I do have some knowledge of Russian and Malay - this is through a process of passive learning as I was surrounded by these languages for many years but never really made a genuine effort to learn them. So for example, in Singapore, I absorbed a lot of Malay vocabulary without actually realizing, simply because I was constantly exposed to the language. Likewise, I listened to a lot of my colleagues speak Russian in that company were I had worked eight years and somehow managed to pick up some words there but I never really tried to learn the language properly. I suppose in Singapore, there really wasn't a need for me to learn Malay since my Malay friends all spoke English very well. Likewise in that company, my Russian colleagues all spoke English and the company was never going to send me to Moscow when there were so many other native speakers of Russian, so I thought it was pointless for me to learn it. However, years later when I started to travel a lot more extensively through Russia and all the former Soviet Republics like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan I then started to learn Russian all over again and I'm extremely frustrated that I had completely missed that golden opportunity to master Russian to a much higher standard. The same thing applies to the Malay language, I never really got to travel much around SE Asia as a child, but as an adult, I've done multiple trips across Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei so once again, I really regret not having made a greater effort as a child to learn Malay despite being surrounded by the language in Singapore. I like learning languages and I am good at it, so why didn't I learn Russian and Malay back when I had the chance to do so? How did these two languages slip through my hands? Why am I only trying to learn Russian now in my late 40s when I spent eight years in a Russian speaking work environment when I was younger? I'm not trying to make any excuses for my mistakes in the past and I did prove to myself on this trip that I am able to function in a Russian speaking environment - I could read the signs, I could make myself understood whilst speaking Russian imperfectly and if I had spent more time in Central Asia, I could definitely improve my Russian. But the question here is not whether or not I can speak Russian if I would make a genuine effort to learn it, but rather, why I had not already done so in the past when given the opportunity.
The first theme I have to deal with is motivation: it didn't take me that much motivation to want to learn Russian, I just needed something as simple as a trip to Central Asia to make me want to put in the effort to learn Russian. Back when I was working in that company, whenever we had a client who was spoke Russian, the standard protocol was to simply pass that client over to a native Russian speaker in the team so the customer would have a much better experience - that removed any incentive for me to learn Russian to deal with those clients since I would never really have the chance to use it within that work context. I regret reaching that conclusion because I was only considering the short term implications - whilst I did not need to speak Russian for that job then, I should have reached the conclusion that I could use the language in the future and learnt it anyway then. But if it wasn't that obvious if and when Russian might come in useful in the future for me, then I have two ways to deal with that issue. The first would be to create a situation whereby it would prove to be very useful, such as by arranging a holiday in a part of the world like Central Asia or Moldova where Russian is still very widely spoken. The second would be to treat it as an exercise to train my mind to learn something new: it is always good to remind yourself how to learn a new skill so the next time you are faced with a steep learning curve, you are not at all daunted by the challenge. It is evident that the former is a lot more straightforward than the latter, but I should have done both. So back when I was still living in Singapore, I was way too young to travel independently but I did have a taste of that when I went to Malaysia and Indonesia for gymnastics competitions and met gymnasts from Malaysia and Indonesia - I remember how I wished I could have spoken more Malay in order to better connect with them, but the Malaysians spoke English really well and even the Indonesians preferred to practice their English with me. In any case, the focus of those competitions was to perform well in gymnastics, rather than to go on a PR campaign and make as many friends as possible there. There were also gymnasts from other countries who spoke other languages as well so there was a sense of, I couldn't possibly learn every single language spoken at the gymnastics competition so let's just focus on the gymnastics. It was really only when I went on holidays as an adult in Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia that I really made an effort to learn Malay, but by then I had already moved to the UK and I was trying to learn Malay online, rather than in a Malay-speaking environment like Singapore where it would have been far easier to pick up the language.
The second theme I want to talk about is opportunity cost: okay, so I didn't learn much Russian when I was working at that company, but what I did do however was improve three other languages that I do speak, namely French, Mandarin, German and Spanish. So it was not like I did nothing at that time, I was busy learning other languages and improving some that I already spoke. I went for the lower hanging fruit then and it was a strategic choice. Given that I only had so much time to try to learn new languages, I did the rational thing and went for the easier ones to ensure the best possible results. Likewise, when I went to Malaysia and Indonesia for those gymnastics competitions, I focused on the gymnastics rather than the social aspect of meeting the other gymnasts there, the latter was just an afterthought and a bonus nd not the key purpose of the trip. Thus if I looked back and can point to exactly what productive activity I had been doing instead of studying Russian and Malay at those points in my life, I am actually okay with it - as long as that time was well spent. Allow me to compare this to something that happened to me on this trip to Central Asia. When I was in Bishkek, there was the opportunity to go skiing and so I got in touch with Mounterra, a local ski travel agent who organized such trips to local ski resorts just outside Bishkek. The lady whom I dealt with was helpful and spoke English very well, she explained to me that I had two options: Kashka Suu or Chunkurchak. They each had their pros and cons: Kashka Suu was more suited for experienced skiiers as it offered steeper slopes whilst Chunkurchak had much gentler slopes and were more suited for beginners, but the lifts at Chunkurchak were a lot newer than the ones at Kashka Suu. Thus whilst you might have more fun as an experienced skiier at Kashka Suu, you would face a frustratingly slow wait for the old ski lifts to get you to the top of the mountain. From that point of view, Chunkurchak offers a better experience even if the slopes were a lot less exciting than the ones at Kashka Suu. I only had time to do one and not both, so I eventually chose to go to Chunkurchak and had a decent time there skiing off piste in the deep snow. When I saw a Instagram post of Kashka Suu, I did think, ooh that looks awesome I wish I went there. But the fact that Kashka Suu is probably an equailly nice place to ski doesn't mean that I had a bad time at Chunkurchak, no it simply reflected the fact that I had to make a choice between the two options and unfortunately, I could not do both within the limited time I had in Kyrgyzstan.
Now there's another theory that I want to explore after having studied so many languages - we will naturally have more affinity for some languages than others. This will vary from person to person, but it would depend on a whole range of factors such as what languages you already speak, what your first language is as well as just how your brain is wired. I have a natural affinity for the Latin-based romance languages, that's why I am fluent in French and Spanish, I speak Italian to a high standard and can get by in Romanian, Catalan and Portuguese despite the fact that I have only ever taken classes in French. But Spanish just felt so natural and easy for me that I took to it with ease and to this date, have never ever had a single formal lesson of Spanish in my life - well, I don't really need it now that I'm already fluent in Spanish. However, I have made a real effort with Dutch and German and the progress I have made with it is a lot slower - are these languages any more difficult? I don't think so but somehow my brain just doesn't click with Germanic languages as easily, the learning process is a lot slower and I have to put in two or three times as much effort in German compared to Spanish or Italian. Despite having studied German for so many years and having worked in Germany on a few occasions, my German is still only as good as my Romanian which I have barely made any effort with but have just picked up casually on my travels through Romania and Moldova. My point is that some languages will come a lot more easily to us than others and it might just be that my brain struggles with Russian and Malay as they are from language families (Slavic and Astronesian) that I am unfamiliar with, hence it would be far harder for me to pick up those languages than something like Portuguese or Romanian which would share so many characteristics with French and Spanish that I already speak fluently. In life we need to pick our battles, so there is nothing wrong by focusing on languages that you have a natural affinity for. My brain somehow managed to click with Welsh despite the fact that it was the first Celtic language that I had studied, but I never experienced that same connection with Russian or Malay when I had been exposed to it in the past, so I suppose that was why I didn't feel a burning desire to become fluent in Russian and Malay.
