There a few who would move to a foreign country without learning any of the basic words or phrases needed for communication in everyday life. There are fewer who would make this move knowing months in advance that the family they would be staying with speak little or no English, and whose mother tongue is Flemish, an apparently less ‘squeaky’ version of Dutch. Yet unfortunately, the small minority to which I belong would even come with no dictionary. And no idea.
I communicate in the form of limited miming skills, honed in school drama lessons, which allows me to construct the most simplistic of conversations. Unsurprisingly, most resulting with optimistic pointing at similar meaning objects in the vague promise of some sort of understanding. Needless to say, Google translate has seen huge increases in its user rate recently.
However, I am determined to learn at least some of the language over the next few months, and the family I’m staying with often get me to repeat Belgian words, more often than not resulting in outbursts of laughter at my dire attempts of a Flemish accent. My most noteworthy endeavour however, has been using facebook in Dutch which, at best, has been less than successful, although I can now “fan worden” (become a fan – for all you non-Flemish speakers out there) of seemingly anything.
I use the term ‘language barrier’ very lightly. It’s more of a solid brick wall, impassable to all but the fiercest of linguists. Certainly no level of cycling pedigree can help me with this one...
Delightful.
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