What he was saying. I snapped back to attention. “Le dernière exemple...” he was saying. I nodded to show him that he should proceed. He would continue on, and after a few moments of listening intently to pick up on a few words that I might recognize, my mind began to wander again.
Mr. Agbo is the director of the orphanage I am working with, Espoir D’Enfant Bénin. It means (not a direct translation) Hope of Benin’s Children. I was visiting the orphanage to ask Mr. Agbo some questions about himself and the orphanage, to collect information for the website I will be designing for them. Now let’s get this straight. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in what he was saying. It was the seemingly insurmountable language barrier that held me back.
Learning a language is not my field of expertise. I learn best when the rules are logical, exceptions are minimal and the applications are many. I hate memorization and it shows, because I am always flipping through my notebook to find the French word I am looking for in the middle of my sentences.
It sucks not being able to convey what I am feeling or fully understand what someone is saying, and there’s no way to shorten this learning curve except practice. This is why I am considering writing a post every now and then in French. Don’t worry! You can just cut and paste these posts into Google Translate if you don’t know French. I will be using Google Translate to check my grammar and sentence structure anyways.
Please let me know what you think of this idea in the comments, and let me know if you’d still read the blog posts in French!
Anonymous Oui!