9 August 9:48
Last night, I couldn’t help but be frustrated by being here. I know, Sprachurlaub in France, the opportunity of a lifetime. I’m not discounting that. What I have noticed, though, is that as an expatriate, my fuse is a lot shorter than it used to be. Don’t get me wrong; I get along just great in Germany. I don’t have any problems with communication anymore, and I’m (slowly) getting to not only understand the cultural customs, but act accordingly. My thing is this -- I only speak regular English with H., my family and a couple of TT’ers. Pretty much everyone else I talk to is a non-native speaker, so I end up speaking more slowly and simply.
That, and I had a revelation last night. Really, I didn’t realize how much energy it takes to live in Germany; because I speak German and can get around without any trouble, it feels like home to me. But as much as I catch myself thinking or dreaming in German, it’s not my native language. English is. And as I lay in bed last night, having flashbacks to a time when my German was about as good as my French and I was settling into Germany, I realized not only how much time and effort it took to get my German to where it is today, but how much EASIER life was when language learning was just a hobby, and I could do everything quickly and efficiently in English, because I lived in an English-speaking country.
Thinking of that, I realized that when I go back to Canada for a visit in November, I’m not going to know what to do with myself. What do you mean I’ll be able to get what I want in English, not having to spell things out for people? Or speak in a different language? Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got it easy now that my German is good. But it’s trips like these to France, where I only understand about half of what comes at me, when I realize how hard things must be for H. He speaks less German than I do French, and lives in Germany. It’s no wonder he gets frustrated. Heck, I’m not even that bad off here, and I’m frustrated.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, that although I don’t have a problem living in Germany, it takes more daily effort than it would to do the same things in, say, Canada or any other English-speaking nation. So, now that you put me in a THIRD country, it’s like my brain has to go into overdrive, because it’s used to working harder in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I wouldn’t change my life for the world. But part of me wonders when it was that I decided I liked learning languages so much that I would dump a good portion of my life into it. Extra Russian lessons, French language vacations, Latin and Spanish lessons in college... seriously? Am I a masochist? Oh, wait, I remember why I decided I like languages. My grade six teacher wrote a poem about our “graduating class” in elementary school. She wrote a bit about each of us, and my part went something like, “Holly took to French très beaucoup. An interpreter in the UN her might woo.” Or something. So maybe I don’t want to be an interpreter and understand that I couldn’t get a job in the UN if I tried. But I am planning on doing post-graduate research in history. In French and German. That’s gotta count for something, right?
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