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!

Do You Get Paid More For Being Multilingual?

When I was fifteen, a friend's mother, a French professor at a US university, made a comment that stuck with me. She said that foreign languages, in the world of work, weren't worth a dime. Unless you had to offer something else besides, preferably a solid set of technical skills.

At the time, I didn't really comprehend the significance of this statement. All I knew was that I liked languages and that I wanted a job where I could use them. Mme Professor was right, of course. When I was job hunting just a couple of years later, I found out very quickly that nobody will employ you just for being a linguaphile. Speaking more than one language is not a guaranteed route to a well paid job. Or any job.

Now, in the course of my higgledy piggledy professional life, I have indeed been paid for being multilingual, but only once I had half a decade of work experience under my belt. It was at the tender age of 21 when I managed to land a job with an international travel and financial services company who paid a bonus for each language its employees could communicate in. In the beginning, my department was small and buzzed with the fun we all had chatting to the different corners of the world, often rescuing distressed customers who had been robbed of all of their belongings. But after a few years, the operation morphed into one of those behemoth call centres with the tasks becoming ever more mundane. I felt like an automaton hooked onto a headset and taking call after call after call. The personal touch, as well as the gratification factor that came with seeing a complicated mission through from beginning to end, were lost and so I left.

My next position was as a Braillist for the RNIB (Royal National Institute for Blind People) who also paid a language skills supplement. The objective was to transcribe a wide range of printed materials, including text books, magazines and exams, into Braille. Before being eligible for the extra pay, I first had to learn Braille and then pass tests in the language-specific Braille codes, the training for which was provided in-house. Oh, I loved that job - imagine being paid for reading books all day, I was in heaven! - but I eventually quit when, due to a regulation change, we were consigned to spend our waking days transcribing gas and electricity bills and very little else. I was bored shitless. That was not what I had signed up for.

In my experience, bonus payments for language skills are rather rare. Most of the time, foreign language requirements - no matter whether they are an "essential" or a "desirable" part of a job spec - do not translate into a neat, quantifiable wad of dosh that rolls into your bank account at the end of every month. However, if you have the skills for the job, being more than monolingual can give you the edge over another candidate, as well as widening the choice of jobs you can apply for.

If anyone has any opinions or experiences to share on this topic, I would sure love to hear from you.