(by John)
I have been trying to learn the local language, Kannada, for the past 5 weeks, mostly from my driver but also using a text book and watching TV. I’ve picked up the occasional word or phrase and can say things like “My name is John”, “My wife’s name is Sarah”, “Can I have the bill please?” and “That car is red”. Today I began a language tutoring program of 1-1/2 hours each morning with a Skype tutor, 5 days a week, for 14 weeks!
Sarah’s company contracted Berlitz to do the tutoring– it was available for the entire family, but no one else has the time nor interest to take advantage of the program but I promised myself that I would learn Kannada before we moved here, so I signed up for the program.
I have always felt like a foreign language failure- from taking 4 years of high school French and one semester in college and not being able to order a coffee in Paris, to living in Germany for 2 years and only picking up “survival German” and never being able to have anything but the simplest conversation in German. I vowed this time would be different. I’m getting too old to fail, I have only so many years left before there’s no point in even trying. I refuse to die monolingual!
I know my weakness in foreign languages and it is not that I don’t have an “ear” for them or my memory isn’t good enough, it is that I don’t like looking stupid. That’s it. In Germany I was a perfectionist and I wouldn’t utter a sentence unless I knew, in advance, that it was exactly correct. And if it wasn’t, and I was corrected, I was embarrassed. I had an Italian friend who started learning German at the same time I did, and he was the opposite. He boldly spit out wrong words, wrong tenses, wrong gendered adjectives and would laugh at himself along the way. He succeeded wildly while I failed. I envied him and I promised myself I would be willing to look stupid in India and babble and just try my best without regard for my ego.
So that’s my goal. To look stupid and fail and be corrected but to keep at it. I succeeded at the looking stupid and failing part today during my tutoring session.
The highlight (lowlight?) was making my tutor break her “immersion promise” where she wouldn’t use any English and we would only use Kannada. I got her to break it within the first 10 minutes! She said “Nanu” and pointed to herself, I knew that meant “I”, so we were off to a good start. Then she said “Neevu” and pointed to me, which I knew meant “you”. So then she pointed to herself, then to me, then clasped her hands together and said “Navu”. And asked (in Kannada) if I understood. I just stared at her. Deer in the headlights would be an appropriate idiom. Then again- with gesturing– “Nanu”, “Neevu”, and the hand clasping “Navu”, do I understand?
Because I could see my video image on Skype, I could actually see the non-comprehension on my face. I looked like I was about to start drooling. Just a blank stare. Seeing my blank face made my anxiety increase and I started scratching under my armpits like I was a flustered monkey. Nanu-Neevu-Navu, Nanu-Neevu-Navu. Do I understand? Nanu-Neevu-Navu, Nanu-Neevu-Navu. Do I understand? My mind was panicked, illogical and racing– “Is she asking me if I’m married? does she want to hold hands? I, you, what? I, you, what? what the hell does Navu mean??”, she eventually relented and said “We– Navu means we”. She didn’t say it, but there was a definite “You idiot!” at the end of her sentence– implied but unspoken.
Moran Family in Asia 