The Flaws of Fluency

February 2010 – New York

Timer set and fidgeting fingers armed with a café beverage, I began to recite with a nervous-confidence the entirety of my life story condensed to its most basic grammatical format. My name is X. I am X years-old. I have a father. He is an engineer. I was born in Texas. The guy across from me sat patiently, listening and nodding. Grammatical errors dribbled from my lips like inadvertent drool.

My running monologue finished, I smiled as he began to respond. And I did not do much else. He spoke and I strained with every fiber of my being to understand. I willed my brain to make sense of the sounds and intonations. He made a slight pause. Oh no. Please don’t let him have asked a question. I smiled and gave him a confident, affirmative nod. He continued, reassured.

I began to read his body language like my life depended on it. An upwards twitch in the corner of his mouth – I flashed him a big smile. “How funny!” I would exclaim. Any pregnant pause whatsoever – my eyes would flick away as I said in my most neutral tone, “How interesting.” But then it stopped working. He wrinkled his eyebrows and panic sirens went off in my head. Mayday! A question has been asked! I repeat! A question has been asked! I smiled again, feigning surprise at my inadequate response to his question with, “Really?”

“Forgive me. Repeat that please.” And so he did. Again and again. Each time he repeated it I tried to repeat it back to him. “You want to know what I like…” I was cut off by his shaking head. “You want to know about…” This time I cut myself off, and broke our strictly Russian communication, asking him what he wanted to know in English. I don’t remember how many times he tried to rephrase the question.

Finally he sighed. “I am asking what you would like to get out of this. If you have any specific areas or questions you need help with in Russian.” My next smile was twisted with shame at the irony of it all.

February 2012 – St. Petersburg

            “What kind of beer did you…take…brought…carry…?” I listened to myself with horror.

            “Ugh!” Was the answer I justly received from my host-sister-in-law. “What happened to you?! Your Russian used to be so beautiful. And now…now it’s just disgusting!”

            I bowed my head in shame, babbling and trying to excuse myself. My grammar drool began to set in and every time I went to wipe it away it just became an even longer trail of embarrassing spittle.

            “What’s disgusting?” I heard my host-mother ask over clanking pots in the kitchen.

            “Her Russian! Have you heard her? She just now forgot how to say ‘bring’!” My host-sister-in-law called back, looking me up and down as if I truly were drooling all over myself.

            “Ah!” My host-mother called back, shuffling into view with a knowing smile. “Yeah your Russian’s gotten a bit worse hasn’t it?” The look she fixed me with was playful, but I knew the only part of that sentence that was in jest was the “a bit” part.

            I wouldn’t have known how to respond even if I had been able to recall all the forgotten verbs I needed for a rebuttal. In all honesty, I was almost too shocked to believe what I was hearing. I had been away from Russia for barely three weeks on Christmas vacation, and it seemed as if that’s all it had taken to undo years of toil and frustration. And what was more, this was perhaps the first truly negative word I had heard about my Russian since I had arrived (by then) eight months prior.

            I was the darling child of my host-families, Russian friends, and peers. It wasn’t that I was some language prodigy; it was just that I wasn’t nearly as bad as they expected me to be. “Only two years? Wow! Your Russian is just amazing for two years! Your grammar is better than mine! You know, you sometimes even speak without any kind of accent!” I enjoyed the compliments but I insisted on never letting them go to my head. Every sentence I uttered rife with glaringly obvious mistakes were enough to remind me I did not deserve their flattery.

            And yet, something must have remained from their kind words to bolster my confidence because standing before my host-family, their respect for my Russian crumbling into nothing before my eyes filled me with despair. “I know, I know!” I finally answered, burying my face into my hands. “It’s just so hard!”

May 2012 – St. Petersburg

            It took me another month to feel comfortable speaking Russian again, a fact that still haunts me to this day. As I long for the family and friends I haven’t laid eyes on in almost a year, joy and anticipation mix with anxious panic at the prospect of losing all that I have fought so hard to gain in my year living abroad. And I am not the only one.

“Yeah, all my friends are like, ‘Hey! How’s Russia? Are you fluent yet?’” Collective moans, pained smiles, and bobbing heads are shared throughout the room.

            I join in. “Yeah, I saw this one article online that said, Become fluent in another language in 6 months or less!” Derisive laughter and shouts of “Oh God!” abound.

            I am of the opinion that a dangerous epidemic has been slowly spreading across the linguistic world. It affects not only the well-meaning bystander but the primary actors as well. You’ve probably already guessed it: fluency. We’ve got to have it, and as soon as possible, or else we risk having wasted all of our earlier efforts for naught.

            But is that all a language is worth? Perfecting one’s knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to be able to communicate with someone else without fear of misunderstanding? Don’t get me wrong, that is a huge motivational factor, and an important one at that. But why is approval and accolade granted to only those that finish the marathon in good form and record times? Doesn’t everyone get a medal? Even if they have to stop along the way? Even if they were the worst one there?

            Of course they do. Because it took guts to enter in that marathon and from then on it took sheer blood, sweat, and tears to finish it. It takes a heck of a lot of courage to stand face to face before a completely foreign language and decide that you too will one day write, read, speak, and hear its words with ease.

            But is this aforementioned ease equal to how our society understands the ultimate linguistic prize, fluency? I think of the relative comfort and control I feel when speaking Russian and then I think of English. The comparison is almost cruel.

When I speak English, my heart soars. I no longer think about words or structure or placement, my thoughts and emotions just appear, falling neatly and perfectly into place without a single afterthought or re-analysis. What is more, I use constructions that are so natural, so current, and so American that I feel almost a patriotic bond kindling between myself and the person I’m speaking with.

Only a lifetime spent in Russia could possibly grant me the same feeling in Russian. But despite this, I cannot fault myself for any linguistic shortcomings. My year long journey in Russia as well as the two I spent poring over textbooks in college have influenced my life like no other. Complete strangers have opened their homes and hearts to me across the world, teaching me lessons in humility and gratitude. Daily interactions with Russians have reminded me of a different understanding of the same world, reminding me to never be too quick to judge. And finally, the frustrations I’ve experienced with trying to obtain a subjective and abstract goal such as fluency has forced me to internalize the wisdom behind one, well-spoken piece of advice:

“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” – Greg Anderson

And I intend to do just that.