5 Secrets to Learn a New Language

I grew up speaking four languages at the same time, which I can converse fluently until this day, thinking back, I am amazed at how I was able to master all four languages.

This is a common phenomenon, especially among CCKs (cross-culture kid) and TCKs (Third-culture kid), and I want to share how we effectively learn languages and also master the cultural language. I grew up speaking English, Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, and Hokkien, I wish to note that although many people thought of Hokkien as a dialect of the Chinese language, it is actually not mutually intelligible.

My amazement of how I picked up the language becomes more evident when I am taking Spanish classes in college; I realized that it is not as easy as I would just pick up the language when I was growing up. This is when I rediscover how I learn the languages as a child, and how I can replicate the same process as an adult.

Let me bring you through a journey on how I picked-up the four languages. The journey started when I arrived in Medan, Indonesia, when I was two years old, with my parents from the United States. Medan is a city located in the northern part of Sumatra Island. It is a culturally diverse, bustling, tropical metropolitan. Our ethnicity is Chinese, and we belong to a community of Chinese Indonesian, which has developed their own distinctive culture with a blend of local and other ethnic communities in Medan. So below is how the different languages are picked up:

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