I had a dream last night about languages. I was in my Germanistic linguistics class, and someone asked the teacher (in English) if she was Chilean, as she had said "po" at some point. She replied she was and asked if anyone had been to Chile and, if so, for how long. I explained (in very poor German) that I was a double major and therefor studied for a semester there. People in the class laughed at my German and the teacher asked my neighbor to say something in Spanish. He tried and couldn't say anything understandable, and I wanted to say "See! That's how speaking German is for me!" in Spanish, but it came out choppy, jarbled and incomprehensible and I realized that my Spanish was gone.
This dream could mean a variety of things, most clearly it shows my rapidly declining confidence in the Spanish language, and my fear that I'll lose it. What would that mean? That my 6 months in Chile were a waste? They weren't. Or does it suggest that the same thing will happen to my German after this year? All the frustration and embarrassment... For nothing? I'm terrified of that possibiliy. And why was the class speaking English? Because I'm stuck in English or because German's becoming more natural and easily understandable... I don't know.
Regardless, I'm frustrated with my German. I'm understanding more, writing better, and speaking better. I'm getting a sense of intuition on how the language works, and yet I feel so far apart from native German speakers.
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