Six days into our ten days of language classes and I am once again reminded of how humbling it is to try and learn a new language.
I have been reflecting on how it requires some form of comparison. And by that, I mean that we learn second and third and fourth (and so on) languages by how they relate to our first.
My mouth tries to pronounce Mongolian words by how their sounds match up with the English alphabet.
My mind tries to form sentences by thinking about how the structure differs from that of English.
Concepts of conjugation, grammar and tenses are all learned by how they do and do not differ from that of the language I've spent the past 20 some years speaking, writing and reading.
I can (attempt) to learn Mongolian by comparing it to English. My framework for conceptualizing language is English and it is there that I try to build new ways of understanding words, meanings, sounds, sentences.
Yet the goal is that at some point such comparison will no longer be necessary. That I will be able to stop thinking in English and translating into Mongolian. That I will be able to stop comparing suffix endings in Mongolian with different tenses in English.
The comparison gives me a starting point, a foothold, a place where reflection and observation and understanding can begin to take place.
The learning, the practice, the daily use will hopefully allow for the words, the pronunciations and the grammar to be internalized.
To become a part of the framework instead of puzzle pieces trying to fit within a border that cannot fully or properly contain them.
Is the same not true of our hearts, our concepts of life and all that it contains?
Moving from one context, one space, one community, to another- we start with what we know and we ask what is the same, what is different, what fails to make sense in light of what we have left.
And then we live life in this new space.
We cook and we shop and we work and we speak and we worship and we rest.
Suddenly we are no longer comparing in order to comprehend. We ourselves have been enlarged. We have found that the context that was once outside of us is now a part of us. That in a multitude of quiet, small moments, we have reconciled what we knew with what we now know.
Our realities shift from being sharp, contrasting edges to soft, shared colors mixing together to create a whole new image. A whole new space from which we may live and see and know God.
12 days is simply that- 12 days. 12 mornings, afternoons, evenings. And in these 12 days of being present in Mongolia, I have been reminded of what it means to be in this place of a framework that cannot fully hold what is trying to find its way in. Only time can bring such reconciliation.
But I am praying that the process would begin anew. That any hesitant vestiges of the old framework would be torn down. That God's grace would be with me as I try to live in the tension of this way.
(Holli and I made a video of us explaining the way we remember the Cyrillic alphabet, but neither of our computers are wanting to download it from my camera. We'll see if I can figure it out, as it's pretty amusing:-))
1 comments:
i can think of no better way to express the mysterious transformation that leaves us different in engaging a new cultural context than understanding ourselves to be enlarged, and our identities no longer clearly defined, but now blended at the edges, no clear beginning and no clear ending. missing you from the rez, and thinking often on your words.
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