Baby Talk

When I was preparing to come to France, I had a lot of people telling me what would happen when it clicks. "When you finally become fluent," people would tell me, "you will..."

• understand French music
• understand French graffiti
• think in French
• dream in French

Obviously, I am not yet fluent. And though I'm excited to experience these "you made it!" landmarks, I have to say that I'm not holding my breath. While I look forward to these landmarks, I can't waste my time waiting for them. But I still actively pursue fluency. How?

In the begining, I tried to force fluency. Because the "thinking in French" landmark is my ultimate goal, I used to try to force myself to think in French. In a way it worked, I can think in French if I want to. It's not difficult to think in a foreign language, but it is tiring. Functioning in another language limits your expression, and if you think that limited speech is painful, take a moment and imagine fitting a language filter on your thoughts. Not very comfortable, being unable to even think freely!

Of course, being me, I still try to think in French as much as possible. It's actually a very good language workout, and I personally find it extremely helpful! Because thinking in another language forces one to formulate thoughts naturally (in the foreign language) it forces the mind to not translate, but rather to formulate natural sentances in the new language. But without a habitual vocabulary/automatic-verb-conjugator, thinking in a foreign language is very difficult, no matter how hard you try, one cannot think (or speak) on the same level that one can in one's primary language. This brings us to the topic of the day: baby talk.

As I have just extablished, it is nearly impossible to function on the same level of thought/speech/conversation in another language. It's much too difficult (and tedious) to translate my typical American vocabulary into French. So why try? I have finally come to the realization that, when attempting to become fluent in a foreign language, it is best to speak like a baby.  I have accepted that, right now, I will not speak like the 16 year old high school student that I am. It's simply not practical. I need to speak like a baby. Well, to be fair, right now I'm at about the level of a gramatically challenged elementary schooler, but I don't want to brag!

But what do I mean when I say "one has to speak like a baby"? I don't mean that one has to dumb down one's language (the phrase "Me want of the ice cream" comes to mind...), although dumbing down sentences does come in handy. By 'talk like a baby' I mean that it is better (for you and the people around you) to use simple words that you have down. Rather than formulating your sentences around the big, sophisticated words you know (and causing yourself major greif when you can't complete the sentence because you don't know how to say "furthermore" in French) why not formulate your sentences around the vocabulary that you can navigate? When you think about it, it just makes sense. If you try to use too big of words, you run many risks. You may use or pronounce the fancy words incorrectly, thus negating the entire statement. You may not even be able to finish the statement (given the fact that you have insufficient vocabulary).

Now that I have started "talking like a baby" and using vocabulary that I really understand, I have found that can I formulate cleaner sentences. People understand me much better this way. And to top it all off, I have been learning a lot more. Rather than using words I've found in the dictionary, I just describe what I'm trying to say. Rather than saying "Wait, let me look up the word for bittersweet" I just simply say "I am happy, but sad at the same time. What is the word for that?" People are always eager to help me discover a new word, and in this way I am encouraged to ask even more questions than I regularly would! In addition to this, when I ask for a word by describing it, I have found that it is easier for me to remember the word (by associating it with the learning experience). An added bonus of asking for words (rather than researching them in a dictionary) is that I get the current, correct translation of the word. With the dictionary, you never really know which words are suitable for everyday conversation. Sometimes they are slightly archaic and, as I found out the hard way, some words have changed in meaning. For example, the original word for kiss in French has evolved into a swear word. That was an interesting mistake to explain in class... Luckily, now that I'm using words that I can handle (and asking for help when I need it) conversations are much smoother for me, and the number of embarassing mistakes I make is dwindling!