan,
like if my dad was away working.
And so at one point I like, forgot English, even!
- Oh, wow. - And came back,
and for like two weeks, the babysitter was like, "Uh..."
'Cause I would just like, be blabbing on in Japanese,
and she'd be like, "Okay!"
- Okay, can you teach me something in Japanese?
Like how to ask for directions or something like that.
- So, if you're looking for a place
you say the name of the place followed with...
(speaking in foreign language)
It's kind of like saying like, "The cafe is where?"
- Okay.
- Of course the first thing that comes to mind is Starbucks,
'cause they have those everywhere in Japan
and they shorten it to "Staba."
- Staba? - Staba!
And then.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Yeah, good job!
- Okay, cool.
Great, now I'll always know where the Starbucks is
if I ever go to Japan. (laughs)
Okay, last thing I want to learn in Japanese
is how to say goodbye.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Oh, I knew that, I feel like.
- Yeah! - Okay.
- But everyone accents it,
with like funky in English, though.
So you can learn
the proper way. - Like, "Sayonara!"
- Yeah, exactly.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Very good.
- All right.
(speaking in foreign language)
- I could tell it was Japanese
because Japanese just sounds so much more different
than the other languages that I heard today.
I feel inspired to learn languages now.
They all sound so cool.
If I was to learn one, maybe it would be Japanese or Hindi,
'cause that would be connected to my roots,
so that'd be really interesting.
If you guys were playing along, let me know how you did,
and did you do better than me?
These were only four out of the thousands
of Asian languages.
Maybe you speak any other ones,
or there's other ones you would want to hear,
let me know also.
(singing in foreign language)
- [Jenny] Yeah, nice!
("If You're Happy And You Know It")