When I started sharing this story to my husband, he looked at me and asked, "Are you telling me a joke?"
This sounds a lot like a beginning of a joke, but it was not. Every Thursday some foreigners from our school community get together to practice their Estonian. They have learned so much already that now they want to practice how to have a meaningful discussion about any subject. Yes, they have an accent. Yes, they make some grammatical mistakes. Yes, they don't know all the words. However, when I joined them for one of their afternoon meetings, I was blown away by how well they spoke. Their topics spread from artificial intelligence to politics to literature. They used complicated words and complex sentences. They brought in multiple perspectives. They laughed at the jokes they made.
I have always considered that being able to understand jokes is the criteria for understanding a language. These language leaners laughed a lot.
Estonian is not an easy language to learn. Some people say that it might be one of the hardest. Listening to these young people proved that when there is a will, dedication, and regular practice, the language isn't that hard.
I had fun answering the questions they pulled from a collection of sentence strips and enjoyed listening to their knowledge, opinions and stories.
To the question about the similarities to a typical Estonian they did not give a straightforward answer. Instead they challenged the stereotypes.
I am in awe of anyone learning another language. Kudos to these young people! I studied French for many years, but remember very little. That's the difference of learning in a classroom and being in the environment of the language.
ReplyDeleteI agree with elsie. I studied Spanish for four years and remember very little of it. Immersion is a key element in learning and remembering a new language. Kudos to those young people.
ReplyDeleteBravo to the people in the group! Learning another language is amazing to me! So enjoyed reading your post.
ReplyDelete