I study French language as a hobby and tired with the frustrations of my slowly progressing intermediate level, I’m now a little obsessed with reaching fluency. It’s a personal challenge for me, to get my brain working as a relatively effortless bilingual processing system. I think that’s a feeling I’m going to absolutely love, so it’s worth working for online and in conversation group.
Psychologically, what I’ve plunged into through language studies has been nothing short of a mind-blowing time warp, right back into infanthood. Learning a foreign language as an adult is humbling, in a very healthy way, because you are again a child, listening to those around you with intense concentration, although often understanding only the simplest communications.
Of course I’ve consciously forgotten what it was like to be two or three years old, but trying to speak French with fluent speakers frequently catapults me back through time into a dimly familiar, primitive feeling of having as yet, no words. It’s been fascinating and so very humbling.
Experiencing just how long and complex the process of language learning is, has also renewed my appreciation for the everyday heroism of immigrants who must learn a new language to live and work. I didn’t fully appreciate what many people go through just to be able to connect and communicate in normal everyday ways until I tried to do it in French.
Just going to the shops and having a simple chat is a big deal when you’re trying to get hold of your words in a foreign language. It takes courage to interact, knowing you will make all kinds of mistakes and people will give you little looks that kindly intimate you didn’t quite get it right. I’ve found that most people are very kind and patient, as they might be with a child. Like I said, it’s probably one of the most profound ways you can catapult yourself back into infanthood that I can imagine.
Sometimes, trying to conjugate verbs in the right mood and tense, remember genders of things, use the right pronouns and put words in order while speaking French absolutely does my head in. The microcosm of language learning is like growing up all over again with all the innocence, mistakes and rewards. On occasion I want to have a tantrum of frustration and I wonder if I’ll ever get there, but I’m sticking with it regardless.
An important element of motivation for me, in the midst of very challenging and long-term projects, is keeping my eye on how I imagine I’m going to feel when I get there. Numbers can help a little - watching my level increase as I tick off skills and milestones, but I’m not a highly competitive person in that way. For some, doing better than others, or better than they did yesterday, is a powerful driving force. And, if it works, use it.
I’m motivated by my imagined feeling of arriving. I want to feel how it feels (to quote Kate Bush) - to switch effortlessly between my mother-tongue and a second language. I want to feel how it feels to be truly bi-lingual for the first time in my life, and I sink into that sound and image in daydreams to push me on.
I’m committed to practicing every day, so I can feel the feeling of frustration gradually, consistently fading, giving way to very private pride and personal victory.
What gives you the beautiful opportunity to feel pride and victory however private, to feel young however humbling, and overall, more alive? It’s worth finding something like that, if you don’t have it yet.
Soundtrack to writing this piece was Vanessa Paradis - Dès Que J’Te Vois (As Soon As I See You) because I love her voice. She inspires and enchants.