Grammar Lessons

I recently sat in on a talk by a language instructor, a confident and fiery teacher of Spanish who regaled the audience with interesting and hilarious tales of language learning. To what extent, she asked us, do you have to be grammatically correct to be understood? If someone asks in, say, a bar in the U.S.: You has here things for eating?, most likely they'll not only get a straight answer, they'll get one in fast-paced normal English that the bar tender won't even bother to cushion with simple vocabulary or more clear annunciation for an obvious second-language speaker. She shook her head and said Teachers are the only ones who are obnoxious. They're the only ones who will say 'You can't say it that way!' Her point settled in, and I've been going over it as I measure my progress with Dutch.

When I go over the evidence, it occurs to me that most native speakers are actually very slow to judge someone's grammar as a second-language speaker. I have been in conversations with plenty of non-native speakers and I very rarely think Wow, they said that all wrong. I'm usually too busy combing for meaning, trying to get the gist, searching for an appropriate response. My H. will let me ramble on in Dutch and I finally turn to him upon composing a particularly daring sentence that could be very clever but is most likely just wrong. He nods more often than not, prompting me to continue with what I'm saying. I finally ask him flat out Is that how you would say it? And he has to think. He reflects. He has to take himself out of what I'm saying and put himself into the how, analyze the surface for cracks in grammar or misused vocabulary. I've begun to love these moments. The larger picture is, at least, recognizable. And isn't that the important thing? It is wonderful to find that someone has been listening to what you've been saying rather than how you have said it.

And so I'm trying to cut myself some slack. My lofty notion of fluency may have inflated over the years, but now, I am thinking about all kinds of past conversations. Conversations with U.S. foreigners, all those times I've said No! Your English is really good! when their confidence lagged - I always meant it. And conversations with native Dutch speakers who give me those same encouraging words. And I am contemplating graduating myself from I speak a little Dutch - to something else.

The Circus was in town

This past weekend marked the second annual Leuven Circus, a charming, home-grown affair whose organizers mine the local Circus school for participants. There were performers who can balance expertly on stilts, women who can dance atop enormous moving balls, men who are masters at manipulating exceedingly large puppets. There were trapeze artists and gymnasts and even a little wagon with a bug circus, a queue snaking out its door with wiggling children and their smiling parents. There were fireworks, right above our heads, in time with the energetic sounds of a percussion band, De Shemayet, and night goblins who rode around lighting fires. We could not have had better weather for it. It was delightful.

For the opening, they brought in the professional Big Boy, a tight-rope walker who made it from one side of Ladeuzeplein to the other, over the heads of a buzzing crowd, ending at the University Library steeple. No less than 200 meters, and with, I’m sure, quite a wind, up there all alone. In the introductory announcement, they laid all his cards on the table – Michel Menin, in his mid-60’s. He had done tight-rope walks more than 500 times, a true veteran. H. leaned over later and commented - It makes it all a little more boring to say he’s an expert. They should have told us he was an accountan who just discovered this new hobby after his retirement, and after he learned to manage his severe tremors, less than a year ago! I did plenty of nail-biting anyway.

My sister, at some point, wondered aloud if New York had anything like this – fun and cute, community-grown and community-oriented. I smiled. I don’t know, but it seems a bit unreplicable, even (or maybe especially) in the Big Apple. Authentic to my small, charming home.

Pitching Belgium

Several months ago, I was leafing through a brochure from a Marketing school here in Belgium (no, not for a degree, just because it was there and convenient in some waiting room or other before some interview or other). The brochure was pitching the school to foreigners and said something like: Why choose Belgium? Belgium is centrally located in Europe - just a short train ride from Paris, London and Amsterdam! Oh Belgium. You’re like the middle child in some incredibly elitist family. In London, you compete with a distinguished older brother who just loves to talk about how proper and interesting he is, and in Paris, a romantic day-dreamer of a beautiful younger sister always stealing away your friends. And let’s not even talk about Amsterdam. You don’t even get the label of wild child of the family.

It is not a little bit twisted that this organization – a marketing school - chooses to pitch Belgium by saying that it’s incredibly easy to get the hell out of. And, I guess, that’s what people know about Beligum. This is what people said to me when I was moving here. Oh! It’s right there in the middle, it’ll be so easy to travel around!

I suppose they say this for lots of reasons, not just because Belgium might suffer from low self-esteem or an inferiority complex. It’s incredibly small, so traveling any kind of major distance really does mean getting out. It’s just a spatial certainty. Because it’s so small, the location is sometimes one of the only things foreigners know about it. And it really is an advantage here that it’s so easy to travel. I jetted up to London a couple of weeks ago, happily and without a second thought.

My mother and sister are visiting now. We talked about going to Paris. Giverny in France. Luxembourg. Germany. Amsterdam. But, in the end, we decided to pass our time here, in Belgium. They have had to cast out on their own since I have been tied to the obligations of my job (and they have done beautifully well at exploring without guides), but a four-day weekend has given me a chance to enjoy the country I now call home. Walking around Antwerp yesterday, my stomach tumbled with the excitement of discovering new nooks and breathtaking areas once again. Sometimes the weekly grind distracts me from appreciating the amazing things that are easily within reach. Today, we stayed in Leuven, enjoyed good food and beautiful weather and ice cream on busy, bustling squares that only a charming Belgian city can offer. There is so much, so close to home.