Lilac Colored Glasses

I find myself becoming more and more confused lately with languages.

Because I am an American and we, as a culture, have rendered ourselves totally useless with more than one language.
Seriously, in a country like Belgium, which is tiny and surrounded by much larger, historically more powerful, influential countries, and which has been occupied by several of those countries (the ones I know of are Spain, France, Holland and I think possibly Austria-Hungary and that’s just off the top of my head), it is pretty much essential to know more than one language. CB is fluent in English and very proficient in French (I think he used to be fluent but lack of use has made him rusty). He also has a very comprehensive passive knowledge of German and a background in Latin. It’s not difficult or unusual for him to switch between English and Dutch with relative ease. I’ve only ever seen him get hung up when he’s trying to speak three languages at once.

Yeah.

Two years ago I could count to ten in a few languages and I knew enough Spanish to say “no more” and “for Spanish, press two”. I had taken German in high school and I’d done well but in retrospect the class was pathetic. We barely learned anything aside from basic grammar and vocabulary in 3 years of class. I tried French in college and did well on the basic level but floundered once I hit grammar. In all honesty I think part of my problem was that I didn’t need French. I had a minimal language requirement to fulfill for my degree so I took French, but I wasn’t really interested in learning or using it. So I passed with the help of a horny old Dutch prof and a lot of cleavage.

Now I consider myself almost fluent in Dutch. I can certainly hold my own in a conversation and I can watch television without subtitles (although I still prefer them so that I don’t miss nuances or to help when people are speaking dialect) and I can read newspapers and magazines and comprehend most of what I’m reading. I actually sometimes think of words in Dutch before I think of them in English. About ten seconds ago I wrote “ondertitling” instead of “subtitles” because I couldn’t think of the word in English. On top of that, over the past month I’ve begun to develop a passive understanding of French after being bombarded with it in Brussels. And I’m picking it up much faster than I picked up Dutch. Granted, I did have 3 semesters of French (10 years ago and not consecutively), but still I’m surprised at how much I can understand already. I imagine a large part of it is from being surrounded by written French every day (Belgium, being a bilingual country*, has to have both languages on everything i.e. food packaging, public notices, official websites). I’m still not speaking any French aside from a few basic words that I need to plug in to my English to help my mostly French speaking coworker understand what I’m talking about. Oh and “oui”. I’m trying really hard to say “oui” instead of “ja” because most French speaking Brusselars really can’t seem to make that intuitive leap and realize that “ja” means “oui”.

The result of all of this isn’t huge, overall. It has made me appreciate how much Dutch I actually do know and can speak and it has made me want to learn that third language, just to be able to compete in a Belgian job market (I’m much more driven than the majority of Wallonia apparently). But the biggest thing I’ve noticed?
My English is suffering.
Yeah, seriously. I play several gaming sites (okay, not since I got a job, but I still play at least one regularly) and I really notice lately that when I respond to people’s comments my sentence structure is really jumbled and confused. It really reads awkwardly at times. And sometimes I can’t always think of the best way to say something in English. A good example was a few weeks ago when I was waiting for the train and was suddenly inspired to write a poem. I had some really great imagery in my head and I wrote it down but when I got to the ending line of my stanza it just didn’t sound right. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why until I reread a few times and realized I was taking a Dutch phrase and trying to anglicize it and it just wouldn’t work. See, in English we say “the train is arriving” while in Dutch they say “de trein komt zo dadelijk aan.” And in my poem I was writing “the train is coming on” which made perfect sense to me because I was literally translating the Dutch. But it clearly wouldn’t work in English and it took me almost a half hour to figure out why.

So yes, the Dutch is coming along just fine and I’m learning some French, to boot. Now I just have to work on retaining my English and I’ll be all set

*And they are actually a trilingual country, but German is kind of ignored in most areas

** For those of you hoping for baby stories, sorry to dissapoint but there was a stomach virus going around this week so most of my stories revolve around projectile vomiting and I thought it best to spare you from those details.

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