S3E18: You only have to understand it once

Full transcript:

Good morning, language learners, happy Wednesday, and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily podcast to offer tips, tricks and encouragement for people who love languages, and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And all this week, we’ve been talking about dealing with all the cloudiness and all the doubts that come with starting something completely new, and today I have another quick reminder for you.

And that’s that, no matter how hard it is right now, no matter how frustrating, a lot of the time, you only have to learn the thing once.

And I need to clarify that by that, I don’t mean revision is dead and memorisation is a one-time event. But what I do mean is, that really complex topic that you can’t get your head around? Understanding the what the subjunctive is for? Figuring out cases? Ergative-absolutive alignment? When to use the perfective and the imperfective? Whatever it is that you just can’t seem to grasp right now, I just want to remind you that you are not alone in struggling with this, and you will get there. 

I know it’s hard. And sitting with bewilderment is really hard.

But you have to sit with it. Make it into questions, as we talked about in yesterday’s episode. Find more examples. Take lots of breaks and really lower the pressure. Resist the urge to conclude that the language is stupid and most world languages manage perfectly well without it, tempting though it may be. Resist the urge to tell yourself that the world stops until it's solved… you can still study other things, you can still communicate with people, and you can still enjoy your language with this going on in the background. And resist the urge to tell yourself that everyone else got this first time, that the problem is you and your brain and that if only you were better at languages, you’d have figured it out by now.

Because this stuff really is difficult. The thing is, we swim around in the most fundamental aspects of the grammar in our native language like fish who never knew that there’s life above the water’s surface. Without learning another language, we’d never be aware that we’re even operating within a system, we’d never question those things, and we’d never look for another way. So when we’re faced with a language that has a completely different way of thinking, it’s really jarring. Of course we feel resistance. Of course we feel confused and lost. And of course we think we’ll never adapt.

But stick at it, and you will have that lightbulb moment. And once it comes, even if you forget that that whole concept exists, even if you uncover more examples of it or new uses of it later, you won’t have to start from the beginning with it again.

Have faith in yourself today, language learners, and have faith that the process will get you there. You’re doing an amazing job, and it will all be worth it. 

And before I go, just a reminder that I’ve just started my 100 Conversations project, where I would love to speak to 100 listeners of the Language Confidence Project, to meet you, to hear about how your language journey is going, and to find out what carving your own path means to you. It’s a really informal 30 minute Skype chat over tea or coffee or whatever beverage you should like to bring, it’s completely free, nobody’s going to try and sell you anything, it really is just a chat, where we can just hang out and chat about languages. If you would like to book a call, I have a Calendly link in the show notes, and it’s also in my Instagram bio at @teawithemily.

Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow.