Passion: All You Really Need to Learn a Language

Passion is above all the most important factor in learning any language – or achieving any goal in life, for that matter.

If you want to learn a language, it isn’t always a smooth ride. You have to have some serious, personally compelling reasons for wanting to do it – reasons that will sustain you through months or even years of study, research and practice.

What do I mean by compelling reasons? Here are some actual reasons I’ve heard from real people (they’re just examples, though!):

you love some specific person who speaks the language and want to impress them or get closer to them
you love people from that culture in general
you want to travel freely in the country(ies) where the language is spoken
you love the aesthetics of the language: the way it sounds spoken, or the look of the characters that make up the writing
you find the culture and history associated with the language fascinating
for many Japanese learners, it could be your love for things native to Japan and a wish to understand them in their original context: Japanese anime, Japanese manga, Japanese games, Japanese music, Japanese TV shows and movies…

What were my reasons? Pretty much all of the above combined, plus a few others.

My Personal Obsession

I was really quite obsessed with learning Japanese. I’ve always loved language, but with Japanese it was a whole new level of love. It basically began with the realization that there was so much out there that I wanted to understand so badly but couldn’t. Just because it was encoded in a language I didn’t know.

This included games that had no English translation, the songs I heard in anime, and especially Japanese fan sites where I found absolutely gorgeous fan art the likes of which I’d never even imagined. Sometimes the artists would write lengthy commentaries full of little emoticons that seemed like they would be so interesting, if only I could understand what they were saying. There were forums where I longed to join in the conversation. There were also fanfiction and other various fan creations written in Japanese that I felt like I was just dying to be able to read.

Some five or six years ago, good dubbed versions of the anime I wanted to watch were a rarity. At the same time, it was also much harder to obtain quality subtitled versions. Sometimes it was so bad that even with the subtitles you couldn’t understand what was really going on in the anime. All of this was just another burning motivation for me to learn this language that now seemed so essential to my everyday life.

The last reason, the one that gave me real pressure to succeed, was one of pure practicality and circumstance. For high school, I needed a second language at a sufficiently advanced level in order to graduate. I’d had about 5 years of continuous French classes (mandatory for Canadians) before I decided I just wasn’t getting into it, dropped the course, and immediately started learning Japanese – all in one fell swoop.

I wasn’t horrible at French either, far from it. I enjoyed studying the language, and because I had the advantage of living around it (everything in Canada is printed bilingually), I had a surprisingly vast vocabulary.

But the simple fact was, 5 years of French classes had given me just about nothing to work with. Little knowledge, and even less passion. Sadly, the level of my French ability was about the equivalent of what my Japanese would become just two months later.

Passion: The Real Ingredient of Success

My point is, without passion to learn you go nowhere. It’s the same for every subject of study. You won’t go far on a weak ambition. It just won’t happen.

You need passion to learn a language. Actually, it’s really all you need. If you can’t find any really personal reason for wanting to learn the language, it’s almost a certainty that you won’t achieve the level of fluency you hope for.

On the other hand, if you’re so in love with Japanese that simply hearing it spoken sends shivers down your spine, then you’ll probably find it to be smooth sailing all the way through.

So… go out there and find something to be obsessed with! Find something Japanese that makes you burn with passion and shiver with excitement! Dream of visiting the country, dream of connecting with the people, dream of finally being able to read that manga or understand that song without anyone’s help!

Once you’ve found your compelling reason, you just won’t be able to help but learn the language.