I’ve been studying Catalan; a language spoken by slightly more than 9 million around the world. Our trip to Barcelona made my heart flutter enough to sign up for a class this Spring semester. I fought my urge to find a practical reason to take the class (i.e, When will I use it? What is it good for? How will this help my future?). It’s funny when you spend your life needing to justify your actions with everyone, you start to do that with your own person. I told myself this obscure class (that is hardly offered anywhere) was for my well-being and it would involve fun learning. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass on.
Thanks to my good fortune (and the coy referencing of ratemyprofessors), I lucked out with having one of the best professors I’ve ever had. As much as I sweat over interacting with people, I really believe in her teaching methodology – absolute and total immersion. Only Catalan is spoken in class and there’s always a fun exercise that requires all of us to speak to each other. Thanks to her positive encouragement, I’ve become a bit fearless of speaking to others in Catalan even though I am well aware that my knowledge is so limited and it probably sounds like baby talk when I open my mouth. In addition, it didn’t matter that I had no foundation of Spanish.
But why don’t I feel the same courageousness with French? Because I was trained in conjugating verbs and not in conversing with others! Quel horreur. I haven’t figured just yet how to combat this problem but it may call for an intervention…in the form of an annual trip to Paris. Oui, oui.
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