Word Nerd 2: Elusive Fluency
English isn't just my first language, it's my only language. I grieve the profundity of this ignorance because cultural and linguistic diversity is humanity's strength. It's what adds hue and texture to the beauty of the human tapestry we weave together. I have tried to reach out beyond my linguistic limitation, but with minimal success.
I got pretty good with German in high school, but that was only under the fierceness of Frau Janetzky's tutelage. She was a tall, bony Austrian woman with bulging blue eyes, and a sharp, jutting jaw. Einstein hair even she, the Teutonic Terror, couldn't tame. She had escaped the Nazis as a child to emigrate to America and said things like “Ve vill haff a focabulary kviz tomorgan und you vill do vell or heads vill rrrroll.” And you know I studied hard for those vocabulary quizzes too, because I believed her. That was a long time ago though and I couldn't tell you the time of day in German now.
Spanish charades are a matter of survival working the auto parts counter for us, the unilingual. I got through it with “enseña me,” and “mira.” I have tried very hard to learn how to say thank you in all the rainbow languages I have encountered, to be polite. The only one that still eludes me completely, although I still struggle with the Diné pronunciation, is Katarina's Slovakian thank you, which I can't remember at all even though she's given it to me a half dozen times or more.
The last two learners I worked with as a volunteer with the literacy program were two young Thai sisters. Pom and Pem. Their real first names are long and musical, as is their Thai last name. Pom and Pem are either abbreviations or nicknames for their linguistically impaired American friends and teachers, near as I can tell. Pom was 12 and Pem was 15 when I started working with them, beautiful girls who had been rescued from a bad family situation in Thailand by a kind distant relative living in Williams Arizona, of all places. They must have thought they'd fallen off the edge of the earth. This is a guess though, we never had enough language in common to explore that topic.
The sisters didn't have one word of English between them when they got here. I'm not exaggerating. Not a single one. I had to teach them money, and each of our learning sessions started with a recitation of their names, their address, their parent's names, and their parent's phone numbers, in clear English. I was terrified they'd get lost and disappear like so many beautiful young women do. They had cell phones so we also rehearsed calling 911 and what to say when the dispatcher answered. Much as I loved it, we had to abandon their long, musical Thai last name. It was too complicated for the American ear and they referred to themselves and Pom and Pem Smith—their foster father's surname.
Pem, like many fifteen year-olds, was only interested in language as far as it would help her navigate the social minefield of high school, which she negotiated just fine with the brilliance of her smile. Pom, however, was sweet and shy and curious. She was scholarly in nature. She was keen to learn the language of her new country and wanted to read and write it correctly. She had the best WTF face I've ever seen, and I saw it a lot.
Almost a year in, we had progressed to the point we were making nouns plural. “Well,” I told Pommy, “this one is easy. You just add an 's' at the end. One tree, many trees.”
“So, one leaf, many leafs.”
“Uh, dang, no. That one is 'leaves.'” As I wrote it out for her she looked at me with that oh-so-eloquent WTF face. “A person leafs through a book. I guess it's probably because a page used to be called a leaf.”
WTF face. “I thought 'leaves' meant go away.”
“Yes, well, it does.”
“How can you tell the difference?”
“By the context.”
WTF face. “What is context?”
“How it's used. Whether the person is talking about a tree or departing. Okay, you're right. I see it now. There are no rules, This is not easy and it makes no sense at all. I'm sorry. I guess we just have to memorize this stuff.”
She was far too polite to roll her eyes at me, but she didn't need to. Her expression said it all. My admiration for my language as beautiful and coherent was crashing down around me. If I'd have had a knife, I'd have stabbed myself in the heart with it.
She came to our meeting one day and asked me what a gag was. My heart sank. “A gag can be a joke, or it can make you barf, or it can be something they stick in your mouth so you can't speak.”
WTF face. “But they at least sound different, don't they?”
“No, dearest, they don't.”
WTF face.
I was born with a defective gene. It compels me to write. I strive to create things in writing that might inspire and entertain readers, open their minds to a different point of view, maybe change their consciousness a little. Perhaps even contribute to saving the world in some small, as yet undiscovered way.
One of my professors, fluent in seven languages by his own definition, said fluency is the ability to write passable poetry. By that definition, I'm not even fluent in my only language. The language I've ruined my eyes apprehending. The one to which I have been such a loyal servant my whole life. The one I suffer so to try and communicate in writing with. I know from my own struggles with German that Pommy, while desperate to understand, could not tiptoe around the vagaries of English she encountered in real time. She had to stop and process. Think it through. Translate and puzzle. The sentence, and the gag that prompted her question that day (which I hope had been of the joke variety) had eluded her completely. Immersion in a foreign language is brutal. An exchange student's first dream in English is often taken as a first, fleeting glimpse of fluency. 
A breakthrough moment. Sadly, I didn't get to work with Pom long enough to experience that magical threshold with her. For myself, the closest I ever got to it was the occasional nightmare, in English, about Frau Janetzky with a hatchet.
MoonLit’s Word Nerd (WRDNRD) series explores the pain and pleasure of one woman’s ambivalent relationship with language. She writes, but not well enough to suit her, nor can she let go of the compulsion to try. She easily identifies this compulsion as a kind of mental illness, but she is so far gone she’s no longer satisfied with being dissatisfied with her use of just one language. Now she yearns to be dissatisfied and inarticulate in multiple languages. What was that definition of insanity again?
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For all that she gripes about it constantly, Terryl is grateful to have the time and space to write, here in her dotage. She is grateful to all the teachers who have helped her (or tried to) learn to use language along the way.
Not all of those teachers spoke or wrote English (Terryl’s only language), neither did they work in schools. Terryl is deeply grateful to all the learners she worked with through the literacy program. She can only hope she taught them a fraction of what she, in turn, learned from them.
Terryl is eternally grateful to the Life in Pieces writing circle. The deadlines SUCK! They’re also the only reason Terryl ever gets anything written so she’s thankful for them.
Terryl is also grateful to Al, whose skills compliment hers so well. There would be little point in doing the heavy lifting of writing without him, because without him nobody would ever read it.
Terryl and Al are both deeply thankful to the people who read our work. You’re why we do it. We love hearing back from you, and are ever so grateful to you for sharing our efforts with your friends and family.