Wie bitte?

Learning to listen.

I grew up speaking two languages, and then one. As a baby, before I learned to speak, I was heavily exposed to two languages: English and Afrikaans. My mom comes from an English speaking home, so she and her side of my family would speak English to me as a cooing infant. My dad grew up in an Afrikaans household, so though he and my mom created a new home together, one where the mother tongue was English, I would often be spoken to in Afrikaans when I was visited by my dad’s side of my family. Regardless of the language, of course, I imagine I mostly heard the kind of squeaky, nonsense words that we seem to reserve for puppies, kittens and babies. The daycare I attended when I was a toddler was also bilingual, as was my pre-school (or kindergarten, if you prefer). But when I went to school, where I was placed in an English class and made predominantly English friends, my Afrikaans ability slowly waned. For a good few years my grasp on Afrikaans was awful (this often surprised strangers, my surname is Afrikaans). Luckily, I had the good fortune of befriending an Afrikaans student when I started university, and after getting to know him and his family, even spending weeks in his home, I am happy to report that my fluency quickly returned. I am even happier to call that Afrikaner my best friend.

I am now embarking on the humbling journey of learning a third language: German. My girlfriend is German, and though her English is unquestionably excellent, I want to speak to her grandparents without the need for a translator, I want to laugh at the jokes her friends make without the need for an explanation, I want to read the books that are important to her, I want to watch the movies she loved as a child. You get the picture. Learning, and I suppose re-learning, Afrikaans was quite approachable. I didn’t really learn it on purpose as a child, my brain just did it. As an adult, it was like practising an old muscle - a bit difficult here and there, but I already had foundational knowledge. I have absolutely no foundational knowledge of German, but it was only when I visited Germany that I realised how little German I actually understand. It’s one thing to be a six year old boy, mispronouncing Afrikaans words when you talk to your friends. It is a totally different experience to be a 23 year old man, struggling to make sense of everyday life in a different country. I once spent twenty minutes in a grocery store, trying to figure out whether I was holding sour cream or whipping cream (the store was in the basement of a building, and I couldn’t google a thing!). Getting a lot of little things wrong all the time is tough. I had to try really hard not to feel embarrassed or ashamed.

Spending so much time learning a new language as an adult has highlighted just how complex communication can be. Anyone who can speak two languages comfortably will likely know this already; it isn’t good enough to know the German translation for each English word in a sentence, and simply swap the English words out for their German counterparts. The way sentences are built in German is totally different to English. Knowing the German words isn’t enough, I must also understand how they are connected, how to build a cohesive phrase with them in German, not in English-translated-to-German. Even deeper than how to build a sentence, I need to learn the way in which Germans speak, how they make meaning. There is melody in language, the physicality of the words, how I show emotion, intent, gratitude; communication is much closer to dancing than it is to cold, dead syntax. To actually connect to German, I need to listen to its heartbeat, not only to its words.

The latest ‘art piece’ (can I call it that? not sure) that my book has sacrificed its pages for.

This new perspective, as usual, sparked another in me. I speak English with my mom and dad, my friends, my colleagues, strangers. And yet, sometimes it feels as if I fail to communicate the gravity of my feelings, even when I speak the same language as the person I’m talking to. Have you heard of the 5 Love Languages? It’s the idea that we each give and receive love in different ways. If I show my mom how much I love her by hugging and snuggling with her, but she needed to hear how much I care about her and cherish her, it’s easy to feel like something went wrong. Recognising what love language my mom, or any other loved one, needs is often the challenge (Read more on the 5 Love Languages here). A less intimate example: my uncle once told me that if someone answers a question of his with, “sure,” it feels dismissive. “Sure,” is a yes to me, no implied negativity. Here’s another: when my mom says she wants to leave at three, it means she wants to be sitting in the car, reversing out of the driveway at 14:59. When I say I want to leave at three, it means at 15:03 I put my shoes on and walk out the door. Can you see that even when we speak the same language, the way we make meaning can be so vastly different? My examples don’t even acknowledge the differences from city to city or country to country.

With my mind left spinning from all of these languages and how to speak them, one thing seems to be the most vital: listening. That’s what I am trying to do more of. When my dad tells me something, I try to listen to how he makes meaning, rather than taking the words he says and translating them into Jeremy. Whether in English, Afrikaans or German, I am trying to bypass mere words and listen for the heartbeat of the language, perhaps the heartbeat of the person. It’s really important to me, all of a sudden, that the people I love know that I listen.