F

our months into learning Japanese, my sensei (teacher) asked me what I had eaten the night before.

 '€œTomodachi o tabemashita,'€ I answered.

The sensei raised his eyebrows. '€œTomodachi? Friend? You mean tamago, egg, right? I assume you don'€™t actually mean you ate your friend last night.'€

'€œOh, sorry sensei. Yes, I mean tomo...'€

He stopped me. '€œYou were about to say tomodachi again.'€

'€œOh my God, I mean tamagotchi, sensei.'€

What was I saying? Instead of tamago, I had blurted out the name of a once-popular digital pet, tamagotchi.

Studying foreign languages is hard, but I try to toughen up myself because I want to see the world, at least through books and literature.

The more I read, the more I find that reading a text in its original language is far more satisfying than in translation. I think that a particular sense, nuance or meaning that the writer wants to convey through his or her choice of words and word order can get lost in translation.

Of course, the process of learning a new language requires an abundance of energy. I have to write new scripts repeatedly -- not only for languages that have their own alphabets like Japanese or Arabic, but also for languages like German and French, which use accents on some letters.

Understanding new sentence patterns also requires hard work and practice, especially for one, such as I, whose mother tongue is Indonesian, a grammatically simple language whose verbs do not conjugate and whose adjectives do not agree.

But the hardest thing is to memorize new vocabulary. I have to be careful, because words can twist and change meaning in my mind.

Sometimes I learn words, only to forget them. However, one of my teachers said that the key to understanding a foreign language was through mastering the vocabulary. So maybe I just have to study harder.

My problems aren'€™t helped when I stop learning one foreign language and move on to another. I tend to mix things up.

Once, when telling a friend that it was 11:40 a.m., I said '€œjuuichi ji quarante'€ an impossible mix of '€œeleven o'€™clock'€ in Japanese and '€œforty'€ in French.

Learning two languages simultaneously is also a minefield. Back when I was in high school, I said '€œyou was'€ because it rhymes with '€œdu bist'€ in German, which, ironically, is correctly translated as '€œyou are'€.

Long story short, in foreign languages I'€™m like a baby '€” I know just enough to call mom and ask for food.

But I never give up because I believe Indonesians are natural polyglots, who usually speak at least two languages: a local language or mother tongue and Indonesian.

Some can even speak more. For instance, an Indonesian born and raised by Javanese parents in Yogyakarta would speak Javanese at home, learn Indonesian as a young child, study English at school and learn some Arabic too, if Muslim.

If our hypothetical polyglot attends university out of town, say in Bandung, he or she would pick up Sundanese from friends and later meet people of other ethnicities, say Bataks from North Sumatra, and learn their language.

That would be six languages in total.

So although I forget almost all my German when I started learning French, and now I'€™ve taken to writing French words in Japanese script, I am, nonetheless, an Indonesian, a natural polyglot.

And that hard work pays off when I'€™m laughing heartily at a copy of Asterix et Obelix in the original French.

And that'€™s not all. Unconsciously, when trying to understand the logic of syntax, I learn a new way of thinking, how native speakers express their thoughts and feelings, as well as becoming much more familiar with their culture, customs, food and even their popular songs and movie stars.

It'€™s like a virtual journey. And the feeling is addictive.

Right now I'€™m planning to start learning another language after mastering enough kanji to read Detective Conan manga in Japanese. But in the meantime, I need to let that particular word sink in: tamago, tamago, tamago'€¦

'€” Dina Mayasari