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.