Time to Read:
I made a friend!
Okay, that’s not exactly postworthy.
But, here on my final country stop on this global language extravaganza world tour, there is a significance to this new friendship.
Going to language schools and new countries, making new friends is par for the course. There are tons of friendly, curious people with a very specific shared interest. Friendships are constantly blooming and I have treasured the experience to meet so many wonderful, fun, interesting, lovely human beings across the globe. Some are friends with which pleasantries and/or good times are exchanged for the duration and then, after goodbyes, they turn into “we may never ever meet again”s, and that is just fine. Some friends are keepers and end up traveling with you afterwards in text messages and photos and updates exchanged. And they are all a wonderful part of this whole experience.
And, on this global pathway, one of the fun features of these new acquaintances and friends is that they are collected from countries far and wide. Everywhere I go, no matter what language I am learning, I am surrounded by a smorgesborg of world languages just by the people around me. This has been one of my favorite parts of the trip. I have had opportunities to continue studying my target languages even after leaving the countries within which I have studied them.
Here, at my current school in Japan, I have had conversations (varying significantly in size and depth depending on my capacity) in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese and, of course, Japanese. That’s my whole trip in one room! I have absolutely loved it!
Yesterday, after spending the day speaking fairly broken Japanese, then having some conversations in French, I came home to a message in Russian from my Russian homestay mother that just received my postcard. I responded to her message with a voice note in Russian. This is my happy place. To have friendships all over the globe and the ability to engage them each in their language. Different things bring different people joy. For me, this is pretty high up on the list of how to bring a smile to my face.
Throughout this trip, I have had continuous opportunities to continue to study my various target languages with new friends and it has been fantastic. However, there is one sidebar to this. In most every place where an international crowd has gathered to study languages, most everyone pretty comfortably speaks English. So, any conversation had in another language is usually a kindness to indulge me and then, only temporarily, as we often revert back to English once the other person tires of whatever tiring degree to which I am butchering their mother tongue. Fair enough. I understand. The friends I meet are not there to help me advance in my linguistic pursuits – we are there to share the journey…and the most common language these days for doing that, is English.
However, here in Japan, I met a Frenchwoman that doesn’t speak fantastic English…so she PREFERS to speak French! That is, of course, once we have both exhausted the few sentences of conversation we can get out in Japanese before the effort to continue becomes mildly futile if we are to have any kind of truly interesting conversation – or really, honestly, any conversation at all.
Hence, we arrive at why having made a new friend is, in my mind, postworthy.
Here in the last country on my tour, I have made a friend FULLY in the language that I studied on the first country of my tour.
Where is the confetti!? Well, it is in my own mind. I am feeling a real sense of triumph and accomplishment and dreams coming true.
I am so aware of the limitations of my French – the struggles in my pronunciation, the vocabulary that I stumble over finding and, of course, the beaucoup des erreurs that I make in my grammar as I am speaking. But, my French friend has given me the stamp that I can say that I am “courrament” in French! I don’t know if I am ready to claim fluency. It is a word, like “love”, with so many meanings and definitions, none of which can claim the official meaning, as there is so much nuance and subjectivity to it. BUT, what I can say definitively is this. I have built an entire relationship in a language that is not English. That is an objective, observable fact. No interpretation needed. And that, for me, is a milestone worth celebrating.
To become fluent enough to form an actual relationship with someone in another language has been a dream and a goal of mine from the beginning of this trip. In conversations with my friend from back home, Polina, who speaks English, Russian and French, all fluently, I would express my marvel towards her language level, often saying, “I can’t imagine being at a level in a language like you, where I could build an actual relationship with someone in that language.” I remember saying that 5.5 months ago while I was in France struggling through a litany of conversational barriers. And now, here I am, in Japan, with a new French friend.
Whether I can say I am actually fluent or not, I do not know. But, I can say I made a friend. Je me suis faite une amie. And, for me, that is enough.
Yesterday, just before we were off on our afternoon school-organized cultural activity of going to a Karate class (which was SO fun and I broke a board with my fist!), she leaned over to me with a quiet smile and said, “Kyo wa, watashi no tanjyobi desu.” This means, “Today is my birthday.” It was quite adorable, especially since this is a woman with 2 grandchildren and 3 more on the way by the end of the year. I immediately turned to one of our teachers and asked, “How do I say Happy Birthday in Japanese?” and then dinner plans to celebrate were immediately made.
We shared stories and laughter and discussions of life, learning Japanese and the menu, all in French. We laughed about the hurdles of language learning after I returned to tell her that, after handling the bill at the counter, I said to the woman that worked at the restaurant, “Ohaiyo gozaimasu.” with a slight bow. This means, “Good morning.” It was 8:45PM. I was tired. I corrected myself and said what I had intended to say, “Arigato gozaimasu.” The woman at the counter laughed a shy laugh with me that she had clearly been holding in until I acknowledged my own faux pas. My new friend told me the story of how, she asked a waiter during a different restaurant excursion for a glass of water without ice. Japanese people, like Americans, serve their water cold. French people go for room temperature. They brought her back a glass of piping hot water in a hot mug. Such is what communication barriers can produce. Holding her glass of steaming H2O, to get her room temperature water, she then had to say, “Can I have some ice please?”. Oh, how confused they must have been.
We laughed and pondered the exotic menu offerings that are outside both of our zones of the familiar.
And we did it all in French.
I have had many goals and hopes on this trip. Many abstract and intangible, and all of which I can say I have, so far, satisfied even more than I’d hoped. But the most concrete goal and lofty one, was to take each of the languages I studied and notch my ability in them up by at least one visible level. So far, with the possiblr exception of Japanese, where I still have almost four weeks to get there and I have definitely alteady improved significantly, I can say I have accomplished it, especially in German, Italian and Chinese – all languages that I couldn’t communicate in at all before this trip and I can now have some degree of a conversation, even if those conversations can only be measured in minutes.
But the big goal, the golden ticket, the crown jewel, the top of the mountain has always been the “F” word. To reach fluency in just one language was the, “If only I could dream…” goal. If the definition of fluency is speaking without an accent, with perfect grammar, at no loss for words and doing it all with the ease, naturalness and colloquialism of a native speaker – then no, I am not there in any of my languages. Quite a distance yet to go as a matter of fact. But, to be able to make, build and sustain a friendship without the help of my native language at all…that I have accomplished.
So, as I peer over the horizon of the spinning globe, seeing my home slowly but surely rush towards me as the end of this trip nears, a land filled with trillions of English words flitting and floating in the air back and forth between native speakers in every second, a land where I will, once again, be able to swim easily through the linguistic waters of my home country without ever considering conjugations, tenses, declensions, auxiliary verb choices or how to navigate communicating through the lack of a vocabulary word (wait, no, I will still be doing that last one), I find myself checking a box. As far as the language that I started this journey with, the one that I have now traveled the longest in and out of, over the course of months and miles, I can now say, I have arrived at the place I hoped so very much to arrive.
Only now, I can say it in French.
J’y suis arrivée.
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