When FluentBrooklyn professor Diego traveled to Japan during high school, he never expected the trip to change his life. Diego was only planning to improve his Japanese, but his host family ended up introducing him to classical music and the joy of singing opera. Diego previously had no instruction in either, but this new passion led him to a new career, and also to a lifetime of learning new languages. Music aside, singing opera is also like memorizing a three-hour long poem in a foreign language, and through this challenge Diego learned to speak French, Italian, and German, in addition to his native Spanish.
“Music helped open doors for me by giving me the chance to live and work in many different countries, “ explained Diego. “When I decided that I wanted to teach, it just came naturally to me.”
Recalling his more recent experience struggling through his few words of Mandarin while performing at the Shanghai World Expo, Diego commented that learning a language comes faster when it is immediately needed to communicate your needs. Diego stresses the importance of taking a class to learn a language, explaining that it is the “closest you can come to that immediacy of needing language to communicate with your peers.”
With convenient locations in Williamsburg and Manhattan, FluentBrooklyn allows you to study language without needing to venture too far. For students hoping for a more fulltime and immersive program of study, FluentBrooklyn offers hands-on language trips to Paris and Spain each summer.
