I spent the whole last weekend doing a Passover clean (Passover started last Monday and ends today). Normal people do a Passover clean every year, but for me, this was my first time.
My kids were in Jerusalem with their dad and grandparents — my last weekend alone for the next few months. I could have spent the whole time on a beach in Tel Aviv. I could have had wild parties.
I couldn’t have had wild parties because Maya was unwell and cried on the phone that she wanted to go home, so I couldn’t exactly relax. (If it’s not the threat of Iranian drones ruining your solo weekend then it’s your child’s stomachache and the ensuing feelings of inadequacy as a parent for not being able to prevent it).
Still, I could have done better than spend four full days (Thursday to Sunday) washing the windows and tearing through cobwebs. (It's not a very big house just a two-bedroom apartment. I just have subpar cleaning skills. Plus, I find it hard to keep my mind on task if the task in question does not involve a cognitive effort of some sort.)
I guess I needed to feel that there was at least something that was under my control. Because there are too many things lately that I have no control over. Like, the state of the world. Or how fast my mom's dementia progresses. Or my children's health.
Or even how fast and how well I learn languages.
That was it: I wanted to get something perfect.
For several days before my cleaning spree, I’d been waking up tired and anxious. I even started to think that maybe I’d burned out. Maybe it wasn’t a good year to do a 12X12 language thing. Maybe I had overestimated my abilities and I can't learn 12 languages in 12 months after all??
I have overestimated my abilities but not in the way you might think.
It’s very doable, for me, to get an overall picture of the grammatical system and reach a basic conversational level in a month — which was the bar I set for myself publicly. What's proven much harder — almost impossible — is to stop there.
On the one hand, I am addicted to the thrill of starting to learn a new language. On the other hand, I also feel compelled to get the old ones perfect. This is a terrible way to live one’s life.
Now that vague general feeling of not-enoughness that seems to accompany women across cultures and generations, has chased me into my favorite creative project. I'm not enough as a mom, I'm not enough as a daughter, and now I’m also not enough as a language learner.
Between bouts of cleaning, I had a conversation with someone in Swahili. I used an app called Italki that lets you practice speaking with native speakers.
There are several such apps that I know of. HelloTalk and Tandem are two language exchange apps. I used HellotTalk a little bit in the past to practice speaking Thai. Italki is different: you pay someone to teach you or to practice speaking. A one-hour Swahili session costs about $10 (hopefully because the cost of living in Tanzania is not very high).
It was the second time I talked to Pius. He asked how things were in Israel (habari gani?) and so naturally I said ‘very bad’ (mbaya sana) and we started talking about what was going on here. In Swahili. (No need to get too excited: Pius speaks English so I was able to ask him words I didn’t know, which was a lot of words).
It was very exciting but almost immediately that high of having communicated with someone in another language was replaced by the feeling of not-enoughness: You mean have been learning Swahili for two whole months and you still don’t know how to say “300 drones and missiles” in this language??
Generally, my confidence level drops the longer I spend learning the language. I drew this helpful chart to illustrate this:
Most days I question if I even know English.
What does it even mean to ‘know a language’?
Some people only know one language but they know it perfectly (if there is such a thing as perfect), i.e. they have a very extensive vocabulary and can write poetry as easily as legal documents.
It’s generally true that the more languages you know the worse you know each of them. It’s not because our minds are incapable of knowing them to the same extent but because of purely practical considerations. Languages tend to attach themselves to areas of our lives and we simply don’t have enough hours in our day to use them all equally. It’s also an impractical goal to want to know all of them to the same extent. The purpose of using a language is to communicate whatever needs to be communicated at that particular moment.
Maybe you can talk about work only in English and about cooking only in Vietnamese because that’s what you speak at home. That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn to talk about both these topics in both languages. It’s just not needed for your particular situation.
My kids don’t speak a single language without an accent (and maybe I don’t either) and they lack vocabulary in all three compared to their monolingual peers in each of these languages. That’s ok and is a worthwhile trade-off, as the benefits of multilingualism far outweigh what can be perceived as drawbacks.
And anyway, I’m not really using any of the languages I’m learning this year. My goal is not to become fluent in 12 languages (that’s impossible in a year) but to get an overall picture of each of them, so that if I’m dropped off in that language community with a pocket dictionary, I’ll find my way around, even if I speak like a two-year-old with a speech impediment.
That for me, at least in theory, counts as knowing the language on a basic level. Now I just need to convince myself of that.
I remember how, during my first year of Crossfit (just before the pandemic) I managed to increase my deadlift 1RM (1 Rep Maximum, i.e. the heaviest single repetition of a lift) for the first time. I shared that exciting news with Gili, my coach, and she said: “And that's just the beginning. With a head like yours, you’ll achieve much more than that. Because you’re the kind of person who doesn’t give up.”
I’d never thought of myself like that until that moment. I just thought I was the kind of person who couldn’t even buy a freaking coriander plant without first writing a Ph.D. dissertation about planting coriander. I liked the idea of ‘rebranding’ myself as a person who doesn’t give up.
Until now. Because right now saying ok my Swahili is good enough let’s move on, feels like giving up.
I started this project because I wanted to share my excitement about languages with the world and to learn as many of them as possible in a short amount of time but look, I’m learning so much more than languages.
I’m learning how to choose very carefully where I spend my limited time and energy in a world of ‘tools’ that keep fighting for my attention.
I’m learning how to settle for good enough, instead of aiming for perfect.
And I’m finally learning how to clean those ceiling fans.
I still make mistakes in Mandarin Chinese after many years. I mispronounced the word for “antique” last night. I said “shareholder” instead. In Cantonese the other day I meant to refer to “potting soil” but my father-in-law thought I was talking about a “gift.” My Vietnamese is even more of a mess.
Hi Tanya! Love the topic. There're some topic I feel more comfortable talking in English than in Vietnamese because my native language doesn't have the words that exactly describe what I want to say. And the other way around is also true. I guess how much emotionally attached we're to a language also plays a role.
Also, I love the idea of having your own definition of "knowing a language". That will prevent you from lots of unnecessary new words cramming and the endless loops of "not good enough".