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| A Monolinguist Abroad—Studying Chinese | |||||
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by Nancy PellegriniGrowing up, I saved every postcard I was ever sent, liberated brochures from countless travel agencies, packed bags, drew maps and took “trips” around my house. I entered cereal box contests in an attempt to win European vacations. Even as a child, I knew that travel was my future. Unfortunately, I had a problem with languages—I had excuses though. “Spanish was difficult for me,” I said, “because I’m not a classroom learner, I need to be there. Korean will be easier because I’ll be living there. And when you live in a country, you learn the language. Right?” That wasn’t exactly true in my case but I had more excuses. |
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“Korean is difficult,” I said, “because I teach English in a total immersion class for ten to twelve hours every day.” I got by while living in Seoul but I hated my monolingualism—my
poor, anemic Spanish, the six emergency phrases I learned from every country
I visited. I was sick of hearing, “But you lived in Korea. You must
be fluent,” when survival Korean was the best I could manage. I
decided that moving to China would be different. “I want to be bilingual,”
I said. “I want to speak Chinese.”
Contrary to common belief, you can navigate
in a new city without speaking the local language. It takes longer, but
you resign yourself to that. Once you learn the linguistic shortcuts,
you can maneuver with 80 percent effectiveness, still not speaking the
language—something I now call the “Korea syndrome.” |
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