Fluent or Not...Here We Come

It’s one of the most emotion filled moments in a child’s life as the sound of a school year’s final dismissal bell is overwhelmed by the cheers of students finally released from nine-months of academic captivity. Remember that feeling? Andrea and I relived a form of it yesterday afternoon as we have officially completed the two semesters of Amharic language school as required by our organization.

 

Back in early February we paid for our last 6-week block of classes, one week of which remained after the mid-March Spring Break. Even after having two weeks of “break,” we both returned to class tired and unmotivated to dig deeper into Amharic. So instead, this final week, we used a large chunk of time each day to learn and practice saying the gospel message from the creation, to the fall, to God’s plan of redemption being declared through prophets, to Jesus’ birth, his life, ministry, death and resurrection, to the way of salvation by grace through faith and finally the judgment day and eternal destinies of all mankind. This was very good practice. Yesterday’s final day of class, we read the Resurrection and Emmaus Road stories, our teacher told us some interesting stories of Ethiopian political history, and then we just sat around talking (all in Amharic of course). When the quitting time came (4:30pm), none of us wanted to say goodbye, so we used the fact that it was raining cats and dogs as an excuse to hang out for another hour with our favorite teacher and friend.

 

When the rain stopped, we began our 10 minute walk home, starting to process what it meant to be finished. It is very obvious to us that we are NOT fluent in Amharic, as we are reminded of each Sunday at the Amharic church we attend. On the other hand, we definitely can communicate and given enough time, we can say most things with accuracy. Although the classes have finished, the learning has not. Language learning truly is a lifelong process. Nevertheless, we walked away from the Joint Language School yesterday afternoon feeling the exact same relief and excitement that I remember as I rode my bike home from Horace Mann Middle School at the completion of eight grade. Well I suppose it wasn’t the exact same feeling. First of all, I wasn’t riding a bike, I didn’t have any “Book It” coupons to redeem at Pizza Hut on the way home, and I wasn’t excitedly anticipating investing more time and energy into finally beating Mike Tyson’s “Punch Out”. Nevertheless, we were ready for some rest and surprisingly excited about tackling ANOTHER language.

 

Looking back at the language school time, we definitely had high mountain top successes and low valleys of discouragement, both of which we expect to continue. One thing that kept language learning fun was the frequent use of Ethiopian traditional stories. It’s been fun to see the patterns within these stories, such as how many characters are killed at the end, how donkeys almost always get the short end of the stick, and how happy endings are not required, or even expected. To give you a glimpse into the minds of Ethiopian story-tellers, we will share a few of our “favorite” stories with you in the next series of blogs.