In college I attained oral fluency in German. I remember my Freshman year professor crying after a fluid conversation in which I finally gendered my nouns correctly within complicated sentences. It was a milestone because I’d been struggling and, according to my professor, my accent was one of the best she’d heard in ages.
I’ve been told over and over I have an ear for languages. That’s a wonderful compliment. The fact is, while I have the ear and the tongue, I do not have the grammatical skill necessary for mastery. Again and again this has gotten in my way.
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That conversation with my professor? It was my final exam. By the time I got there I was convinced I would fail. I passed inly because I spoke on instinct and without hope instead if thinking about the words and if I was getting them right.
I left that University for another where they placed me in beginning German classes based on my written test scores. Again, I failed technical language skills. I spent two semesters talking circles around my peers (much to my AIs’ delight), scored near perfect on every segment technical or otherwise, and grew so frustrated with the department’s unwillingness to advance me, I switched to Arabic.
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Technically, Arabic is a far more difficult language than German. Even if I had a stellar background education in English grammar (which, surprise, I do not), it takes years of immersive study to master. It’s kind of funny because Arabic was my native language. My father stopped speaking it when I was five and I lost the words if not the sounds. I transferred out of a class at the mid-level because I was going to fail. But I had gleaned a lot.
In fact, I had learned enough that Arabic became a bridge between English and German. One of my uncles teaches German in Lebanon. We couldn’t communicate in Arabic on my end or English on his, so we fell back on German with him filling in my vocabulary through hilarious comic strips and long, patient conversations.
Fluency and German happened without my realizing it. But, like Arabic, I stopped speaking it and quickly lost skill.
I have kept both languages (and learning tools for them) around me in hopes of picking them—and Spanish—back up. Today was the day it happened. My homeschooled child wants to learn all three languages. We dusted off my German textbooks and spent half an hour practicing reading German words.
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My son has an ear and a tongue for language. It was such a pleasure speaking with him. I was reminded of how much German I know. It will keep coming back quickly, and it’s special to learn it with my child.
What languages do you speak or want to learn?
