Toddlerdom

Learning a new language through immersion is like returning to toddlerhood. The world around you no longer fully makes sense. People do strange and inexplicable things. People look at you intently and say a string of sounds which have little meaning and you don’t know how to respond. People laugh because you did something funny, but you’re not sure what it was. It is exhausting! Naps are a great idea to recover enough energy for the next round of learning and I understand why toddlers have tantrums out of sheer frustration.

I am thankful that as I learn Kope, I do have training  and some aids. During  my year at linguistics school I studied methods and techniques to help with language acquisition. As a linguist worked in this area in the 1980s and Robbie has worked there more recently, I have some papers and books I can refer to. There is the draft of a small dictionary. There is a children’s picture dictionary. There is a grammar of a closely related language. There are some children’s story books. Each of these is a wonderful resource for me to refer to for new words, confirming the meaning of words and for learning phrases in context. There is no ‘How to learn Kope’ book, but these other books are invaluable helps.

Another language learning help is that I share the house with a toddler. Although he comprehends more Kope than I do, and will become fluent sooner than I will, he helps me out. Because of Small Boy I have learnt the words for ‘Be quiet!’, ‘Enough!’ ‘Put it down!’ and other such phrases. His default method of communication when he has no words, crying, is one method I have chosen to bypass.

Although toddlers start their language development with a lot of ‘I want…’ I have started with stating the obvious. ‘I am cold’.’ ‘I am hot.’ ‘ The woman is tall.’ ‘The man is strong.’ Stative clauses are easy enough.  Well, except for the day I said ‘Mo darudaru ka’ instead of ‘Mo daradara ka,’ so declaring that I was yellow, rather than that I was confused.

Adding verbs is when it gets complex, but even then I am stating the obvious. ‘I am going to the toilet.’ ‘I am going to the house.’ Still, if I can learn to make verbs work for me with obvious statements, I should eventually be able to make complex statements and string my clauses together into some sort of story or argument.

Another area of village life in which the toddler outstrips me is in balance and stability. He has grown up with canoes and mud, so knows how to sit and walk so that he does not fall over. I am still learning. Miraculously, in the first six weeks I have only had one slip, the bigger miracle being that no one else saw it happen. I also weigh a whole lot more than a toddler, and more than most village folk, so I am the one who will find every weak plank in a house or a walkway. Breaking people’s houses is rather embarrassing, for both parties. I am learning to assess strength of planks before I step and to pace my steps for the parts with a beam underneath. Meanwhile, the toddler skips about the house and other adults walk in straight lines.

So it is that I have returned to being an adult sized toddler. Some days I have to remind myself that this is a stage, that it will pass, and pass sooner the more I focus on language learning. In a country where the white people are generally seen as the experts and the teachers, it is good for me to be the incompetent one and the learner. I have been learning a lot about humility as well as about language!

At the moment the toddler in the house knows more language than me, but my goal is eventually to be able to speak with Old Lady (really, that is what people call her in language). As she has few teeth, no English, talks quickly and laughs at her own jokes, I have set my sights high.

PS I am writing these blog posts with limited internet access and scheduling them for the coming weeks. Photos will be added later when better internet is available, although as Small Boy does not like to wear pants, and those sort of photos are all kinds of trouble, there may still be no photos of my toddle sized language helper.