For my class on language development, the instructor had us watch a video which compared a baby learning his or her native language to an adult trying to learn a foreign language in a foreign country. As an adult trying (admittedly halfheartedly) to learn two foreign languages in a foreign country, I was not impressed by the comparison.
But the more I got to thinking about it, the more I realized that it would be really nice if adults were allowed to learn languages the way children do. So here's what I think I should be allowed to do here in Morocco so I can pick up on more Arabic and French:
1. For at least six months, I should be allowed to do nothing but listen to adults speak. I shouldn't have to cook for myself, transport myself anywhere, or even clean or dress myself. I should just be allowed to sit around and listen to people talk. I should not be expected to respond in any way, other than maybe smiling at them.
2. For the next six months, I should be allowed to make fairly random sounds. I should be allowed – without any self-consciousness whatsoever – to play with my tongue and lips. I should be allowed to walk around making velar fricatives, nasal vowels, glottal stops, etc. I should not be asked to connect any of these sounds with any real-world referents.
3. After about a year of listening to people talk and practicing individual sounds and combinations of sounds, maybe then I'd be ready to start pointing to objects and naming them. (That's pretty much what I do now. Rather than saying in Arabic "Could I please have a kilo of lemons?" I point to the lemons and say "Kilo? Hamd?")
4. Maybe, maybe after that I would be ready for a little bit of formal grammar instruction. But I still shouldn't be expected for at least another year to construct utterances of, say, more than five words each.
I think I might actually be able to learn something if I were allowed to follow these steps.
Seriously, though, I am discovering that I actually can pick up some words just by listening to people talk. (I'm talking about Arabic here. I still absolutely cannot parse French words from each other. French still sounds to me like a bunch of vowels mushed up together. Sorry, HBW.) We went with an American couple to Azrou on Saturday, and the husband, B, speaks pretty fluent Darija and likes talking to Moroccans. So I got to spend a good chunk of the day listening to people speak in Darija. At the end of the day, I realized that I had actually parsed out some individual words. I asked him and his wife what those words meant. I seriously felt like a two-year-old, but I was also proud that I was learning something. Not that knowing the words for "good," "there is," and "yes, it's clear," is particularly helpful, but this was an accomplishment for me.
Maybe there's hope for me yet. Maybe.
No comments:
Post a Comment