In the last year or so, I have made some headway into the world of speaking Czech. Oh, I have ‘spoken’ Czech for years, but recently I have been studying the actual language, and, you know, the words and grammar that make it sensible to other people who speak that language. So, while I am still about as fluent as a pineapple melting in the sun, now that pineapple can use the right case to speak of its misery.
We meet at the university once a week. My teacher is an extraordinarily patient woman who balances that patience along with a strictness that is appreciated and yet not terrifying. If awards were given for things such as ‘she resists the urge to beat the student with the coursebook even though he forgot the dative again’ then her wall would be littered with their corresponding ribbons. She is tough and nice, she is as obsessive as I am. So I genuinely feel bad about the weekly torture to which I subject her as I mangle her language right there in front of her, as if we’re in the end stages of a Korean game show.
Besides the gradual language acquisition, studying the language has brought secondary advantages that I had not foreseen. One is that I now have a counter frame of reference with my students. When they look for the thousandth time at their phone, I can say ‘I don’t do that in my Czech lesson’ – and, and this is important, I am not lying. When they don’t do their homework, I say ‘I always do my homework for my Czech lesson.’ A notable point is that when I pull this card, the students don’t seem to acknowledge what I have said, what it means, that anyone has even spoken to them, or who I am. But still, feels good.
Another secondary point of attrition is that I am now eking forth into different sections of the language cave. Before I existed in the back of the cave, where I knew that I knew nothing but confidently thought I knew some words and set phrases. Now I have come to a part of the cave where I know a little something, and thus realize that even the things that I thought I knew, I didn’t know.
An example. For eons and eons and eons, I used the phrase ‘kolík to stojí?’ thinking that it meant how much is that? Meanwhile, it should be ‘kolik to stojí?’ If this looks the same to you, then you shan’t be blamed, the difference is in the long i (í) in the first word. This means the difference between saying kol-eek and ko-lick. While the second one does indeed inquire about the cost of products or services, the first – evidently – is a memorandum on the state of one’s erection. And so, I report with grave embarrassment the fact that I have been telling waitresses for 20 years about my erections. Seems like a lost opportunity if I’m being honest.
There’s more. I’m getting more adventurous and I have the single more combustible conversation starter in all the Czech Republic – a dog. Now, like most British people (which I’m not), I go through life terrified at the prospect of spontaneous conversation. When that conversation is in a second language, the terror is genuine. But now I am finding the most remarkable things – that I understand what is being said. And as such, I think that I can just go in there and answer. I should have my mind examined. This has led to their confusion and my embarrassment. Sometimes vice versa. Sometimes all of the above for all parties. Afterwards, I assume that my interlocutor does what I do: finds the closest pub. But at least when they get there, they can tell their bartender the story.
The first unwritten rule in language learning is this: don’t worry about looking foolish. This is because there’s no way to avoid that. No matter your study and intentions, you are at some point going to step into one of language’s many, many, many booby traps. You are going to call someone a prick, you’re going to say something sexual about your (or someone else’s) grandmother, you’re going to say you will when you meant you were, and you are going to explain with earnest the state of your erection to a complete stranger who’s been bringing you food and drinks all night. It’s right there in the unwritten rule book of language. It’s part of the joy of language learning.
