Where a Diplomat's Self Esteem Goes to Die

Language training is designed to constantly push you further, so you never reach a comfort level. In preparation for my first progress test, I've been reading a lot of articles about bus accidents (apparently this type of thing happens a lot in Nepal). Just as I've gotten pretty good at reading for gist and for details, my instructor took me to the media lab and had me listen to some Nepali news reports about bus accidents. Holy crap.

I had two reactions to the news clips. The first - Why is he shouting at me? The second - Is he racing through the story so quickly because he gets paid by the number of stories he can squeeze into the newscast? More often than not, I leave class thinking, "I suck."

I guess language training is not an exercise in developing self-esteem.

How Many Languages Can I Butcher in One Sentence?

I know enough Nepali to be able to construct simple sentences, but not enough to have a vocabulary that enables me to always communicate precisely what I want to say. When this happens, my brain reaches for the only non-English word it can think of. This is usually a Romanian word (although German occasionally pops up, too). So these days it's not uncommon for me to throw together Nepali, English and Romanian into a single sentence. While this is likely entertaining for my instructors, I don't think it will impress the testers when the time comes to evaluate my progress.

It reminds me of a time when I was traveling through Europe a couple years ago. The man at the airport check-in counter asked me a simple question to which I responded "Da, I mean yes, I mean ja, I mean si, I mean... where am I?" It's a very cosmopolitan life I lead.