Hi Team,
மாலை வணக்கம் (iravu vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening from East Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
I’ll be sharing a thing I did, a tweet I loved, and a thought I had.
A Thing ✍🏾
I published an essay titled How I Learned Tamil In My 30s..
I used to think that it was impossible to learn a language without being fully immersed in a foreign country, speaking the language 24/7. Until I proved myself wrong. Something about an impossible problem makes me want to solve it.
I recorded a video to show y’all, but embedding it has proved more annoying than I expected. Click the button below to see it :)
I want to thank everyone here for supporting me even as I was figuring things out.
Without sharing those frustrations and insights along the way in the TTT Newsletter, there’s no way I could have published the essay I did. Many of the frustrations I’ve since made peace with. Without a chronology I would have forgotten how I felt during those moments.
I am beyond excited to continue graduating these nascent ideas from TTT into fully-fledged content.
A Tweet 🐦
You might think the target audience of this week’s essay was people who want to learn Tamil but don’t live in Sri Lanka.
But, there are tons of people all over the world, separated from their homelands and languages.
While I think finding a teacher is the most direct way to learn a language, Sabtha’s (my Tamil teacher for 18 months) content was mostly available on Youtube. I was only able to find 2 SL Tamil language Youtube series - “Hello Kekutho” and “Jaffna Suthan”.
With the rise of folks publishing more prolifically on YouTube, it’s getting even easier to find even a dialect of Tamil spoken in Northern Sri Lanka.
Even the vocabulary decks I use are made once by Sabtha one time, but can be enjoyed by infinite humans.
4 years ago, I wouldn’t have had access to resources to accomplish this.
I’m laying out the blueprint here for generically approaching any language. So long as you can find
500 most common words (with pronunciation)
Grammar rules for sentence structure in past, present, and future
Youtube content by native speakers (to use Mimic Methods on)
You can learn whatever language you want from wherever, too.
A Thought 💭
I’ve been feeling incredibly lonely lately.
Late at night, when I sit on my couch watching TV in the dark. I know that all feelings are temporary, and only those which we suppress or ignore linger. But I can’t help shake the feeling that there are choices I’ve made that are structurally keeping me here.
It’s not just the physical loneliness. It’s the intellectual loneliness.
When I started writing, I didn’t realize exactly how helpful it would be to add structure to my thoughts. Some days, after publishing a piece I’m proud of, I feel mentally invincible. Like I solved a problem other people didn’t even know existed.
But when I talk about these same topics in real life, sometimes the reaction makes me feel like I’m boring them.
Like they’re merely tolerating me.
And that hurts me in my soul.
I'd love to hear any feelings you felt while reading this and until next time - be easy.
With Love,
Janahan
P.S. A Big Thank You to my friends who gave me excellent feedback this week - KimSia Sim, Sam Cho, Chris Wong, Louie Bacaj, and Angeli Sivaraman. Y’all keep me going. I’m forever in debt to your generosity.
TTT 24: Intellectual Loneliness 😔
You’re welcome, Janahan 💜