When learning a language is not a love story.
For many, the main reason why they learn a language is because they fall in love with it. They love the sound of it. They want to connect with native speakers. They are attracted to the culture of the language. This is what we call a love story.
In other cases, the language is learned for professional reasons, to find a job, get a promotion, relocate, etc. Here, the motivation is less “loving” and quite functional. And we can deal with functionality when, even if we do not like the language, we get the job, promotion or relocation we are striving for.
However, sometimes, we need to learn the language for a less clear outcome. Let’s say that you have moved to a new country for your partner. You love your partner, but you may not love the country, culture or language you moved to. You may even harbour certain resentment, frustration or even anger towards that country, culture and language.
But you still need to learn it. You want to. Because that would make your life much easier; it would allow you to connect more deeply with loved ones (for example, your partner’s family). It would enable you to create deeper relationships with people around you, to be more independent and successful in exchanges (bureaucratic, commercial, community….) and above all, to experience a sense of belonging.
But let’s face it: sometimes, when we are learning a language that we don’t love or when it doesn’t serve to achieve a clear outcome, frustration can be our constant companion.
A language is nothing but the people who use it.
My first immersion experience in a target language, English, was quite catastrophic. I spent a month working in a hotel in a little village in the Cotswolds. All very quaint. All very pretty. All very… harsh. It was the first time I experienced microaggressions due to my accent, the way I spoke English and my Mediterranean appearance. I had been struggling to speak English “properly” (as in the variety spoken in southeast England in professional communication), and the experiences I had the first time I ventured to communicate didn’t help to establish a loving relationship with the language. On the contrary, it felt more like an abusive relationship with a narcissistic boyfriend.
And this has an impact on how we continue learning. Suppose we feel belittled in the relationship with the language, or more precisely, the people who use the language in a native capacity make us feel that way. In that case, our confidence will be eroded, and little by little, our sense of self-efficacy will be harmed, and over time, we may give up while feeling ashamed about it.
Let’s say that you have a high degree of self-awareness, have learned more than one language, and/or have travelled the world. In this case, you may not feel belittled by those interactions but angry. Because you see the dynamic that’s been played, let’s say that on top of your self-awareness, you are also aware of the role colonization has played in how we perceive languages and the “proper” use of language. In this case, you may feel even more angry.
But you see? If you still need to learn the language or want to learn it, being angry at it is not going to play in your favour. In fact, anger is creating a wall between you and speaking that language.
A language is nothing but a tool, a tool that is in constant change. A tool that belongs to each and every speaker who uses it
How do you break that wall, then? How do you repair that relationship between you and the target language?
As you know, if you have downloaded the free Rewild Your Spanish guidebook, I recommend seeing the target language as a person. This approach helps us to work on the kind of relationship we want to have with it (the language and the learning process). Is it a respectful relationship or an abusive one? Do you want it to be obsessive or balanced, healthy or toxic? What behaviours or feelings do we not wish to have in the relationship? There are so many options, but you get the idea.
If we see the language as a person or the other part of the relationship, then we can experience different emotions. Sometimes, these emotions will be negative for the well-being of the relationship, and we’ll have to work on moving healthily through them.
How to move through the anger we experience towards the language we are learning.
5 steps
- Acknowledge the anger. This is an important one. Sometimes, we ignore the bitterness, anger or frustration we feel for the language or the learning process. We bypass our emotions, thinking that they have no validity. When we do that, we just ignore the wall that exists between us and the language.
There is something empowering about verbalizing,
“I am angry at my [insert target language] and the culture, and sometimes, the people speaking that language.”This is the first step. This is the step that enables you to break that wall.
- Feel the anger.
- Express it. Ideally, we would express our anger to the person who needs to receive it. However, a language is not a person, and we can’t express anger to every person who uses that language indiscriminately. My recommendation is to write a letter to the target language or the process or even to the individuals who have made you feel angry. This, my friend, is cathartic.
- See the other side of the conflict. Change the perspective. Now that we have all the feels out of the way, we can engage our analytical brain (neocortex).
For this phase, I recommend you focus on the individual cases that made you feel angry or frustrated at the language. How can you reframe the situation? How can you put yourself in the other side’s shoes? What kind of experiences may cause the other person to behave in that way or say what they did?
(Side note: we cannot bypass the older parts of our brain: the instinctive mind (lizard brain) and the emotional mind (limbic or mammal brain). We need to address what we perceive as danger, and we need to feel our emotions before we can access our thinking brain). - Have compassion (for yourself and the other).
- Decide if a reparation is possible or worth it. Since a language is not really a person but a tool people use, we can ignore this point. We have more control over the “other part” in the relationship.
Once the anger is not clouding our minds, there is no wall separating us from the language. Yet, the absence of a wall doesn’t mean that there are no challenges ahead in our learning journey or people who will react to our expression of the language in less than healthy ways. But both challenges and challenging people are shaping your journey. It’s your choice if you want to get stuck on them or acknowledge them, learn whatever lesson they bring, say thank you and move on.
Thanks for writing this. I’ve been struggling lately after moving to be with my francophone partner; as soon as I got here, learning french stopped feeling like a fun adventure and way to be closer to my partner, but instead like a necessity that I would never be good enough at to stop feeling so horribly isolated from everyone, but also that I’m not allowed to give up on. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one
Hi Kat, you are definitely not the only one! Learning a language for fun or love is not the same as doing it because we feel we have to, the energy is not the same and therefore the motivation is impacted. Can I suggest you remind yourself of the main reason you started learning in the first place? Also, remember that you are good enough now, that you are making the effort of learning and that you are not the only one in the communication equation.