To this day, I still remember clearly the first moment I fell in love with
English; everything is as vivid as it was back then. I don’t think that I have
learned everything that I wanted to learn in English yet, and I probably
never will, but I know for sure that I am going to keep on digging in it
because the passion I have for it is beyond explainable. Well, the last
statement is not true, because it really can be explained very well
actually.
I believe that it was the summer of 1994, and I was around seven
years old. “Lion King” came out that year, and that was probably the first
movie I saw. I bring this movie up because it was the movie that changed
my life; not only because I dove into the world of filmmaking after seeing
it, but I also wondered what that sweet language was that everybody in
the movie was speaking in. However, the interests I had for English did not
really stimulate any of my peers in school. Everyone I knew, well, mostly
everyone I knew would not step out of their little safe zone of studying and
try to explore the unknown world of English. My friends all looked at English
as something that they had to learn in school and probably not
something that was going to help them in any way, so I was alone.
I am not trying to say that I was an excellent student in learning
English; I was not. It appeared to me that the method I was using to study
it was not efficient enough. I just could not get to the other side where
everything gets easier from there. To me, English was a barricade that I
could not cross over. However, deep down in my heart, on a
subconscious level, I knew that someday, I was going to be great in
English, so I did not really worry at all.
Time flew. Before I knew it, I was already in middle school, and as
nobody had expected, I was still very bad in English in general. The main
thing about that was the fact that I really did try, but it didn’t matter how
hard I tried, I still could not get it through. At this point, my parents saw the
struggle I had with English, so they made a decision for me: they sent me
off to England. Now that I look back, it was probably one of the most
significant decisions that was ever made for me.
See, even though I am constantly writing about how I was bad in
English, I was not aware of this before I departured for England. Actually, I
thought I was pretty decent at it, and I even told myself not to worry, that
soon enough, my genius in English would be in good use. Oh I wish I
hadn’t thought like that! Because not only did my skills not shine in
anything, I could barely understand anybody when I got there. I
remember that there was this moment when the cab driver that was
picking me up from the airport said something like, “Where ya going
mate?” and all I heard was, “mehmehmehmeh, meh?” If that’s not
torture, what is?
As time went on, I became more confident each day with my
speaking and listening skills. The way I did it was by talking to anybody I
could find, trying to learn whatever they said to me, and then using those
words on someone else. I did that over and over again for one year
straight. Sometimes, people didn’t even realize that I was from another
country, and whenever that happened, it would always make my day.
However, at this point, I thought British English was the only thing to learn
and that I did not have to worry about anything else in the English world. I
did not see what was coming for me.
When I was ready to go to high school, my mom and dad made
another decision for me, and that was to send me to New York in United
States because they thought that US would be the perfect place for me
to learn Filmmaking. They thought why not start before college so I could
get used to the environment and everything. Now, I am very grateful
about this decision, but back then, it was a real pain for me. I thought that
all the time I spent on learning the local slang when I was in England was
going to be useless when I left there. Anyway, I did not have any time to
hesitate, and I had to carry on with all sorts of doubts.
In New York, I realized two things. One was that I was speaking in a
different accent and people had trouble understanding it. Another one
was that British English and American English were not that different after
all. I could see how things were pronounced differently, and sometimes
they use alternative words for certain things. However, at the end of the
day, it was still the same language. Also, along with the huge impact of
culture that New York had brought to me, I felt that this had been the
English that I always wanted to learn and I was finally there to do it. So
without any hesitation, I was going to give up my British accent, and start
over with the American one.
Learning the way Americans talk was not as hard as I thought it was
going to be because as long as you understand the cultural element
behind every sentence, you can catch up with it in no time. I remember
that I would spend days just staying in watching “Friends”, and to this day,
I still think that it was the best sitcom ever made. There were ten seasons of
“Friends”, and each episode of it had numerous amounts of dialogues just
between friends and families, so I basically just tried to learn the way
people talked in that show. After a year doing that, I felt that I could pass
as an American when I talked to people.
The interesting thing about me learning English is that I don’t really
consider myself as an American or Englishman, I just like the way this
language is composed, and it is a great thing when I talk to people in this
language, and they know that I fit in really well. I still don’t think that I can
speak English as well as others who were born in place speaking this
language, but I am trying, and I don’t think I will ever give up on it,
because after all these years pursuing the habit of speaking it, I can most
definitely tell that it is only getting better and better.