Hola Frustration

Language is an odd thing.

I can't remember not being able to speak English. I've taken for granted how easily the words slip off my tongue, how simple it is to connect words to my ideas. No more.

Trying to learn another language is like reverting to Huggies and high chairs. You're back at square one, except your brain isn't half so spongelike. I never thought it would be this frustrating to stare down at a page and not recognize a single word. It's weird. I'm used to seeing a word and its meaning instantly presenting itself in my brain, with little to no effort. Now I must slave over the simplest of phrases to glean half-correct, ill-translated English equivalences out of them. Struggling to communicate has to be the most frustrating thing one can encounter.

I feel a whole new level of respect for people entering new countries without knowing the language, or those who rely on Braille or sign language. It takes them twice the effort to achieve what we do every day without even thinking. Great, now I sound like an after school special.

But there are also positives to the pitfalls of new language learning. It shows that some things are universal, unequivocally human. Every person who has a heart that beats and a brain that thinks understands some things unquestionably. There's something a little amazing in that. Sometimes, there's a bazillion ways to say something (in fourteen tenses, perhaps) but you only need to understand one.