On Bilingualism: Inside-Out

The neighbor's ajisai are the loveliest blue...

Around the time I went to Germany, I used to have a recurring dream that was so vivid I can recall it to this day in its entirety.

I remember standing in a square room with no doors or windows, although it wasn't dark inside.  The entire floor was a sort of jungle gym of square pylons of varying colors and heights--some near the floor, low enough to sit on, others nearly touching the ceiling.  As soon as I noticed these things, I became aware that the floor was covered with water.  Water that was rapidly rising.  To escape the water I climbed the pylons, sure that there must be some exit near the top of the room.  There was no exit.  I sat on the top pylon, flattening myself against the ceiling, as the water swirled around my feet.  At this point in the dream, the fear started.  Just before the water reached my face, I took the biggest breath I could...and held it.  I could swim around the room, but there was still no way out.  The breath began escaping from my mouth. I tried to slow it, to forestall the inevitable moment when I would have to breathe in.

Some part of my brain knew I was holding my breath in my sleep.

My body started to shake from the effort of forcing the flow of air out instead of in... gone.  An involuntary gasping intake of water into my lungs and-- I could breathe.  In. Out.  Normal, easy breaths.  Of water.  The dream always ended with a feeling of  joyous wonder at my ability to breathe underwater.

Years later someone explained that awful, wonderful dream to me.  She said it was my own brain telling me not to worry about going to Germany and speaking German.  The room was Germany, the water was the language—my brain’s very literal way of representing the “immersion” experience of living in another country, speaking another language.  My brain was telling me I would be able to “breathe underwater", that is, I would be able to communicate in German.

I can clearly remember the first night in the Studentenheim on Kaulbach Strasse--I was terrified.  I was the only student from the exchange program in that particular dormitory, so at first I had no one to talk to.  I remember lying on my bed, feeling as though someone was pouring ice water into my veins starting at my feet.

I remember wandering around the second day until I found a supermarket.  I  was hungry, but couldn't cook anything since I had no pots or kitchen things.  I bought a coke and cookies--paying for them without speaking.  The following day I found a stand selling wurst.  I couldn't put words together to ask for what I wanted, but I was hungry since I hadn't eaten anything but cookies and coke the day before.  I pointed, and what came out was "Das!" (that!).   [Mini-moral:  if you are hungry enough, you will speak]

I went back feeling defeated and ashamed-- six years of German, and all I could say was "das".  I thought I must be stupid;  I thought I had no language ability at all.  I wish someone had told me before I went what a Silent Period is--and how normal and even necessary it is.  That *all* language learners--including, especially, babies-- go through it in an immersion situation.  It lasts weeks or months for adults (sometimes longer), one to two years for babies (no such thing as a chatty newborn;-)).  During the silent period, it's your ears that are doing all the work--following the rhythm, the prosody, of the language; picking out words and phrases; accumulating examples of syntax.  And within that expanding balloon of comprehension appears a tiny new balloon for production--speech production *always* lags listening comprehension in immersion.

I struggled when classes started at the Uni Hamburg-- everyone spoke so quickly.  I had to ask so often for people to repeat what they'd said, I thought for sure they must have believed me to be hard of hearing.  I thought there couldn't be anything harder than trying to understand my professors lecturing/gabbling at top speed... until I got Telephone Duty in the dormitory.  The dormitories (this was 1988, mind) had only one phone for incoming calls, and residents took turns acting as "receptionist", answering the phone and buzzing other residents when they had a call.   I discovered, upon picking up a phone for the first time, that it is an order of magnitude more difficult to understand someone whom you cannot see.  You lose an entire layer of facial expressions, lip-reading, hand gestures, and actions that are of signal help in the early stages of language learning.  

It was a good month and a half before I began to feel comfortable speaking in restaurants, stores, and similar situations.  Three or four months into my year abroad, I noticed that words and phrases (from tv, or heard from acquaintances) would seemingly jump out at me--"Ooh!  That's the fourth time in two days I've heard that word!"....and I'd go look it up.  Aha.  So that's what it means.  And then I owned it--I could use it in my own still sometimes halting speech.  Sometimes the way a particular person talked would strike my ear--and I would sit in my room repeating like a toddler phrases and clauses I'd heard.  Grown-up babbling stage:-))   I remember distinctly sitting on my bed saying "Ich mein', dass das eigentlich...." ...over and over, in an effort to say it in the smooth, cool way that Monika (who lived down the hall--different Monika;-)) did.  "I think that it's actually..."--this is the sort of phrase that, usually, you "unhear".  That is, you don't have to listen to every word of it--you can guess what's coming before it's said.  This sort of phrase is really a high-level filler-- an edumacated way of saying "umm".  I remember feeling inordinately pleased with myself the first time I got a whole sentence out with that phrase stuck on the front.

Every step along the way, the experience of learning from the "inside" was much more like learning to sing a song than learning the rules of a game before playing it.  Another language teacher once told me that "language is acoustical, not intellectual".  I largely agree with that.  Gradually, bits and pieces of the language "stick" in your head in the same way a song gets stuck up there.  (Please note that, as a public service,  I did not embed any links to songs that might get stuck in your head.  Am I not nice?:-))

There's actually more I'd like to say--but it's 3am, and I'm ready to pass out.  To be continued...;-))