Beginning Again

In Catalan class, you hear the same words echoed again and again, "I'd forgotten how it felt to be a beginner." They're no longer used to not knowing how to say anything, to express basic concepts, to understand and reply. There isn't a person in the class who isn't at least intermediate level in Spanish or French, and now we're all beginning again. And we've forgotten how, apparently.

Except for me, right? After all, I start a new language about every 6 months, most recently Hindi. I'm a certified idiot in about 12 languages. I'm not afraid to sound stupid, I haven't forgotten how to wrestle with the basic building blocks of a language. Except that I have. Or... what? Why is this hard?

Because Catalan is an easy language. With all due respect to the lovely language and culture, it's just that, for an English speaker, especially one who speaks Spanish quite well and knows a bit of Latin and Italian as well, a Romance language, any Romance language, just isn't going to be able to compete with Japanese or Finnish.

And that's my problem right now - I look at the page and I think, "This is easy, I don't need to study this." Because it's so similar. Because I understand. Most of the time.

And then they tell me, "Well, then speak!" and suddenly I realize I don't remember if their word for speak is based on hablar or parlare or loquere, and how it ends, and how it's pronounced... I don't, in fact, know anything at all. And there's no shame in knowing nothing at all in Mandarin or Aramaic, but to know nothing at all in Catalan - it's embarassing, and it makes me nervous, sews my mouth shut.

So I have to study. Right now. I have to force myself to begin again.