(foreign languages)
As of today, I have been in Germany for 1 month. Though truthfully it feels like less than that. I want to write about languages in this post.
I wish that I had been a better student in elementary/middle/high school. I always just did the bare minimum to scrape by. I never paid attention in classes (with a few exceptions, like Mr. Percival's Astronomy class...) I didn't do homework, and put off projects and papers until the last minute. In my defense, I read a lot of books. But they were mostly science fiction or fantasy books, which somehow is less "legit" than reading Shakespeare or Dickens or Tolstoy. [Though I will never apologize for reading every single Piers Anthony book.]
I wish that I had taken Latin. If I had, I feel like learning German would be a lot easier. I think it is more than a little bit sad that most Americans are monolingual. I have written in the past about my experiences with languages. Pine View tried really hard to get us into languages. I took French there for what must have been 5 years, but don't really remember it. I hear they offer Arabic and Mandarin now, though I have yet to confirm that. I took Japanese over the summer when I was 14, but don't remember that either.
The bottom line is, despite exposure to Russian, French, Spanish, Japanese... I never bothered to see the advantages of knowing foreign languages. I sometimes feel like it is "too late" for me. Considering I started German (which I am determined to master) at the age of 24, I feel like a 3 year old toddler here, who can understand the majority of what I hear but cannot respond in kind. It's getting better though, and I've learned a lot over the past month.
At the moment, I've got friends living in S. Korea, Japan, France, and Ukraine. I know at least one of these people reads this blog consistently. I just wonder how long it really takes to achieve fluency, if it is even possible. I am in class with some people who have been learning German for 7-9 years, and thus feel like I am at a huge disadvantage. I can communicate better than I have ever been able to, but still feel like I am mangling my sentences, or forgetting words that I've learned a thousand times before.
This tone of this entry is beginning to smack of self-pity.
So I've been reading Der Vorleser (a.k.a. The Reader, made into a film w/ Kate Winslet) and it is the first full book that I have attempted to read, and so far I'm understanding most of what is going on. If I stop to look up every unknown word, it takes me 15 minutes to read a page, so I just gloss over and try to glean the meaning from the context. It's pretty exciting to me, though the actual story isn't mind-blowing, that I am even able to read to the level that I can.
Speaking of Pine View, our 10 year reunion (if we're having one?) is next year. I often find myself wondering what has been going on for the past 9 years. I went to college [more than once], I've been in relationships, both serious and less-serious. I've made and lost friends, lived in a few different apartments, worked a few jobs. I wonder if my fellow Classmates of the year 2000 ever feel the same as I do. Though I have seen many of these people since 2000, there are those that I have not seen since the night we graduated. I wonder what those people look like now, and what they are doing.
And now I find myself here, in a city that is currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of a wall that divided the city (/country/continent) from 1961-1989. I am still beyond happy to be here. I have a future plan, which I am sure will continually change, but that's alright with me.
I wonder how many people actually read this... If you are a regular reader, you should "follow" this blog so I can know how large my audience truly is. I would probably be inclined to update more often if I knew that people are reading these ramblings.
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2 comments:
Samus,
I think the idea of being fluent in a foreign language is misunderstood. To me, fluency is a measure of the variety of different scenarios in which you can communicate effectively.
For example, in English, if you bump your elbow, you might say "Ouch!" In Japanese, the word is "Itai!" Shortened to a more realistic utterance, it comes out as "Ite~!" If in a crowd of Japanese you stub your toe or bump your head on something and let out an "Ite~!" for that very specific instance you are fluent. You have communicated exactly what you're trying to say. It's not difficult, and even by myself now you'll catch me letting out an "Itetete~" if I burn myself or do something stupidly painful.
The trick, then, is simply expanding the number of situations in which you can communicate effectivly. There is no magic point at which you can say, "I'm fluent now!" It's all about the context. For example, having lived in the temple for some time, if we're talking about Buddhism or temple life, I can probably speak better than most Japanese people. That doesn't mean they're not fluent, right? They just don't have the knowledge necessary to communicate in that situation.
One might object and say that such specific, jargon-filled examples are different from fluency, but that's not the case. It's just a matter of what you want to talk about, what your interests are. I know enough at this point to speak comfortably about most any topic, but I can't follow the news when it comes to talking about Japanese politics, because I don't care and have never made an effort to familiarize myself w/the common terms and concepts that are involved in most political conversations. If someone is asking me about those things, I'll have to ask them what they mean by certain terms, but after that I can speak my mind.
It just takes practice getting comfortable and expanding the set of grammar points/vocabulary words/idioms that you can confidently use and understand.
I just found your blog. I am, without a doubt, the laziest language student I know. What boggles my mind is that I've once again placed myself in a position where I have to learn a new one. Inevitably this means making a total ass out of myself on a regular basis. I like to say it's character building, but sometimes I think I'm maxed out on this method of building character.
Good for you if you're doing it willingly. And I have no idea what determines fluency. I just know I'm not there.
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