This is a road of humiliation and tears


The language journey is a spiney one. It's colourful and challenging, but painful. And then there's this question 'how many languages do you speak?' From where this hangs is dependent on so many tiers of the sprawling vine of language knowledge, and a short interchange about tomato types in a market to chatting with a friend's family over tea to handling customer problems on the phone in Italian can bring about completely different outcomes. I've had 'you speak like a native' to 'there is a language barrier, is it better to speak in English?' With Russian it's the same. People are surprised when they hear I speak Russian, and often say 'and where did you learn such good Russian?' but I also got from a baker in a dusty bread booth 'you speak Russian badly, don't you', so matter-of-factly, I just laughed. 

The job I have currently involves solving problems with printers. 'I'm so jealous you get to practice your Italian all day' several friends have said. If only they knew though, if only they could feel the terror and dread of answering a customer call, the intense need to put the phone down and end it asap. If only they could feel the shame when fellow colleagues look at you like a useless rag, when they speak English to you even though their English is terrible and I understand them better in Italian. The shame when, even after learning this language for six years, having spent time on farms and internships, with families and artists and translators, I still couldn't answer a client's simple question 'che tempo fa in Georgia?' - a question about the weather! An A1 topic - not to say a Brit's topic - the weather!

It's humbling to work with people who grew up speaking x3 languages, their mum being one nationality, their country's national tv or children's cartoons in another. Being a native English speaker is just not enough, it's not impressive, it's at once my language and not. But my love of English is not just the communication side; my English is rich and creative, not littered with mistakes and banal expressions, having an English-teacher-grandmother made sure of this. My French, Georgian and Italian friends, Nathan, Niko, Nicole (love the 3 Ns) give me hope with their beautiful, inquisitive English, they care more than simple communication. Are you a prescriptivist or descriptivist? Again, it depends doesn't it. 

How many more fuck ups will there be? How many more people am I going to confuse and subject to my terrible Italian/Russian? This is a road of humiliation and tears, but it's exciting to think that my Italian level has never been this good and of the heights it's capable of soaring to. Beware of complacency, for there is always more to learn.

And now, I stand in the market and look at the pyramids of aubergines and towers of tomatoes and sweeping swathes of parsley and dill and coriander and purple basil, all bound with a single band of willow twine. I order in Russian and they understand me. Tomorrow I will go to the sulphur baths and be pummelled by rumpelly soviet women and they will understand me. I will send some voicenotes to Italian families I know to catch up and they will understand me. On Monday, I'll take some calls and they won't go perfectly well and I'll definitely make some mistakes, but they will, on the whole, understand me.

"Someone with broken English likely knows every single word that you know, but in another language. They literally know tens of thousands more words than you. Think about that the next time you question someone's intelligence for struggling with the only language you know." @the.language.nerds

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