Tag Archives: Learning languages

Spring 2018 Issue XII: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

Words at the Tip of My Tongue

Four years ago, when I was at home in China, getting ready to study abroad in the United States, my family and friends repeatedly advised me to befriend all kinds of people. “Step out of your comfort zone!” They urged. “Don’t get caught up in the Chinese students’ inner circle!” But then, there we were— occupying a table in the dining hall, forming study groups, eating out on weekends, and traveling together over the break. There was almost a natural affinity among us and I wondered why. I gradually noticed that this inner circle comprised of those who were using English as a functional language.

By “functional” I mean the fundamental use of the language to achieve a goal, such as buying a toothbrush, ordering a meal, or understanding the questions in an exam. In my first year, I struggled with even the functional use of English. I could only decline when my friends asked me out for a movie. “Why?” They asked. “Because I wouldn’t be able to understand!” I replied. They laughed so hard that I was bewildered. Isn’t that strange — A college student still relying  on subtitles to understand most vernacular English? Language is an interactive tool, but at the same time, a subjective experience. How well was I supposed to understand a speaker? How much did they understand me? Would they judge my intelligence based on my flawed expressions? I had no way to know. As I talked, so many words were at the tip of my tongue. So I paused; I even saw what I intended to say written out in Chinese in front of eyes, but I was silent. My world was muffled, so I strived extra hard to sharpen my senses.

I used to be afraid of overhearing people speaking English due to the fear that it would confirm my inability to understand them. Gradually, I learned to open my ears to the outside world and acquire as much information as possible. I put down my earphones and tuned in to the people around me. Still, I would describe my experience of going outside of my dorm room in my first year as stepping onto a battlefield, since I was easily submerged in frustrations and embarrassments.

I also realized that a more severe obstacle to making friends in another linguistic environment is the expression of emotions. Words don’t just mean what they mean; they also carry loads of emotions. There are words to make jokes and puns, to form swear words and release anger, to trigger laughter and tears, to hurt, and to heal. I felt those words at the tip of my tongue but not in my heart. The distance between my tongue and my heart was the distance between me and others, whose emotions were revealed whenever they spoke.

Deciding to learn German is what saved me. In that classroom, I found something familiar—the deliberateness of sticking to grammatical rules due to an absence of intuition, the hardship of coming up with the right words, and the decoupling of thoughts and the medium that carries them. If I talked about struggling with words at the tip of the tongue, my German study pals were the ones who fully comprehended and empathized with me.

When studying abroad in Hamburg, the American students formed an inner circle, and I was part of it. This is why I smiled when one member of the Hamburg group asked, “why do Chinese students only hang out with each other?” It doesn’t have much to do with the nature of a particular culture or national character, as some may suggest. The familiarity and security within a group is what defines a comfort zone, where people naturally fall back.

This was the time when not only my German but also my English progressed considerably. Every word was a trial and every sentence that I uttered carried the risk of embarrassing myself. But at the same time, each attempt at communication was an endeavor beyond my comfort zone. It was this type of everyday struggle that humbled my friends and me, as well as empowered us. In Hamburg, we faced, fought, and embraced this linguistic challenge together.

Admittedly, language barriers don’t account for all the hardships of making friends in a foreign environment, but language is certainly one of the most significant factors, as it carries the signature of one’s culture, living environment, and family character. It defines insiders and outsiders, and it delineates everyone’s most basic comfort zone. In this context, stepping out of our comfort zone is not the end but the beginning. Just like weight training, knowing how many sets of a routine there are (i.e. when the discomfort will end) is essential, as no one can sustain in an uncomfortable environment forever. But the ultimate goal should be to expand our comfort zone through repetitive and continuous attempts.

What I gained in both English and German environments was not just the languages themselves but also confidence, persistence, resilience, and courage. I now have a greater appreciation for the struggles of living in a foreign environment and more understanding of the tendency for people to cluster together with their peers from the same cultural background. We are not simply wasting an opportunity to improve but seeking a temporary shelter between battles.

Now I know that time will bring the words at the tip of my tongue, one by one, down to the depth of my heart.

 

Tianhua Zhu ’18 is currently a Senior, majoring in both Government and Linguistics. Looking at the intersection between the two majors, she is interested in the politics of language and seeks to understand the language of politics. She participated in the Smith Program in Hamburg in Spring 2017 and took advantage of the great opportunity to travel around several countries in Europe. Originally coming from Shanghai, China, she would like to accumulate more international experiences and bring together distinct perspectives echoing through the East and the West.