If you think I am being harsh on myself when it comes to Russian and Malay, especially since there are so many monolingual people in the world today, I want to introduce you to a former colleague David, or fat David (let's not beat around the bush here, he is so overweight). According to both David and his best friend (whom I also got to know through work), David isn't concerned about his obesity because he knows he can lose weight quite easily, in the past when he has gone on a diet and started exercising regularly, he was able to lose weight quite easily and bring the situation under control. So I don't doubt that story, ie. sometime in the past, David did manage to successfully lose weight through a diet and exercise programme, but the fact is for the entire period I knew David and worked with him (which was for about four years), he was severely obese. Like we're not just talking a bit fat here, this guy was so fat he struggled to climb a flight of stairs. You don't need to be a doctor to arrive at the conclusion that David really needed to lose weight desperately in order to avoid serious health issues associated with obesity, but for some reason, he didn't bother. He worked long hours, drank a lot, did virtually no exercise at all. We were once on a business trip together and I told him I was going to go to the hotel pool to have a swim after work, he said "nah, I'd feel quite self-conscious because of my tattoos." I did a double take, I didn't even realize he had any tattoos but I knew he was self-conscious because he didn't want to let people see just how fat he was when he was swimming - it wouldn't have been a pretty sight. So in the case of David, even if it was completely true that he could lose all that weight relatively easily, he simply didn't do it and it has been years since I have spoken to him, but I am guessing that he is still morbidly obese today. Thus I don't want to be like David, I don't want to be the guy who claims, "yeah I could easily learn Russian or Malay if I wanted to, I just haven't found the time or inclination to do so yet, so I can't speak those languages well today." No, David is living proof of why using excuses is a dumb idea and you are really not fooling anyone. If David really can lose all that weight, that he ought to do it immediately and likewise - if I really want to learn Russian and/or Malay, then I must also just get on with it today.
Finally, I'd like to point out that it is never too late to learn anything - being immersed in a Russian speaking environment for nearly two weeks on this trip has allowed me to make a lot of improvements with my Russian. Sure I had missed an opportunity in the past to learn Russian and Malay, but that does not mean that I can never pick up that language. I have mixed feelings about Russian at the moment, on one hand, I feel like I can definitely become a lot better at it and use it on my future travels to Russian speaking countries like Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. On the other hand, there's the obvious issue that Russia is the world's number one pariah state after having invaded Ukraine and it does feel like I am learning the mortal enemy's language. One has definitely got to take a side in this conflict and I have always made it clear that I am on the side of the Ukrainians. Likewise, on my last trip to SE Asia, I did feel the same way about my ability to pick up Malay. Whilst it is 100% true that I have missed opportunities to learn these languages in the past, it doesn't mean that I have missed the boat - if I really wanted to do it, then I'd have to go out of my way to create a new environment where I make sure I have access to speakers of the languages that I want to learn in London. I certainly don't believe that I am too old to learn a new language - that's a very flawed theory that has been used as some adult who do not want to make the effort to learn another language. Children are perceived to learn languages more quickly as they are full time students who have plenty of time to dedicate to the study of the languages they have to learn whilst us adults are often juggling so many responsibilities whilst still trying to improve ourselves by learning a new language. I find that the more languages I have studied, the better equipped I feel to take on new languages - this is why we need to keep our brains active and take on new challenges all the time. Thus after I have made this genuine effort to improve my Russian, I now feel like I am a better learner and student ready to scale this steep learning curve. I am trying to decide which language I ought to focus on next - for work at the moment, the three key languages I need are still French, Mandarin and Spanish so maybe I ought to spend more time becoming even more fluent in Spanish next given that I actually need it for my work (unlike Russian and Malay). But let's see, I am always looking for my next language to learn.
So there you go, that's it from me on this topic. I didn't want to be defensive about the fact that I really feel that sense of regret when it comes to my ability to speak Russian and Malay fluently. I didn't want to go down the route of comparing myself to people whose language abilities are worse than mine as two wrongs don't make a right. If other people are not that interested in learning new languages, that is entirely up to them and their decision but as someone who is obviously a fanatic when it comes to learning foreign languages, my inability to speak Russian and Malay fluently does upset me a lot. But what do you think? Am I too harsh on myself or was I plain foolish to have passed up on those chances in the past to learn Russian and Malay? What language(s) should I learn next? Should I try something new or polish up a language like Italian or Welsh that I already speak to become totally fluent in those languages? Is there anything you regret not having learnt when you were younger and how do you reconcile yourself with it in your head? Are you filled with regret over the matter or are you quite happy to just let it go? Leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
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