Earwigging on the conversations of strangers......

Three days from now I will have my bags packed and be setting my alarm for 3.30am so I can get a plane home to England for the summer. It's been a little odd trying to settle in to a new country knowing that in a few months or weeks I would be leaving again for a while. Generally I've found it easier to ignore this fact and just concentrate on being here but I have to admit it has affected me in some ways- especially in the last month or so. The most obvious being my 'enthusiasm' for my language learning.

Before we came I was so excited about learning a new language. I felt like I had learned loads from the CD’s I had determinedly chuntered along to while ironing and driving to aerobics classes. I could count to a hundred. I could say I wanted something to eat and drink in many different forms, ask how, when and where, say here or there. And, of course, my personal favourite, the catch-all, get you out of trouble phrase "I am English, I don't understand!!!"

But then I got here........and everyone looked at me blank. My pronunciation was terrible I know (stupid tongue- why can't you roll your 'r's) but it wasn't just that. It turns out that pretty much everything I had learned on my CD’s was in fact an overly formal version of what normal people would actually say in any given situation. So even the phrases I thought I knew needed to be re-learned and replaced with new, more usable, versions. For example, suppose you wanted to invite your new friends round to your house for some food- what you need to know how to say is "hey guys, I'm starving d'ya fancy coming round to mine and getting a take-away". Instead the CD has equipped me with the decidedly less friendly announcement "I would like to eat something" which, while it may sound functional when you first learn it, comes across somewhat robotic when deposited into a real-life conversation unaccompanied by anecdotal preliminaries. And then of course there's the realisation that just because you know how to say "hello, how are you?" doesn't mean you'll stand a chance of understanding "er...yeah, I'm ok I guess, been a bit tired recently but I'm not so bad". According to the CD the only response I should ever expect to receive was "good thanks, how are you?".

It's also interesting to discover just how quick your conversation runs out. For example the first time I meet a Romanian who doesn't speak English I am able say "hello, my name is Sam, it's nice to meet you". If I feel confident to hang around I can then go on to ask where they live and if they have any children. I can have a small conversation about how pregnant I am and the seemingly incomprehensible notion that I do not know whether I am having a boy or a girl. By now though I'm starting to get desperate so, in true English style I refer to the weather- I am still a bit weak in this area so I either say "it is very hot" or "it is very cold". There follows an awkward silence before I pull out my 'get out of jail free card' "Unde este Toaletta vuh rog?" (where is the toilet please?) The second time I meet this person I have nothing conversational beyond “it is nice to see you” so I have no option but to come across as a temperature obsessed toilet visiting weirdo.......thank goodness I'm pregnant otherwise people would think I had a problem!

Then of course you have to contend with the fact that everybody speaks better English than you do Romanian. It is both the blessing and the curse of the English speaker. Even those who claim not to speak English at all can understand it better than you think- they have been listening to English music and watching films in English with Romanian subtitles their whole lives. Not that this makes it easy or natural for them necessarily, but I do feel at a slight disadvantage. I have absolutely nothing in the bank, no phrases, sayings or even childhood nursery rhymes- before I thought about coming here I think I can honestly say I had never encountered a single Romanian word. So, needless to say it soon gets boring for everyone involved if we limit conversation to my Romanian. English it is then - a relief and a disappointment all at the same time- I know I should try and insist they let me practice with them but I just feel like such an idiot and it's so hard I can't imagine I'll ever get it right. It takes a really long time to learn a language- it's not just vocabulary, it's phrases and sayings, and gender's and word orders, it's concepts, it's culture.

Having reached the end of the CD learning program I have nothing left but books from the 1980's (it's surprisingly hard to find Romanian language lessons) which I keep intending to work through but which I always discard in disgust as soon as I pick them up again- I struggle enough with my Yorkshire version of the pronunciation when someone says the word to me, never-mind trying to figure it out from the Romanian spelling. Needless to say, as the dates for returning to England have approached I have become less and less disciplined in my determination to try. I asked about lessons but then there didn't seem any point cos we were going home in a few weeks blah blah blah. Excuses excuses I know. I am a bit disappointed in myself actually......but apparently not enough to do anything about it. :-)

I have tried not to waste my time here thinking about the things I miss about home but now that there's only a few days left I'm allowing myself to contemplate country walks, fish and chips and pub meals, and of course the family and friends I will finally get to hug again. And today, as I sat in the mall it also occurred to me how nice it would be not to be a foreigner for a little while. To instantly understand everything that I see and hear around me. To not only be able to talk to anyone or everyone in the room if I wanted to, but to be able to sneakily earwig on the conversations of strangers. To comprehend the cost of something instantly without having to perform arithmetical gymnastics. To know where to go and what to do if I need to pay a bill or the car breaks down (both of which occurred today!). Don't get me wrong I am loving living in Romania but I am gonna enjoy being English in England this summer.