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Summer 2016 Issue VII: Transitions

Spanish Flowers in German Soil

I tend to be a little nervous when I’m meeting a native Spanish speaker. I get flustered and stutter over my Spanish—even with the words I’ve said so many times that they’re second nature to me. Depending on the evening or my amount of carefree disregard, complete thoughts and sentences unfurl with the ease of my English fluency. It’s a feeling I want more of in my life, and theoretically I know how to achieve it. I need to speak more Spanish, listen, and engage with the language despite its difficulties. It’s about improvement as opposed to a flawless performance; I just need to start small and close to the earth. I want my language to flourish with the vibrancy of the rural Honduran countryside that my mother came from, and the musical energy of my father’s small town not too far from hers. I would tend to my Spanish like delicate seedlings in my greenhouse, awaiting the seasonal shifts of blooming fluency.

martinez_2016-04-05-essay-imageI asked for a tutor in my Spanish literature course in Hamburg because I wanted to improve. It was frighteningly difficult and embarrassing to ask for help with Spanish; I didn’t want to reveal the gaps of language that were allowed to go unbridged in my upbringing. But I had spent too many years feeling embarrassed, and my German had a structure that my Spanish sorely lacked. I wanted them to be even.

I was to meet my tutor at the library; I didn’t know what she looked like. She was from Venezuela, a native speaker of Spanish, educated in the language and capable of cultivating articulate thoughts with a delicacy I could only imagine. I wondered how I would greet her. Would I approach her in English, for ease? In German, for practicality? Or in Spanish—for what, I couldn’t really say.

I don’t really remember how I picked her out among the other people at the library’s cafe; there was simply a moment of recognition for a mutual purpose. I stumbled into an energetic greeting in Spanish, and she stopped me. She asked me where I was from.

I told her that I was from the United States, but my family was Honduran. There was such kindness in her at my response; she heard the accent when I spoke. It was evident.

I eased very happily into my conversation with her then. Occasionally I felt silly and clumsy; I recalled that I didn’t know how to say whatever I wanted, and that I couldn’t arrange my sentences into neat rows like beautifully planted gardens. It’s a skill my mother has; her ease with Spanish came naturally to her because it was the native language she cared for and cultivated all her life. Spanish was my native language, too; it merely shared space with an invasive species I couldn’t tame.

My tutor helped me cut down the weeds and organize my thoughts. It was lovely to remember that Spanish was as rightfully mine as it was hers. It was the beginning of a place of confidence for me. I planted my Spanish flowers in German soil and watered them with German water. I never expected it would be just the thing I needed.

 
Nancy Martinez speaks at least three languages (the fourth is debatable): English, Spanish, German (and Italian). She studies literature in a desire to draw out the human experience in the structure of narratives, and couples that with her language studies to access the structures of thought in different literary traditions. She looks forward to translating her memories into different languages and perhaps working with the publication of scholarly texts after graduation.

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Summer 2016 Issue VII: Transitions

Staring Down a Whole Library: How I Became Less Afraid of Learning Yiddish

There is a photo in which I look absolutely terrified. This photo was taken at the National Yiddish Book Center, during my first week of Yiddish classes, in the middle of what the employees of the book center fondly call “the stacks.” Behind the camera, rows upon piles upon boxes of books written in Yiddish stare me down. In front of the camera, fear radiates from all of my pores.

Translators at the Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, MA.
Translators at the Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, MA.

The program that I participated in, the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program, brought together a group of nineteen students and gave us the materials to learn Yiddish at the National Yiddish Book Center. Our days were split between class, clubs, and activities, but for the first few weeks all I could do to stay afloat was to study long hours, often late into the night. I had long ago accepted that I was a slow language learner, and honestly, at that point, most of my classmates had reached the same conclusion. I could actually feel people scoot their chairs away from mine when it was time for group work. It was starting to become discouraging, and the fear that photo captured, of being unable to learn, remained tangible. The ultimate moment of rejection came when, as a member of Translation Club, I was asked to visually translate the text our group was working on. In other words, my club-mates would translate while I drew the pictures.

I was resentful, but who knew that the best way to make me do something is to tell me that I can’t do it at all? I started studying, even more intensely, with some vague intention of proving everybody wrong, and eventually moved up the ranks in the classroom. I found myself being able to help others, instead of always raising my hand for assistance. I consulted dictionaries, and sat among countless drafts of the translation. At the end of the seven weeks, I presented the translation that our club had put together as a group. It included my illustrations, but also my hard work translating a portion of the short story from English into Yiddish.

When I graduated from the program, I took the time to walk through the stacks once again. There are thousands of books there. Sholem Aleichem, Mendele the Book Peddler, S. An-ski, Peretz, Khava Rosenfarb, Israel Rabon, the list goes on. I wasn’t afraid of them anymore. I knew that with enough hours spent with my nose in the dictionary and a pen in my hand, I could eventually read any of them. And I would. The photo of me at the beginning of the program would contrast greatly against a picture you might take of me in the stacks today. I have learned that with enough hard work, a literature full of history, philosophy, political ideology, religion, and vibrant culture lays at my fingertips, and I have learned that Yiddish is not something to be afraid of. Not at all.

 

schneider_2016-03-28-author-image.png (966×700)Hannah Schneider is a Jewish Studies major at Smith College, where she concentrates in Yiddish translation. To date, she has translated the children’s story “A Memorial by the Stream,” by Moyshe Levin, and is in the process of working with professor Justin Cammy, and several other translators, on the first draft into English of Avrom Sutzkever’s memoir, “Vilna Ghetto.”

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