Language Purgatory.

December 2, 2013

We’ve been diligently working on learning the Nuer language for close to two months now, and we’ve met our first benchmark and are now working toward the second. But an interesting thing has happened. We seem to be in some kind of language purgatory.

At first, learning Thuok Nuera was exciting and a LOT of fun. We were making a lot of progress each day, learning greetings, learning how to ask questions, learning to tell people about ourselves. And then one day, seemingly overnight, we could do all of those things well enough for people to understand us. And for us to understand some of what they said in response. Benchmark One!

Encouraged and eager to keep learning, we pushed forward and continued into more advanced language topics: conjugating verbs, forming simple sentences (Nuer uses a COMPLETELY different sentence structure), and understanding tenses, possession, etc. I LOVED it, because I’m a nerdy teacher and that apparently makes me a nerdy student, as well. =)

However, it seems that I’ve hit some sort of wall in language learning. I’m still making progress each day, but that progress has slowed down considerably now, as we spend more time on the more tedious nuances of the language. Additionally, I’m in this weird in-between place. I’ve mastered the greetings and some very basic small talk, as well as the ability to meet basic needs; however, I am not yet capable of having discussions that go any deeper. I cannot talk about ideas, feelings, or anything abstract. And it’s frustrating. There are so many questions that I want to ask and learn about my friends here in Nasir, and so many things I want to tell them about me and my life. But I literally do not have the words.

So, I’m in language purgatory.

Thankfully, the way out of it is just persistence. I still love planning each day’s lessons, sitting in “class” (which is just our chairs arranged in a circle on a shady spot of our compound), and the overall process of language learning. I know that with time, patience, and practice, I’ll eventually be able to have deeper, more meaningful conversations without a translator.

Amath amath.

Pray for us as we continue pressing into language learning. Pray that we would pick it up quickly, that we would remember it, that our ears would hear the tones and that our mouths would be able to form the words. And that soon we’ll be having heart-level conversations in Thuok Nuera.

Here are a few pictures from language.

Preparing the lesson…