I started learning Japanese just over three months ago, I don’t really know why. Suddenly it seemed like it would be fun to do, and I got excited about the idea of being able to read a book in Japanese. Not a specific book, just, you know, in general to be able to read whatever I like. I don’t try to interrogate where these ideas come from, but when they do I follow them.

I got a book of kids’ stories designed for beginners. There are pictures, simple words, and simple sentences. After each story there’s a list of words which you might not have seen before, and an English translation of the whole thing.

When I was reading the first story, I had to look up every single word in every sentence, bearing in mind that in Japanese there are no spaces between words, so I had to try and guess where one word ended and another one began.

By the time I got round to reading the last story I knew just over 1000 words. I was able to just read. Slowly, because I am still at the stage of sounding out characters one by one, and it often takes me a moment to understand the grammar. There were a few words I didn’t know and had to work out from context. Nonetheless, the process actually looked like reading.

Around the same time I noticed that I started getting the rough gist of what was being said in Japanese vlogs or a video game. This seems very much a function of being able to pick out a few individual words, rather than fully grasping the nuance of grammar in each sentence.

All this, for the low price of learning roughly 11 words a day! It’s so cool that the basic words are also very common, making it possible to got from zero to a little bit of understanding in such a short time.

Learning vocabulary is easy (IMHO), because it depends on memorisation rather than understanding. Memorisation is a piece of cake thanks to spaced repetition. I wish I’d known about this technique in school, because it really doesn’t feel like work, or effort, or even thinking. I see a new word, immediately get quizzed on it until I start remembering, with the frequency of quizzes depending on how well I can recall it. I can do it while brushing my teeth, or while half-thinking about something else. When I was in school, memorising new words in a foreign language seemed like hell, now it’s something I choose to do every time I’m waiting for the kettle to boil.

And it’s funny, because in my first language I am slowly forgetting all the words. I mean, I understand exactly what people say to me, but when I have to respond I struggle to say anything more complex than a simple yes or no.

When I moved to England (over twenty years ago!), I really wanted my English to get really good. So I made friends who didn’t speak Polish, I listened to the radio, read the newspaper, went to university. Before I knew it, the voice in my head spoke only English, and all the different characters in my dreams did too. The only times I’d occasionally catch myself trying to speak Polish was when counting from one to three.

And it really does seem to be a use-it-or-lose-it kind of situation. The less I spoke, the harder it became to speak, so I would speak even less.

And now it’s so hard for me to say anything, that I honestly find it strange to describe Polish as my first language — people look at me funny when I try to speak it! They know my mind is having to work overtime, they can practically see the cogs turning as I sweat profusely trying to answer a simple question. Nobody thinks of me as a native speaker, not anymore.

So the concepts of native, or first language, or being bilingual, have gone all weird and meaningless for me. English is the only language I truly speak fluently at the moment, albeit with a foreign accent. If I’m lucky and I get to live a long time, who knows how many new languages I’ll have time to learn and forget.