Pathway to Understanding

Verstehen Sie Deutsch?  Est-ce que tu parles français?  Tu linguam Latinam?

All my life, I have loved languages—words, idioms, the fact that one language allows a speaker to say something in a way that can’t quite be replicated in another language. An early childhood ambition was to learn many languages and become a translator at the United Nations. Then, an encounter with reality: I discovered that I was not good at learning languages.  Alas! Dear reader, do you doubt me? Here are the languages that I have explored, either through the American school system or continuing education courses or private lessons: French, Spanish, Latin, Japanese, Russian, and Hebrew.  I appreciate the beauty of the sounds and the majesty of the literature, but am I fluent in any of those languages? Non. Proficient, perhaps? Nein.

Sometimes I feel that I am a living example of a joke a Russian friend once told me: what do you call someone who speaks many languages? A polyglot. Someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. Someone who speaks one language? An American.

Yet, in the immortal words of Alexander Pope, “hope springs eternal”:  I am now an adult-education student, enrolled in Beginning German. All my life I have wanted to learn German; when I moved as a child from Louisiana to the Washington, D.C. area, I thought: surely this cosmopolitan area will give me the chance to study German! However, my middle grade school offered only French and Spanish—lovely languages, both—and I took French. A few decades later, I am now proud owner of the textbook, German is Fun. Am I hopeful that I will become proficient in the study of this language before my May 2020 trip to Germany? No, I am not. But I do hope to pick up a few words and a modicum of greater understanding. Then, perhaps if someone says to me, “Verstehen Sie Deutsch? “(Do you understand German?), I will at least know what I am being asked! With any luck, perhaps I will be able to reply truthfully: “ein bisschen” (a bit).