Question: What was your most embarrassing moment in dealing with the intercultural language barrier?
-- Leslie Logsdon, junior, Theology and Ministry Major, Southern Nazarene University
Response: Language can be a funny thing. It can be the knee-slapping kind of funny, but sometimes it’s just the odd kind of funny. For the weird kind, I think of the two weeks in French language school in which our class slaved over relative pronouns. The Brits in the class had less trouble with them, since British English – like French – still has a lot of formal syntax. But for Americans who rarely say “that” and never use the stuffy “that which,” it was a challenge!
After a six-hour day of frustration and an uncharacteristically lousy quiz score to boot, I moped my way home and slammed the door. All alone, I broke down and sobbed: “God, why did you send me here? I just DON’T GET this pronoun stuff!”
Oddly enough, after the wave of tears had washed over me and subsided, I opened up my grammar book, and suddenly it all clicked. I understood. My next quiz was a smashing success. Only then did I recall what Dr. Paul Orjala, my missions professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary, had said one day years before: “You won’t learn a new language until you’ve cried over it.”
Thankfully, language learning isn’t usually about weeping; more often, it’s just laughing at yourself. One evening during our year of language school in the mountains of southeastern France, my wife, Amy, our two young sons and I took a stroll up to a picturesque medieval town nestled in the foothills. When Amy noticed a single mother struggling to watch her toddlers and change a flat tire, she nudged me in their direction to help.
The mom gladly accepted my assistance as I raised the front end of the car using the jack. With the spare bolted in place, I needed to tell them to watch out, since it was time to lower the tire. What was that verb, to lower? I’d seen it in class just the other day. It finally came to me, but when I’d given my instructions, the French woman looked at me strangely: “You’re going to kiss the tire? Shouldn’t we lower it instead?” It turns out there is a single letter difference between the two French verbs. “Ah, yes,” I muttered, “of course, let’s lower the tire.”
As Dr. Orjala said, “You’re going to make 10,000 mistakes learning a language, so you might as well get started now.” My theory is: Make your mistakes with confidence! And most of all, don’t forget to laugh at yourself along the way. Most people will soon forget the embarrassing moment, but will long remember that you loved them enough to learn their language.
You can read this and other language learning stories in Amy Crofford's book, The Tower of Babel was a Bad Idea. It’s one of the Nazarene mission books published this year, found at www.NPH.com.
Editor's note: The picture is of Greg and his language teacher, Madame Weil.
-- Dr. Greg Crofford is a missionary serving as director of the Nazarene Theological Institute, a decentralized ministerial education program active in 15 African nations. Previously, Greg and his wife Amy served for 13 years on the West African and French Caribbean fields, working in both theological education (Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti) and church planting (Benin).