TRAVEL|CULTURE
3-Year-Olds Are Better Than Me Which Is A Hard Pill To Swallow
Yes, I am improving, but it is a humbling journey of patience and acceptance
The above photo is how I look and feel when I speak German.
The photo below is how I feel and look when people are speaking in German, Italian, Spanish or French to me.
What do the two photos have in common?
They’re both photos of toddlers, which is a perfect representation of my skill level in German.
I’m currently living in Germany. If you’d like to know more about what brought me here, you can read about it in the following story:
English is my native language. I was born to American parents and raised in Philadelphia. I loved the sound of French so much that I used to pretend at times to have a French accent while talking to my mom.
In America, for whatever asinine reason, most schools wait until high school to teach foreign languages.
I say that this is foolish because:
50% of our ability to learn is developed by age 3 and 30% by age 8. That means that our learning pathways are mostly developed at a young age.
The truth is researchers aren’t able to agree on an age. What researchers can agree on, is that it’s easier for children to learn languages than adults. A study done by a neurology professor at UCLA, Dr. Paul Thompson and his team found out that the brain systems in charge of language learning have accelerated growth from six years old until puberty.
Another study was done at MIT and it concluded that the most optimal time to learn a new language and achieve native fluency was by age 10.
After 3 years and 1 semester of French in high school and college, I quit. In 1995 there was no Internet nor smart devices to help me practice with native speakers.
There were no apps to make language learning more fun, only books, flash cards, movies (which weren’t easy to get on VHS then) and magazines.
I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina for 3 months in 1999 and became conversationally fluent in Spanish without any prior attempts to learn the language. I even started dreaming in Spanish which was pretty awesome.
When I returned to the States, I began working as a waitress in Seattle and was able to keep up with my Spanish by talking to the back of the house staff at the restaurant where I worked. They were all from Mexico and were happy to speak Spanish with me.
I loved it, but lost it as well once I left Seattle in 2003.
I have wanted to become fluent in another language since high school and found Spanish to be the most practical language to learn, but I never took it seriously enough to master it.
It wasn’t until I visited Italy in 2014 that I truly fell in love with a language, and it’s culture, and became inspired to master Italian. However, I didn’t commit to learning Italian until 2017.
I bought a big, fat grammar book that was also a workbook with games to make learning more fun. I used the app DuoLingo for the first time and liked it, but I didn’t stay consistent with it. I
It wasn’t until I joined the community on the website HelloTalk that I began to see real progress. HT helped me connect with people in Italy who wanted to learn English.
They post photos, texts and videos from YouTube in their native language as well as other languages.
HT makes it easy to correct each other’s mistakes and learn from one another’s post. You can privately message people and call them via the website as well. It was a game changer for me.
I befriended a few people whom I eventually met in real life as well.
I’ve been to Italy 7 times since 2014 and spent 3 months there this past spring, which has all helped me to improve in speaking and understanding Italian, but I’m still far from fluency.
In September of 2020, I decided (again) to move to Germany and started to teach myself German using DuoLingo, HelloTalk, Flash Academy and Babbel. Babbel is my favorite so far, but I still struggle with being consistent when using apps.
I listen to German music, watch shows and movies in German, (try to) read (children’s) books in German and speak it when I go shopping. I also have 2 language partners with whom I try to talk to over the phone every week or every other week.
People have been very friendly and patient with my limited German speaking abilities, but it’s hard and humbling to be 45 years old and sound like a 3 year old when speaking with other adults.
Regardless, I keep at it because I, and others, respect the fact that I’m at least trying to speak in German.
It’s surprising to me how many Americans go to foreign countries and expect them to speak English.
The only way to get past the “toddler stage” is to keep going and growing with study, practice and engagement.
Hopefully by this time next year, I’ll feel more like a 10 year old or 5th grader when it comes to my level of German, and maybe Italian as well. Eventually I’d like to go back to learning Spanish and French also because they are very useful languages to know.
For now, I’m sticking with my baby steps in German and appreciate the fact that I am starting to be able to speak (slowly) in full sentences.
It’s never too (early or) late to learn…
