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Rays of sunshine in languages | ||
Tags: Measuring Progress | Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 6 12 December 2010 at 12:26am | IP Logged | ||
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You know when you are learning a new language, and you feel like a clutz with basically oat meal porridge for brains? And then suddenly you get something totally right - or you get a compliment, and you feel like your soul is suddenly warmed up by a ray of the most beautiful, warm sunshine?
As this is the darkest time of the year (at least where I am - we only have sunshine from 10 pm to 3 am) I figured this might be a good time to share a little sunshine:-) My examples are from Russian, which in my case is the linguistic equivalent to wrestling a polar bear, and I am extremely happy every time I manage to say something remotely coherent. This summer, when I was in Kyiv, I went to a store to get a DVD, and I asked in my best Russian if they had the DVD I was looking for, praying that I would get my message through. To my astonishment the lady answered back in quick Russian, and I had to admit that I did not understand what she was saying, as I did not speak that much Russian. She looked surprised at me and said, "But your Russian is so good! I would have loved to answer something nice in return, even if it had just been to admit that it is easy to sound good, if all you are saying is one single sentence, but even that was too advanced for me, so I just smiled. It still made my day though! A few days later I asked my Russian teacher to identify which sounds I had most problems with, and she answered, "Oh but you have no big difficulties, you have the best pronunciation of all my students!" That one kept me warm all day, until I met up with my German friend Claudia, who had heard me butchering the Russian language trying to order from a menu. She listened patiently to me and then said: "Ok, so this means that if you were actually able to say something in Russian, your Russian would have been very good indeed". That one got me back down on the ground. Now of course in any event I have to take into consideration that most of the other students were American and German, and most of the Americans had very heavy accents and the Germans were struggling with the Russian R. If I had been compared to other Scandinavians I might not have received such a favourable review:-) So what are your rays of sunshine? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 12 December 2010 at 1:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4917 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 6 12 December 2010 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||
The first time I went skiing in Italy (Borgata), I stayed at a small family-run inn right on the mountain (that was awesome. I could ski right outside my door). There was a little common room with a small bar and a fireplace. After the first day of skiing, I headed down there to relax by the fireplace and drink a beer. The family's mother was running the bar that night. After asking for a beer, she asked me how long I'd been living in Italy. I was very flattered. And it was a real confidence booster. And I had a conversation partner every night for the rest of my ski trip. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5013 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 6 12 December 2010 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
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My Russian ray of sunshine came last summer (not that I needed more light then but anyway :) when I was hanging out at a friend's food shop. My friend's wife was alone with their 5yo child and no customers so we could chat a bit. She decided to have me explain some Spanish stuff to her, and when we finished discussing that and the boy last progresses at school and languages, she turned to me and said, 'ok, and now I want you to speak some Russian'.
I'm always asking my Russian friends questions about Russian but although they always say that my pronunciation is good, I very rarely say anything because my vocabulary is very small, so this woman hadn't heard me more than a couple of times. Anyway I had to say something, I didn't know what to say, so I uttered a school spelling rule my friend (her husband) had taught me some time before: 'chu, schu, pisà cheres u, ne iu'. The face! Her mouth gaped and her eyes seemed about to pop out. After two full seconds all she could say was "good Lord! You pronounce better than my boy, and you come here and give us Russian lessons?!?!" Of course it was the surprise effect of my completely unexpected utterance rather than any amazingly good pron on my part, but hey... I was grinning the whole day, and part of the next one :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5553 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 6 12 December 2010 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||
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One time near the end of my home stay in Spain, I answered the phone. It was the mother of my host mom, with whom I had talked over the phone in English and broken Spanish at the beginning of my home stay. When I answered the phone that time, she first tried the name of the housekeeper and her own daughter's name before realizing is was me. =D
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 5 of 6 12 December 2010 at 6:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I can recall two Turkish breakthrough moments.
The first was when I was hiking the first few days of the Lycian Way and came down a steep path near the end of day one. I made it to a little restaurant where I was the only patron, and collapsed in a chair. The owner, an older woman, didn't speak any English and we spent about two hours conversing in Turkish- my first real Turkish conversation! Felt great. The second came at the end of a terrible, terrible day I had at work (I was bartending in southern Turkey at this point, a volunteer job I had for about a month). I'd been in a horrible mood since waking up and had had to pull a double shift. At closing time, I decided I needed a couple beers to pull me out of it, and I ended up chatting with a friend and fellow bartender in Turkish until the small hours of the morning- suddenly I could understand things and say them myself. I've never felt so positive about Turkish, and it turned my whole day around. Sigh... gotta get back to Turkey. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5380 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 6 of 6 12 December 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I had a breakthrough just the other day. After following a thread here on whether we are
too hard on polyglots, I found myself shortly after watching video's of polyglots on youtube - some of which are from this forum. Now, I chat online and watch TV in Italian and can understand quite a bit, but to this point my comprehension has been via English - translating in my head. Now, whilst watching fasulye's science video in Italian, I was a minute into the video when I realised that I had been understanding everything she said - in Italian! I was amazed when I realised this and it has given me a real boost. I have been working through Assimil and following their advice of relaxed study and it seems to be paying off even though I am only 1/3 through the passive phase. I think these moments are very important in maitaining interest and motiviation in what is a long grind for most of us. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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