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Sunday 22 January 2017

My Five Favourite Language Learning Milestones

The road to fluency is long and lined with potholes, into which we want to crawl and never come out of again. The threat of failure stalks us every step of the way, especially in the intermediate stages, and we'd never make it, if there weren't for those splendid little successes that crop up, sometimes when we least expect them. And they have nothing whatsoever to do with passing exams or getting certificates. Here we go:

1. You can identify "your" language(s). You can tell instantly that that book page with Cyrillic text someone's shared on Facebook is, in fact, Ukrainian and not Russian. Or even though you haven't the foggiest idea of what those tourists walking in front of you in the street are yakking on about, you know for certain that it's German and not Dutch, Danish or Swedish. And then you turn the corner really quickly, because it would be soooo embarrassing if they actually tried to ask you anything right now...

2. You've had your first successful communication with a native speaker. It was only half a mangled sentence, but, by golly, you've managed to order yourself a coffee! WHOOP! And the waiter came back... with a coffee! Double-WHOOP! Suddenly, all those hours spent poring over grammar exercises and combing through flashcards seem worthwhile. This experience is so intoxicating that it instantly turns you into a junkie, constantly on the lookout for the next fix. In fact, you're going to ask the waiter RIGHT NOW for the way to the toilet. Even though you can see the door with a big "WC" sign on it from where you're sitting.

3. Remember our tourists from #1? You've now arrived at the point where you can give them directions. (Except if you're me - I'm incapable of giving directions in any language. Must be something congenital. A few months ago, a French couple asked me the way to the cathedral. My response was to raise my right arm and point it in the approximate direction, accompanied by a couple of encouraging grunts - a bit like a gorilla attempting a Nazi salute. Not sure I helped those guys find the cathedral, but it did make them chuckle...)

4. You've understood a joke in your target language. It was trite, banal, barely half a notch above slapstick. But you laughed and laughed till you nearly peed your pants. Because you "got" it. Oh, you were so impressed with yourself that you shared that little gem of teenage humour with all those friends of yours who are native speakers of that language. The next morning, mysteriously, your friend count is down by a dozen.

5. You can follow and engage in a conversation in a noisy bar. This really is the acid test. Until you are in the situation of trying to communicate in another language in a busy place stuffed to the rafters with people and music blaring, you'll probably never have realised just how much work your brain is having to do, which you're mostly unconscious of. Usually, even if you can only hear every third word or so, as long as it's your native language, your brain fills in the blanks for you. It's like when you're engrossed in a book and you're not actually reading the words, but "recognising" them, and when you turn the page, you already know what the next word will be before you see it. If you're still grappling with a language somewhere at intermediate level, your grey cells won't, can't perform this task. You actually need to hear/see every single word in order to understand what's going on - especially since you're still struggling with so much unknown vocab. But once the switch finally flicks and you've mastered the heaving bar scenario, you know you have truly arrived!


Sunday 8 January 2017

Socialising Dilemmas: Which Language?!

Multilingual life can throw up some curious problems in social situations. Even if the people who get together have several languages in common, things can still get unexpectedly awkward.

A few months ago, my Portuguese teacher's son, Jaime, invited me and his mother for lunch in Madrid. Jaime lives and works in Switzerland, and since his German is a bit on the wobbly side, I'd been helping him with his CVs, interview preparation, emails, etc. for the past year and a half. He was briefly in Spain for a wedding, and this would be the first time we'd meet face-to-face.

Teresa was already there when I got to the restaurant, and we chatted in Portuguese while waiting for her son to turn up. When Jaime arrived, we first had to settle on which language to speak. (I usually speak Spanish with him, and some German.) In theory, we share three languages in common: Spanish, Portuguese and English. We decided on Spanish, based on the rationale that my Spanish is significantly better than my Portuguese and that this way, nobody would be left struggling with the conversation. Or so we thought.

After ordering our food, Jaime and I launched right into catching up, since we'd not spoken to each other in a few weeks. At some point, I turned to Teresa to ask her something. She looked at me blankly. Then she said, "Sorry, I'm not actually listening to the conversation... in my head, I'm correcting everything you're saying into Portuguese!"

