Languages

Armed with a BA Majoring in Linguistics in one hand, and a love of foreign cultures and languages in the other, Dan devours new languages. Today Dan speaks Japanese, Chinese and Czech; he also claims he can speak English.

Japanese

The day after finishing his final VCE exam in 2005 (Philosophy), he began studying Japanese three hours a day. After putting it off for two years due the need to learn more and more about English for his English, Literature, English Language and Philosophy subjects, Dan was pretty much finished with the English language in November of 2005.

By the first day of Japanese 1A at university he had already finished the whole textbook for 1A and 1B. By the end of the semester he was conversational after making friends with Japanese international students. By August 2007 he was in a plane to Japan where he was going to stay with the members of each of the Footbag Clubs in Japan and teach them how to play better while there.

In 2009 Dan began running language exchanges in Melbourne to help bring locals learning languages and international students together. Language Connection now reaches thousands of language learners and helps them develop their conversational ability, confidence and social networks.

In 2011, Dan was selected to represent Australian on the 23rd Ship the World Youth Program, a program run by the Japanese Government to develop young leaders from all over the world and promote global harmony and cultural understanding.

Czech

Open the map and decide where you want to do exchange for a semester. I had friends there, the classes were taught in English but the people there spoke a different language – this was the place to go. After three months I was conversational and then I lived in Jesenik with my friend’s family. They only spoke Czech, the only person in the town that spoke English was my friend and the English teachers and I made it – I made friends, felt the confidence of being accepted by people from a different country and I felt what it was like to reconfigure my own compass about what is valuable and what isn’t. The video above was taken over a year after I left, but the Czech people and their way of life are still very close to my heart.

Chinese (Mandarin)

At 330 on the 29 September 2009, Dan opened Basic Chinese 1 and found there on the pages the first words of what has become his most challenging language. Dan founded the Bang Bang Tang Language Exchange Club after only a month of learning Chinese by himself. It met weekly over about 40 weeks in Melbourne, attracting hundreds of Australians learning Mandarin and international students wanting to improve their English and make new friends.

My Chinese friends come from such a different world view that sometimes I feel like we just aren’t connecting at all regardless of the language. At other times I feel lucky to understand something so insightful, so rational, yet for me so exotic about how they see their own lives and careers.

More about my languages and videos can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/user/danednie/