How Christy Tam found her true passion within a foreign language.
“Donde es… la town center?”, stuttered Christy, furrowing her brow at the crumpled map she held. The local businessman she was trying to talk to peered at the map, clearly having trouble understanding her broken Spanish, but he tried to help anyway. Through a complicated mixture of Spanish, English, and a lot of gesturing, he attempted to explain how to navigate the narrow, winding streets of Valencia.
“So, yo go… todo recto, y… turn right?”, asked Christy, with a hesitant smile.
“No, no”, the man chuckled. “Here, I bring you.”
After another ten minutes, in which they managed to talk and laugh in that same confusing combination of languages, she finally reached the Plaza de la Almoina. “Adios!”, she called out. “Gracias, very much.”
Christy Tam had booked this solo trip on a whim, despite knowing a grand total of ten Spanish words. She had just finished with high school, and this was her graduation present to herself. At the time, she had no idea what to pursue at university. She tells me with a soft chuckle that the only thing she was sure of was her hatred of mathematics, “All the subjects related to numbers or maths — I didn’t want to take those.” By the end of her fifteen-day trip, she had gotten lost multiple times, and butchered the melodic sounds of the language whilst asking for directions; but most importantly, found her love for Español.
Now, Tam is in the process of learning Spanish, which would be her third language, putting her among the 13% of the population who are trilingual. Despite the difficulties that she faces, her love for the language reminds her why she started in the first place.
Spanish courses at the University of Hong Kong, which Tam is now studying at, are notorious for their intense workload, and long hours. Students must spend six hours in Spanish classes per week, double the contact hours of other courses. Many students take Spanish and other foreign languages as interest courses, but fed up with the long hours, or simply, having lost interest, few stick with foreign languages through all four years of university.
However, Tam has always been an avid linguist. While speaking to me, she switches seamlessly between fluent Cantonese and English. These languages were her two favorite subjects in high school, which she excelled at. Instead of finding them daunting and difficult to understand, she finds joy in unraveling the mysteries of grammar and sentence structure. Her face lights up when speaking about her language classes, a stark departure from the bored, half-asleep faces that I usually see around campus.
Apart from being a subject that she loves to study, Spanish is especially important to Tam as it helped ease her transition to HKU from the community college of CityU. “It was really hard for me to adapt to the [new] environment”, she says. After two years of college, Tam entered HKU as a third-year student, which thrust her into a class full of strangers who already had two years to get to know each other, and become friends. However, as Tam had also majored in Spanish at CityU, Spanish classes were familiar to her, and therefore became her source of comfort.
Even so, Tam still encounters many frustrations and difficulties in her Spanish education. The Spanish professors at HKU are excellent teachers, but they speed through concepts at an alarmingly fast rate. For example, in the first thirteen-week semester, students start off not knowing a single Spanish word, but by the end of the course, are expected to know how to order food and describe people. There is an overwhelming amount of vocabulary, and grammatical structures to memorize, which is one of the aspects Tam finds most challenging. “As an adult learner,” she adds, with a wry grin, “I tend to think in English first, and then translate my thoughts into Spanish.” However, as she has delved deeper into the language, the difference between the two become more apparent, and she finds that this method becomes less effective.
Tam is now in her final year of university, and will be graduating after two more months. But, she isn’t quite done with Spanish yet. “I honestly still feel like a primary student,” she whispers, “I’ve still got a long way to go.” She plans to take the public Spanish exam, and then keep taking Spanish lessons, hopefully until she is fluent.
In the future, Tam wants to be a business consultant, for firms in Spanish-speaking countries, and Asian markets who want to collaborate. As businesses are now booming in China, and are quickly developing in South American countries, her Spanish might soon be put to good use.
Apart from leading Tam to a career path she is passionate about, and giving her something to impress people with, Spanish has changed the way she views life. “I’m very inspired by their culture and their lifestyle,” she explains. “It’s completely different.” Hong Kong is a fast-paced city, where everyone works and studies under extreme pressure. Whereas in Spain, people take a few hours to eat lunch, to enjoy their food, and to relax. “I think I would prefer living in Spain,” she says with a giggle.
Another aspect of her life that Spanish has improved is Tam’s confidence. Learning a completely new language is a daunting task for most people, and is one that requires determination and hard work. The fact that she accomplished it proved to herself that her abilities were stronger than she thought. In fact, Christy does not want to stop at Spanish, and plans to master French and Latin as well.
After telling me her inspiring story, Christy shares her favorite Spanish saying, “querer es poder”, which translates to “when there is a will, there is a way.” This quote is strangely apt for her Spanish journey, and perhaps is one that encouraged her along the way.
