It was three o’clock in the morning, and after having spent hours conversing in French and sipping French wine with other students, my words in French were leaving my mouth in much the same fashion that boulders leave mountains. That’s when I decided it was time to go to bed. My heavy feet miraculously carried me back to my tiny room in the French residence hall, as my thoughts were everywhere but in the direction I was walking. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I absolutely loved speaking in French. After having spent 19 years speaking in English, being able to express my ideas, my sentiments?my life?in another language was phenomenal. Yet, only having been there one week, my perspective on language remained fairly precarious. I saw it as a mathematics equation; I had something I wanted to say in English, so all I had to do was find the equivalent in French and plug in the French words in place of the English. To me, language was a set of variables, variables that are replaced with the words of a certain language, and undoubtedly, the same sentence would hold the same meaning in different languages. It was kind of a fun game, a little challenging at times, but I was comforted in my belief that it was all logical, mathematical?I mean, it was just a language!
That’s when my falsely constructed logic of language came crashing down on my head. As I was preparing for bed, I heard a knock on my door. Upon answering, I found one of the friends with whom I had spent hours this evening laughing over, discussing, and analyzing the differences between our two cultures. I was so happy to have made such a nice new friend!
That’s when his head dove in to kiss mine, and I consequently found myself using my elbow to wedge myself out from between him and my door, slamming my door behind me. We stood in the hallway, staring blankly at one another, dumbfounded with confusion. I realized something had been miscommunicated between the two of us, for I had never said anything to give him the impression that I was interested in him. Yet just the same, here I was at three in the morning, dodging French kisses from this French speaker, and I realized I was going to have to pull out the “let’s be pals” speech?a speech I had never given in French.
Halfway through my speech of friendship, the expression on his face made it very apparent that I was not succeeding. Yet how could I communicate that I merely wanted to be friends when the French word for friend is the same word for girlfriend or boyfriend? Suddenly it hit me painfully?like a bug hitting a windshield: language was not some logical combination of sounds; Language is much, much, much more complicated than that. I realized I may have learned a lot of different French words that I could use as variables in different sentences, but I had failed to learn the actual French language, and thus I was left a victim of my inability to effectively communicate.
Language is more than just a combination of words or even just vocal sounds. It consists of many different layers, from the historic roots of its words and people, to the gestures and body language employed by its people. To the underlying values found in the construction of catch phrases. For weeks I walked around extending my hand for a handshake every time I met someone new, only to later find out that it is extremely rude for a girl to offer her hand for a handshake (the French give two kisses on the cheeks as a greeting). I had not wished to be rude, but just as words do not carry the same meanings in both English and French, the meaning of different gestures and behaviors can vary drastically.
After my friend explained to me that he wanted to marry me and have babies “of two cultures,” I decided to drastically change my approach to learning the French language. Thinking in English and translating into French is ridiculously flawed, and the only way to actually communicate in a foreign language is to absolve yourself of the barriers of your first language and think in the foreign language. Our first language structures our thinking and creates boundaries which our thoughts can never cross.
Mary Nagle is a sophomore in the College. She is a Kansas girl who already misses its sunsets and the midnight trains that flatten coins quicker than gravity could ever flatten our universe.
