Conversation

To converse in a language not my own mother tongue is quite the undertaking. The amount of effort and diligent study and commitment to improvement regardless of the mistakes that inevitably occur in the aquiring of a foreign language is monumental. It takes a decidely unwavering path toward enlarging the vocabulary and subsequent usage of it.

In respect to the last point, I find the application phase particularly forboding. Not only for the fact that retaining new words is a sizeable task but that actual speaking is often arduous in that the grammar and tones often become confused and unintelligable to the native speaker.

The native speaker is not one to mince words or shy away from immediately correcting any mis-pronounced/inflected word or the word. This is not a problem in and of itself really. In fact, it is nice to hear the correct issuance of the intended word, phrase, or sentence. The problematice part is the harried sense that I get from these well intentioned corrections. They are often, if not nearly always, fast and almost like an aside that is spoken so that the native can satisfy their own need to hear the correct rendering of the phrase. At times it is certainly aimed at me in an effort to improve my speech, making it sound more natural.

Now , if only they would be so kind as to slow down just a little for the learner so as to more effectively internalize and indeed realize what was being said. It is easy to catch only a few words while missing the rest simply because of translation issues, i. e. some words or not known to me.