I am not going to lie. Rome has been difficult.
Now in a way that I miss my family and friends and I feel left out type of difficult.
But for my work life, it has been a struggle.
Although it has not gone as well as I had hoped, I feel that I have really picked up the basics of the language, able to communicate on a everyday level, on shallow and easy topics with friends and colleagues in broken italian, a language which I was basically thrown into its deep end 5 months ago (4 if you take the month of august away).
Having only studied french and latin in school almost a decade ago, my knowledge of european language is not very good at all. But I was happy about this change. I was happy that after graudation, I was given this opportunity to explore a completely new city, new work space, and most of all, learn a new language that is very crucial for my choice of career.
Little did I know that I would have THIS much difficulties with the language, especially during work.
Yes, I have picked up words and sentence structures only the Roman uses (fare come Romana). But I am still struggling day after day to express myself, to show my creative side. I can receive information and do as I am told, but I was unable to share my opinions and my passion for design. This has been incredibly frustrating. Especially frustrating when the promised language lessons never took place. I continue to try my best to speak about my designs and work in as much of profession-suitable italian that I have learnt and picked up, but in the end, I am often overlooked because of this shortcoming.
I would love to be one of those people that are just a genius when it comes to language and be able to learn it in no time, especially when given the opportunity to live in said country.
I feel like I have failed.
I am still very much wanting to learn the language when I am back in London, simply because I have lived here for 5 months (and will be 6 months), I have made many italian friends whom I want to keep in touch with. I want to keep on expanding my knowledge for this language, because it is beautiful and extremely useful.
I just hope, I won't fail again when I do take it up once I am back.
in order to succeed to you need to reduce the time between failures. Failure is not a bad thing at all Cynthia, i'd call it learning experience. The more you get, the higher your chances of succeeding one time ;) Re language. I completely get what your saying. I always feel completely stupid when I realise I can't express myself the way I want to. After Phase 1 I entered the phase where you understand enough but need too much energy to listen, which means participating in a conversation becomes tricky, as you need to listen, then prepare your answer and by the time you wanna jump in, the topic has switched :) lol....
ReplyDeleteSo true! I was worried that I was becoming more stupid with the language, as recently I have found myself able to hear and listen and understand more, but I just somehow cant reply. or I can, but my ability, I feel like it has declined significantly...
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