Awhile ago, I read someone talking about his parents, who had moved to Mexico. His mother, he said, started trying out her Spanish on the locals as soon as she knew a half-dozen words; his father, on the other hand, studied and studied in private but wanted to be fluent before he tried his language out. The writer pointed out that, after living there six months, his mother's Spanish was constantly improving and she was cheerfully able to go about her business; she had also made some Spanish-speaking friends. His father was still afraid to leave the house alone.
I'm afraid I'm like the father. My timidity has cost me many opportunities. Just today, Eric and I made friends with a little boy and his grandfather at the library. The boy and his grandfather spoke Russian. I was pleased that the grandfather was willing to simply start talking to me in Russian; he and I carried on a lively and friendly conversation about the boys, his half in Russian and mine in English. Our conversation extended all the way to cheery Good-byes in the parking lot.
The sad thing is, I speak Russian.
OK, I speak a tiny bit of Russian. Nearly twenty years after studying it in college, and 18 years since I've been in Russia, I have a tiny vocabulary. Nonetheless, I was disappoointed in myself for not being willing to try. Among the things I could have said to this nice man:
"Do you speak Russian?" This may sound stupid, but it would have let me confirm that he wasn't speaking, say, Polish, which I sometimes mistake for Russian.
"I speak a little Russian, but I have forgotten everything I knew."
"I only understand a little when you speak."
"What is your name?"
"My name is Su. This is Eric."
"He is very slow." (This during the trying-to-get-my-dawdling child out the door stage of our interaction; could have been said with wry, amused smile.)
"I enjoyed meeting you. Have a good day."
Sigh.
A few years ago, I studied American Sign Language. I knew that one of my weaknesses was that I didn't have the nerve to just jump in and start talking to deaf people, and I knew that if I continued to study the language, that would be my biggest obstacle to fluency. In Camryn Manheim's book, she describes how she became a sign language interpreter. She had taken one semester of sign language, and found herself on the scene when a deaf man was injured. She ended up interpreting for the paremedics, accompanying the man to the hospital, and interpreting for the medical staff and the man's wife (also deaf). She did this mostly with finger-spelling and her small vocabulary. The power of her role, and the obvious need for it (this was before the American with Disabilities Act required hostpitals to provide interpretation) led her to continue her studies and become an interpreter. If it had been me, on the scene of the accident, with only a semester of ASL under my belt, I would not have dashed forward and volunteered myself when I saw that the injured man and the paremedics could not understand each other because the man was deaf. I would have slunk back into the crowd, and gone on my shame-faced way, and I would have wished forever that I'd had the courage to offer some help.
I could have at least said, "Do svedanya." Don't you think?
Posted by Su Penn at December 8, 2003 05:05 PM | TrackBack