The Stages and Milestones of Learning a Language

     There are countless of different ways in which language can be learned. There is the high school class, the private tutiona, and the crash courses. There is the “I’m going on vacation for a week, so I’m going to buy a dictionary and go for it!” approach.  There is of course, the passive aggressive Duolingo owl, and his daily five minute lessons.  There is also the newborn baby method, in which a completely confused and deeply curious being is thrust into a whole new world.
     My language learning experience was all and none of these. My lingual journal was, and continues to be, overwhelming, evolving, challenging and exciting. These are the stages that I experienced as I was plopped into a Marathi and Hindi speaking city armed with nothing but a little pink dictionary.  My method is one called, “The 15-year-old baby with a book.”

     Stage One; my dad, ever the travel and language enthusiast, jumped onto Amazon the second AFS India excepted me to order every book he could find on my obscure Indian regional language.
     Next came stage two, when these books sat on my desk for a month as busy life went on and my impending exchange year still felt like a distant experience...instead of the quickly approaching adventure it truly was.
     This stage abruptly ended when I was sitting in the airplane. At this point it dawned on me that 23 hours later, the plane would land, my visa would get stamped and I would live in India. I pulled the paper back from my carry-on and frantically tried to memorize phrases. Stage three was very stressful. For those of you looking to learn a language yourself, I highly suggest that you spread the memorization phase out over a month. If you cram it all into one plane ride, you run the risk of being so stressfully burried in your book that you don’t notice the flight attendant handing out samosas.
     Stage four came when I came to my host family. I arrived at 3:00am to a house full of relatives jabbering away in Marathi. This was the first time I had heard Marathi being spoken. Marathi was like no language I had ever heard before. My overwhelmed brain was too exhausted to pinpoint anything beyond “Namaste”, “American”, and various names flying about, including my own, although I hardly recognized it as it was something resembling  “Loicia” at this point. For the next month or so I communicated with 50% pointing and gesturing, 40% expressive “hmm”s and “oh”s, 5% Marathi and 5% English masked in an Indian accent.
     As the days went on, the sounds around me began to resemble words. I wrote words on sticky notes and attached them to every day objects. I attended an hour of tution every day, and at dinner I memorized phrases with my family. When the crazy sea of Marathi words flowed through my ears and into my head it was still overwhelming, but the exciting kind, not the stressful kind I had experienced two weeks before. I was slowly but surely improving,
     In the middle of August, my host mom decided that I was ready to skip about ten steps. She told me that from then on, the two of us would speak only Marathi. To say this transition was difficult  would be an understatement. She would speak to me in Marathi and I would just nod and say “ho” which means yes. This would work for a few minutes, she would think I was following until I answered “yes!” to the question “how was your day?”. She would then playfully whack me and say “lou! Aikna!” meaning “listen!”. A few times she would tell me to chop a veggie, and I would think to myself “Yes! You understood, good job! Let’s chop this tomato!” only to find out afterwards that she had actually asked me to chop onions. However, it wasn’t long before I had properly remembered the names of veggies, and always chopped the intended one. It wasn’t long before we could chat about our days together. Although I had thought my mom was crazy and for plunging me into full Marathi, and very overconfident in my knowledge, I am sure that she is largely responsible for any and all Marathi I can now speak.
     By October I was gossiping happily in Marathi with my mom and chatting with my friends, albeit a little hesitantly. Then I traveled outside of Maharashtra, and my regional language skills were essentially useless. I was once again completely unable to communicate to Hindi, as I had been in my first month with Marathi. This experience made me realize how much Marathi I knew which I didn’t give myself credit for. I didn’t consider myself to be Marathi speaking, but after feeling what it truly felt like to be non communicative, I realized that this was not how I was feeling in my daily life. After traveling I knew that I really, truly spoke no Hindi and I was not able to communicate outside of Maharashtra...but I really was able to communicate within my regional language!
     Filled with the “I guess I kinda can speak Marathi!” gusto, I got really chatty. I started initiating conversations with the lady who runs the shop. I used full, proper sentences with the rickshaw drivers instead of getting by with the bare minimum. I asked my friends as many questions as I could instead of just answering theirs. At this point I was five months into living in this Marathi world. I heard, read, wrote, studies, and spoke Marathi everyday. And everyday it made a little more sense.
     Over the last few months my comfort in the language has grown so much. Someone will make a request to me in Marathi, I will start to complete it, and then a few seconds into the task realize that I understood and reacted to Marathi without even noticing I had. I understand 90% of the conversations taking place in the living room around me. Sometimes I even feel comfortable in interjecting a spontaneous sentence!
     A few week ago, I hit a big milestone. I woke up from an afternoon nap and ran down the stairs full of excitement to inform my host family that I had just dreamed in Marathi! My subconscious knew a sentence that I didn’t even know that I knew! And last week I served as the English to Marathi translator between a few fellow exchange students from outside my city and a marathi speaking friend.
     I am now here in the eighth month of my exchange. My footing in my city is steady, my relationships are deep and lasting, and my communication is quite strong. There are still times when I don’t understand or I can’t articulate my thoughts, but I can still for the most part communicate. I can communicate with the citizens of a city halfway across the world from my native place. I can talk to people who are different from me and learn from them, and I can tell them who I am. This is a goal that I had been set on accomplishing this year, and I am continuing to work towards it, but I’m happy to say that I am well underway.