Language Learning

   I spent the first twenty-five years of my life taking for granted the ability to just chat with the people around me. It was not as though my introverted self walked around striking up conversations with strangers, but I could have. If I wanted to. In this new life of mine almost every conversation is a mental effort. Day in and day out I wrestle to understand what’s being said around me, confused over meaning, sentence structure, pronunciation. On Friday I tried to ask one of the girls who lives here if her sore throat had improved. What I actually said, while stroking my neck, was “is your cup better?” Thankfully her father understood the context clues and answered my actual question (after a few surprised looks).

  I have learned a lot since January, but I think the thing about living in another country, another culture is that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know. Does that make sense? Before I came down here I thought I knew in the abstract how important language learning would be. I saw it as one of my first tasks, after all how can I love well people I cannot talk to? Now that I am here, the need to talk, to communicate, is both tangible and acute.

   The people I live with are so wonderful to me as I learn. Their grace as I string together grammatically incorrect sentences, their kindness as they parse what I am trying to say and their patience as they repeat vocabulary words to me (again) are precious. There is something beautiful about the kingdom of God and learning to love your neighbor in all of this, but it can be hard for me to see it when I just want to know how far away the market we are walking to is.

  Rationally, I know it is ridiculous to be expecting myself to speak Kreyol like a native when I have only been here since January. I keep reminding myself of that fact, but there are SO many things I just want to be able to ask people. I want to talk to the women in the neighborhoods we visit about their children, their daily schedules, what they think about life and health. I want to ask kids how school was, what their day was like, what songs and foods they like or do not like. I am learning to string some of those sentences together, but I am impatient, dreaming of the day the words flow off of my tongue intelligibly.

   Will you join me in praying for grace in language learning? That I would work hard, while giving myself grace, and for grace for those are wrestling to understand me as well. Thanks friends.