Communication

On days like these one hopes that, no matter how little you understand, the onslaught of words will somehow slowly settle in your mind overnight and rest on the retina there at the back. This is to clutch at a positive. For today was four hours with my girlfriend’s parents, four hours full of German conversation. And then four more at her best friend’s birthday party. Subjects included photographic technology.

What does one show on his face in these moments? Smile? Yes a bit, but don’t look stupid, after all they know that you don’t understand. Same goes for looking them in the eyes while they talk. Its ok while they are not returning the gaze, but when they do, switch quickly to a nearby object. For to look into each other’s eyes feels like a con, as if you are trying to convince the other that in fact you can understand. Once again, stupid. But cast your eyes dreamily around the kitchen and you must pay attention, for boredom is immediately apparent, and, in the presence of my girlfriend’s parents, this is undesirable. So keep the eyes twinkling. The feeling is of hopelessness when, after a roar of laughter around the table, one discovers that a thin smile is across his face. For what? Is laughter funny in itself? Above all, say something sometimes. The longer the period between your last sentence and the next (German or English), the more resonating any future utterance may be. It feels like everyone holds their breath.

Reading that paragraph I really feel like an old-fashioned Englishman so over-concerned with manners.

There is, of course, an acute loneliness attached to learning a new language. It is classically abstract like loneliness almost always is. One can be in the most heart-warming of German beer tents and still feel it. Surrounded by company but well short of communication, I felt myself shrinking into a little ball inside myself, always sinking deeper into the depths of my bowels, so that my mouth was a long dark tunnel away. My body was a host to a little ball, merely able to conduct itself politely (see above). Then, on the way home, with the company now divided, two of the boys spoke English to me, and it felt like a cannon had fired that little ball into my mouthpiece, and I rather shouted into conversation, so euphoric at the thrill of communication. These are the thorny beginning of learning a language, and worse still, they induce the sort of self-pity witnessed here.