Ooops.

You see, Teresa and I never speak in Spanish to each other. Except for when I can't think of how to say something in Portuguese, then she helps me out. I also tend to mess up my Portuguese by mixing in Spanish words and expressions (this drives her mad), and in her capacity as my teacher, it's always been her job to correct me relentlessly. It's a deeply ingrained protocol which has served me (and my Portuguese) very well, but in this lunch situation, not so much...


Friday 6 January 2017

Writing is Just So Damn Hard!

My Portuguese teacher despairs of me. "So, have you written anything this week...?" I look at my fingernails and shake my head. Nope. BUT, as I'm trying to point out to  her, I have done some 'homework' - I've been reading a novel, I've completed various exercises in my grammar & vocab book, I've listened to a couple of podcasts, I've been watching cartoons in Portuguese while having my lunch. I do realise that one lesson a week is not enough to advance my language skills and that I need to work at it a little bit every day. But... I just don't like writing.

"How can you NOT like writing? You write for a living!" She glares at me in stupefaction. I shift uncomfortably in my chair.

Yes, it's a paradox, I realise. In fact, I love writing. As long as I know what I'm doing. I don't like patching together a Frankenessay of words that just don't collocate, sloshing about in a sea of mutilated grammar. I don't like making mistakes, and what I like even less is having a written record of them. It's like being fat in your wedding photo.

I didn't really start writing in English until I was almost in my mid-twenties, when I had to compose my first ever academic essay. At that point, I'd already spent several years in an English-speaking country, in total immersion, reading, listening and speaking, and so I virtually no trouble producing a coherent piece of writing, more or less indistinguishable from something concocted by a native speaker. I'd had so much language input that, when it finally came to producing output, it all came completely naturally. I'd built up sufficient muscle over the years without even noticing or making a conscious effort.



A little while ago, I read In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri, an American writer of Indian heritage (the fact that she's bilingual and bicultural adds an intriguing twist, but I won't go into that right now). Lahiri is already an acclaimed writer (in English) when she moves from the US to Italy and starts writing in Italian, a language she's deeply passionate about. She's been studying Italian on and off for many years, but without ever becoming fluent. She's determined to finally conquer this language and she's doing a lot more than "just" living in Italy and keeping her diary in Italian - she's actually writing In Other Words entirely in Italian - a book destined for publication. So, she's fiddling about with dictionaries, she's having to write in the simplest of sentences, she's totally out of her depth. It's an excruciating process for her, like writing a letter blindfolded, with a pencil wedged between frost bitten toes. And of course, she needs to have everything proofread over and over again by native Italian writers.

She succeeds, evidently, overcoming her fears, limitations, frustrations and incompetence. And she does become fluent in Italian. Kudos to her.

Lahiri is not the only successful author to write in a non-native language, but I'm guessing that not many have attempted such a feat while their command of the language was still rather on the patchy side.

Do I feel at all inspired to follow her example? If only...




Monday 2 January 2017

My New Year's Language Resolutions

I have a confession to make: I ain't got any. What I do have instead is a loose plan... or maybe it's more of a project. I want to give my Portuguese a kick up the butt. It feels like I've been hovering at the threshold between upper intermediate and advanced forever and ever and what it needs now is a concerted push. I love that language.

To this end, I'll be spending virtually the entire month of March in Lisbon. I've booked myself into a language school to do an "extensive" course. Extensive as opposed to intensive - this means an hour and a half of classes two to three times a week. I'll be staying with someone who works at the school, so I should be able to get some conversation practice in a domestic setting, which is hard to come by in a classroom or when reading books.

I do have another agenda for this trip: I really like Lisbon and I'm considering re-locating there. So, this is going to be a bit of a recon mission, if you will. I've been to Lisbon only twice, and for very short durations. I have a couple of acquaintances there, but no "friends", no network. Nor do I know much about the "language scene" there. I've done a few web searches which haven't come up with anything useful, like book clubs or groups of people who meet up to practice languages. I'm thinking, though, that these must surely exist in a capital city. So, I'll have my research cut out when I get to Lisbon!