“Donde es… la town center?”, stuttered Christy, furrowing her brow at the crumpled map she held. The local businessman she was trying to talk to peered at the map, clearly having trouble understanding her broken Spanish, but he tried to help anyway. Through a complicated mixture of Spanish, English, and a lot of gesturing, he attempted to explain how to navigate the narrow, winding streets of Valencia.
“So, yo go… todo recto, y… turn right?”, asked Christy, with a hesitant smile.
“No, no”, the man chuckled. “Here, I bring you.”
After another ten minutes, in which they managed to talk and laugh in that same confusing combination of languages, she finally reached the Plaza de la Almoina. “Adios!”, she called out. “Gracias, very much.”
Christy Tam had booked this solo trip on a whim, despite knowing a grand total of ten Spanish words. She had just finished with high school, and this was her graduation present to herself. At the time, she had no idea what to pursue at university. She tells me with a soft chuckle that the only thing she was sure of was her hatred of mathematics, “All the subjects related to numbers or maths — I didn’t want to take those.” By the end of her fifteen-day trip, she had gotten lost multiple times, and butchered the melodic sounds of the language whilst asking for directions; but most importantly, found her love for Español.
Now, Tam is in the process of learning Spanish, which would be her third language, putting her among the 13% of the population who are trilingual. Despite the difficulties that she faces, her love for the language reminds her why she started in the first place.
Spanish courses at the University of Hong Kong, which Tam is now studying at, are notorious for their intense workload, and long hours. Students must spend six hours in Spanish classes per week, double the contact hours of other courses. Many students take Spanish and other foreign languages as interest courses, but fed up with the long hours, or simply, having lost interest, few stick with foreign languages through all four years of university.
However, Tam has always been an avid linguist. While speaking to me, she switches seamlessly between fluent Cantonese and English. These languages were her two favorite subjects in high school, which she excelled at. Instead of finding them daunting and difficult to understand, she finds joy in unraveling the mysteries of grammar and sentence structure. Her face lights up when speaking about her language classes, a stark departure from the bored, half-asleep faces that I usually see around campus.
Apart from being a subject that she loves to study, Spanish is especially important to Tam as it helped ease her transition to HKU from the community college of CityU. “It was really hard for me to adapt to the [new] environment”, she says. After two years of college, Tam entered HKU as a third-year student, which thrust her into a class full of strangers who already had two years to get to know each other, and become friends. However, as Tam had also majored in Spanish at CityU, Spanish classes were familiar to her, and therefore became her source of comfort.
Even so, Tam still encounters many frustrations and difficulties in her Spanish education. The Spanish professors at HKU are excellent teachers, but they speed through concepts at an alarmingly fast rate. For example, in the first thirteen-week semester, students start off not knowing a single Spanish word, but by the end of the course, are expected to know how to order food and describe people. There is an overwhelming amount of vocabulary, and grammatical structures to memorize, which is one of the aspects Tam finds most challenging. “As an adult learner,” she adds, with a wry grin, “I tend to think in English first, and then translate my thoughts into Spanish.” However, as she has delved deeper into the language, the difference between the two become more apparent, and she finds that this method becomes less effective.
Tam is now in her final year of university, and will be graduating after two more months. But, she isn’t quite done with Spanish yet. “I honestly still feel like a primary student,” she whispers, “I’ve still got a long way to go.” She plans to take the public Spanish exam, and then keep taking Spanish lessons, hopefully until she is fluent.
In the future, Tam wants to be a business consultant, for firms in Spanish-speaking countries, and Asian markets who want to collaborate. As businesses are now booming in China, and are quickly developing in South American countries, her Spanish might soon be put to good use.
Apart from leading Tam to a career path she is passionate about, and giving her something to impress people with, Spanish has changed the way she views life. “I’m very inspired by their culture and their lifestyle,” she explains. “It’s completely different.” Hong Kong is a fast-paced city, where everyone works and studies under extreme pressure. Whereas in Spain, people take a few hours to eat lunch, to enjoy their food, and to relax. “I think I would prefer living in Spain,” she says with a giggle.
Another aspect of her life that Spanish has improved is Tam’s confidence. Learning a completely new language is a daunting task for most people, and is one that requires determination and hard work. The fact that she accomplished it proved to herself that her abilities were stronger than she thought. In fact, Christy does not want to stop at Spanish, and plans to master French and Latin as well.
After telling me her inspiring story, Christy shares her favorite Spanish saying, “querer es poder”, which translates to “when there is a will, there is a way.” This quote is strangely apt for her Spanish journey, and perhaps is one that encouraged her along the way.