The process of learning a foreign language is the most wonderful and daunting task of your life, plunging into the depths of a culture, the very soul of the people. Language brings to life the intangibles of a culture: the pain, values, joys, history, and love of a people. Learning a language forces you to encounter the world first hand.
I can’t remember the first time I ever spoke. I know it was quite the task that took me nearly a year and a half to accomplish. My mom frequently retells the story of my first word “mommy”. I learned English the only way one knows how… crawling around searching, asking for the meaning of the colors, sights, the sounds of my world. “You use to crawl everywhere, grabbing everything your big brown eyes laid on.” She would eagerly follow behind me and explain the meaning to me of everything that I saw. This adventure in language thrilled me. I wanted a meaning so bad that it forced me to explore.
I’ve never stopped asking the meaning of thing.
Traveling to a new place reverses you to this place, the eager-wide eyed youth of your past, where everything is illuminated, and everything has potential. You struggle with how to enter this world that you can only peer at. It is this struggle that they call- learning a foreign language. And if you grapple long enough, it finally becomes a part of you.
Romania is a compelling place. You see things that shock you, you feel your heart beating in ways you’ve never felt before, you taste the bitter smoky taste of a foreign meat, you hear a collision of sounds- chattering, laughter, yelling. You realize that your previous vocabulary doesn’t suffice for the description of these things and you’re forced to engage, to find a new meaning.
Life happens- you witness laughter and wide eyed grins at a full table, children screaming with excitement as they chase each other down the slide, questions at a vegetable stand, parents disciplining their children, couples kissing, friends laughing. Your heart aches inside you to find the reason for the laughter, for the weird shaped grins on their faces, for the tears, for the questions. So you stumble outside of yourself, your English language bubble, to engage in this mysterious world. You learn a word and pull it out. It comes out messy and disjointed but eventually you stumble upon a meaning. You sleep with the Romanian dictionary under your pillow, hoping that it magically appears in your mind the next morning. You begin to attempt to read a 100 page Romanian novel but only getting the first three pages of it translated. You learn to listen deeply to people, even though you want to respond immediately with “nu vorbesc Romaneste.” You take risks but you gain something much greater, you gain the ability to know the people.
I wish I had words to describe this journey but no words suffice. It’s both painful and exhilarating. It’s like waiting in line to jump off the diving board on the 12ft side, your insides are turning, you’re heart is racing. You’re both excited but scared, feeling like your risking everything. You let a couple people go ahead of you because the water looks to deep and the board just too high but you make the climb, one stair at a time, until finally our at the top peering down at the water below. You close your eyes, plug your nose and make the plunge till you feel body colliding with the water. I’m glad I took that plunge. My heart has expanded; I’ve allowed myself to go deeper.
I’m at the end of this journey now… and I can say that learning Romanian has been my greatest joy. Taking the plunge has allowed me to enter into the hearts of the people, learning stories of love, life and pain. The Romanian language has changed me in that I have realized the limitless of the human existence. It has bound me to the people and country of Romania forever, and because of this… I am forever different.
Samantha
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