Hello it's your American friend Anming here once again and we're going to the west of Japan
to go to Kobe Chinatown so we can talk about how to master the skill of flawlessly switching between multiple languages
without getting them mixed up in your head.
As a person that did not grow up in a bilingual household, I always really admired people that did
and could switch so flawlessly between languages even mid-sentence.
I wondered as an adult if that was still possible for me to learn.
What I found is good news. It is still possible to learn this skill as an adult.
So today we're going to Kobe Chinatown to talk to some multilingual people and have some interactions.
Now be aware regardless of your level when you talk to Chinese, Japanese, or Korean people, they're always going to compliment you on
your language skills. Whether you're good or not, they're always going to tell you...
Do you like switching it up? Let's switch up the languages. I can switch back and forth all day.
And that was not something I was able to do automatically knowing Chinese and Japanese.
It's something I practiced doing from the environment I was in
where I had to use Chinese, Japanese, and English everyday
switching them sometimes at a moment's notice.
You know speaking Japanese in the classroom and during the breaks I'd talk to my Chinese friends.
The I'd go home and talk to my Chinese roommates. Then I'd go to work and use English.
Yeah, I got used to it.
Plus one. That's how you do it. One at a time. That's not how you do it.
Oh yeah, I made business cards.
So now I can hand these out to people when I do these videos.
Oh, yeah.
Hello, nice to meet you. How's is going?
Come on in. Come to our restaurant. It's delicious.
She's very nice.
Oooo, I got a meat bun.
Shooting.
Well that was fun. I didn't expect that.
Whatever I see, just go with the flow.
We never know where life is going to take us. We have to take things step by step.
And language learning is the exact same way. I started off so simple.
Just with audio lessons 30 minutes a day on my commute to work.That can be found in the video description. It's the first link.
And heck, after that I decided I wanted to take it even further and go to language school, go to grad school
and somehow today I'm working in a Japanese office using Japanese.
Though it is a long process. If you want to be switching back and forth in multiple languages realize
it takes time. I don't have any kind of superpower or any special ability above anyone else.
I just took it one step at a time for many many years and got to this point.
And if I can do it, there's absolutely no reason why you can't do it too.