One meaningful thing I’ve been doing of late – apart from the usual work and soccer – is studying languages. I’ve been actively studying Arabic for my second time over the last few months thanks to my friend who’s been teaching me. I’m starting to make a bit of headway and this has propelled me into delving  back into some of the other languages I’ve dabbled with in the past – namely Korean (seeing as I’m in Korea and all), Mandarin (Chinese) and Japanese.

Call it Attention Deficit Disorder or just being a victim of today’s Instant Gratification society – or perhaps, I’m just an Obsessive Complusive freak – but once I start on one thing, I get bored easily and move onto another these days. A result of this is my current trend of studying four languages – three of which, passively – simultaneously.

Whilst studying Arabic, I’ve re-opened a handy book I bought last year on basic, everyday Chinese phrases – the good thing about this book however is that it’s a Korean book (hence it’s written in Korean) yet also contains English translations. So, as a result I end up studying two languages at the same time.

As for Japanese, I’ve started getting back into this nifty Facebook application whereby you can study and quiz yourself on the language’s indigenous Kana characters and imported (and somewhat modified) Kanji characters as well as studying and testing yourself on your reading and vocabulary skills. The best part about this application, Kanji Box, is that it is fun, easy to use and addictive.

Googling on studying multiple languages simultaneously brings up several interesting pages, blogs and documents on the relative merits and pitfalls of during so. But, as I see it, my quest of multiple language acquisition is purely a cerebral exercise to keep my brain active whilst doing something relatively constructive. Plus, if I’m ever to reach my life-long dream of fluency in eight plus languages, I need all the time, effort and enthusiasm I can muster!

Hopefully by 2025, I’ve mastered the four languages I’ve mentioned and can then more onto the comparatively easier European languages I’m after – Spanish, German and Italian. Russian looks like it’ll be my retirement activity!