The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2001, Side 26

64
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 56 #2
Nicolle Olafson and Lillian Vilborg studying in the sun
tomed ear could hear what was being said.
During the last month of my stay I was at
a Symphony Orchestra concert. I was sur-
prised that I understood a lot of the written
programme notes. All the times I had attend-
ed before I never had a clue what was on the
written programme, except for the composer's
names. At a meeting that same day I under-
stood big chunks of the discussion, but still
missed some stories that I thought I should
have caught. I conducted several interviews in
Icelandic, and even took notes in Icelandic.
So, I know I made some progress in my time
there.
During all this I discovered that learning
a language is an extremely complex process.
It is not just a matter of understanding gram-
matical constructions and rules, nor of memo-
rizing words. It's definitely not about translat-
ing from one language to another. I have been
told that language acquisition occurs in
stages, and that auditory recognition precedes
the ability to reproduce what you hear. Many
people in Iceland have said to me "|ni skilir
meira en J>u talar." "You understand more
than you can say." No kidding. One thing that
surprised me was the extent to which lan-
guage is "embodied." This struck me one day
when I read the word "yta" on the door of the
bank, and felt my arm automatically raise and
push on the door, my brain not having
engaged to translate the word to the English
"push." I felt I had made a giant leap.
Language isn't just brain work, it's also body
work.
Some days, as I tried to stuff more and
more into my brain, my body tightened up
inside, and seemed to say "No more. I can't
take any more." Other days I got so discour-
aged I thought it was an absolutely hopeless
and ridiculous task I had set for myself. It felt
harder than law school!! Many days I found
myself physically exhausted from the effort to
hear, speak and read. And on another day I
had a conversation that seemed relatively nor-
mal and I felt elated, floating home, smiling to
myself. However, after a successful commu-
nicating day, I might come home and turn on
the television for the 11:00 news, and my
brain would feel like it was chasing its tail,
running, running in circles, trying to keep up
with the speed of the talk. Chasing words.
It's a rocky road, being serious about
learning a language. And I'm surprised that I
have never been told by anyone how very dif-
ficult it is. I know many people who have
studied French as adults in Canada and I have
never heard them discuss their experience of
language acquisition. My own daughter stud-
ied French in immersion as a child, and she
used to tell me how her brain worked differ-
ently depending on which language she was