Sign: Elevator not working.
[Editorial comment: It had been out of order for months, and residents were annoyed.]
Graffiti: Why not?!
When we fled to Hungary, we were forced to begin learning one of the world’s most difficult languages. We downloaded Duolingo to all our phones and invested in an annual family subscription to enable unlimited use. We got another app called Drops that focuses on building vocabulary. I threw myself into learning all the food-related words, and within a month, I could confidently shop at the grocery store, knowing I could read all the ingredient lists to ensure nothing I bought contained gluten or any of my lengthy list of allergens. I had early successes that boosted my confidence, like when I ordered pizza and discovered I knew all the words to build a custom, gluten-free, vegan masterpiece.
But almost four years in, I still feel like a linguistic newbie. I hardly know anything, and I rarely use what I know. Our work focuses on Ukrainian refugees. Our personal life revolves around other people displaced by the war in Ukraine. Even our children’s friends are Ukrainian. With our calendar packed with outreach to displaced Ukrainians all over Hungary, we have little opportunity to practice Hungarian. And, as any successful language learner will tell you, practice is indispensable.
Communication is my superpower,
the one natural skill God gave me.
Last Christmas I asked for a Hungarian language-learning program. I wanted to go deeper into the grammar than Duolingo wanted to take me. The first module of my new program was designed to help the student understand their Hungarian goals. One question in that module provoked a paradigm shift.
Imagine a recent situation when you were not satisfied with your level of Hungarian. What would you like to change?
Until considering this question, my goal was to reach the same level of fluency as I have in Ukrainian. To put this into context, I am currently translating my book into Ukrainian with the help of ChatGPT. The AI does all the heavy lifting, then I read the results, identify the mistakes and the deviations from my chosen style, and tell ChatGPT to fix them. It took me over two decades to acquire this level of fluency, while raising six kids on the mission field. When faced with the prospect of beginning all over again, I wanted to collapse and give up before I’d even started.
Communication is my superpower, the one natural skill God gave me. In English, it’s as effortless as breathing. Losing this ability when I moved to Ukraine made me feel like a non-person. After years of struggle, I finally learned enough to get my point across clearly. Because I worked so long to reach this level, suddenly being forced to start over from scratch the most demoralizing thing I’ve ever experienced. But that question in the first module of my language-learning program put everything into perspective.
The most powerful thing this language course gave me was the gift of lowering my expectations.
I easily identified a recent situation when I had been dissatisfied with my Hungarian. A man had rung our doorbell to ask me a question. From his attire, I gathered that he was a repairman of some sort, and I guessed he needed some information relevant to the job he was doing in our building. But I had no idea what he was saying, so I couldn’t help him.
As I analyzed that experience, I realized I had no lofty goals for the Hungarian language. I didn’t foresee needing to teach a Bible study or share my life story. I simply wanted to be able to understand a workman who came to my door and give him what he needed.
The most powerful thing this language course gave me was the gift of lowering my expectations. While gaining full fluency seemed impossible, this new vision felt doable.
Last month, I achieved it.
Our doorbell rang, and I opened the door to find two workmen. One said a bunch of words in Hungarian. The only one I understood was bathroom. I grabbed my phone to use Google Translate, but first I said in Hungarian, “I don’t speak Hungarian. I understand bathroom.”
And then we went on to have a whole conversation entirely in Hungarian, no Google Translate needed!
Hours later I realized the magnitude of what had happened.
The man explained slowly that we shouldn’t use our bathroom.
I nodded and said, “Here, two bathrooms,” and pointed to their locations, wondering if the prohibition applied to both.
He said that we could use the second one.
I said, “Kitchen?” making two question marks with my raised eyebrows.
He said it was fine to use the kitchen sink.
I said, “One hour? Two hours?” tilting my head to one side inquiringly, while holding up one finger, then two fingers.
He said that we shouldn’t use the bathroom for two hours.
In under two hours, he was back again, and I understood that he was asking me to flush the toilet. So I did. He telephoned his partner then asked me to flush it again.
I tried, but the tank hadn’t finished filling. I went back to the door, pointed toward the bathroom and scrambled for words to explain. Feeling imbecilic, I finally settled on, “Now small water,” while making a motion with my hands to indicate a rising water level.
He understood, asked me to flush it once the tank filled, thanked me, and left.
Hours later I realized the magnitude of what had happened. I had already achieved the goal I set for myself ten months ago! I’m not going to stop studying Hungarian, but everything I learn from here on is a bonus!