Acquisition

I’m reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. Part of the book is an interchange of letters between an American and a Ukrainian. This is excerpt from one of Alexander’s letter to Jonathan:

Dear Jonathan,
I hanker for this letter to be good. Like you know, I am not first rate with English. In Russian my ideas are asserted abnormally well, but my second tongue is not so premium. I undertaked to input the things you counseled me to, and I fatigued the thesaurus you presented me, as you counseled me to, when my words appeared too petite, or not befitting. If you are not happy with what I have performed, I command you to return it back to me. I will persevere to toil on it until you are appeased.

(page 23)

Alexander’s letters are quite funny to read as his word choices are unconventional, to say the least.

And so, while I’m laughing out loud at this hilarity, I’m suddenly struck: Is this what I sound like to Spaniards? Are they secretly laughing at my word choices? Are they finding my vocabulary outdated and forced?

My Arabic professor was talking about the difficulty of learning Arabic, noting that it takes about seven months more in an Arabic speaking country to learn the language than it takes a student studying Spanish in Spain. He then proceeded to demonstrate how an Arabic word sounds different depending on the primary language of the speaker- the Arab, the Spaniard, the English, and the French. It is so interesting to see how our language acquisition and ability to produce sounds is effected by what we first learn and know best.

I still wonder, though, how my Spanish sounds to the ears of these people. At dinner one night, my roommate was talking about her class on Don Juan. For the life of her, our family could not understand her when she said, “Don Juan”. They kept looking at her quizzically and suggesting words. Suddenly, after the twelfth time of over-enunciating the words “Don Juan”, they understood her, saying, “Oh, Don Juan.” I was laughing so hard at the entire situation. My ears could hear no difference between Javier saying “Don Juan” and Katie saying “Don Juan”. But, obviously, there was quite a difference to the ears of my Spanish family.

When I am having trouble being understood, I’ve learned to just pick up the rate of my speech, lower my voice some, and gesticulate a bit more aggressively. It is amazing how that can help one be understood. Suddenly, the person I’m talking with is interrupting me, pointing out how great they think my Spanish is. If all things in life were that easy!

Regardless, learning a language is so much more than mere words and conjugations. And the part you learn off the paper and in the street may be the most important. I’ll keep checking my verbs, but my conversations are my best teachers.