Marathon Fever, and Languages Everywhere

Today I went to Café Margot for my coffee. Soon after I sat down, a woman and her daughter, around five years old, came into the café. The little girl was speaking English. The mother, however, did not look American and in fact, as soon as they sat down, I heard her say, “Ne znaio,” which means “I don’t know” in Russian.

I was so excited. That’s all I heard from where I was sitting, but those kinds of moments are terribly meaningful to me, and are an important goal of this project. Advanced conversation, reading, and writing skills would of course be preferable—but how great is it to be able to easily recognize many of the languages that are around you all day long in this city?

Even more languages than usual can be heard right now: it is New York City Marathon weekend, and marathoners from all over the globe have descended on the city to run 26.2 miles through the five boroughs.

On the subway on my way down to SoHo, I spoke German with three Germans who were part of a tour group. They weren’t running, but they said a lot of their friends were. They said my German was good. It’s not.

I find that politeness often causes people to say your language skills are good even when they are lacking. However, one thing that was kind of cool: I was comfortable enough to pause as I was speaking German and ask them grammar questions about what I was saying.

That means I am not in the panic stage of language acquisition, at least not where German is concerned. When you’re in the panic stage, you’re just trying not to drown; there is no time to look right or left or ask leisurely questions. The goal is just to make it to the end of the sentence without tragic incident.