Language Barriers

I’m honestly a little embarrassed writing this post, because I feel horrible about how little of the language I’ve been picking up while I’m here. Though I tried to pick up the basics before leaving the U.S., I was supremely unsuccessful, and have been extremely unconfident in my ability to properly communicate with the people here.

Part of what’s so challenging about the language here is that it has no basis in anything I know — I feel like I’m faring about as well here as I would in China, whereas if you dropped me in Italy (or even Germany), I would be able to do a far better job of picking up context clues in the language and being able to communicate the basics. Having absolutely no practice with Slavic languages before, I’ve been tripping over my tongue a lot — we went to get ice cream the other day, and the lady working the stand patiently coached me through pronouncing the word for hazelnut (ljesnjak). It’s definitely been a challenge!

One of the strangest things I find myself doing is nearly blurting out words in French (or, if I’m really not thinking, actually blurting out words in French). I feel so out of my element that I get this weird urge to speak anything but English. It’s happened more than once that I’ve ordered my coffee with a French accent (luckily, the words are similar enough that what I’ve said is understood, even if I get some weird looks), and then automatically responded with “merci” instead of “hvala”.

In fact, I’ve learned so little of the language in my time here thus far (some of which, I’m sure, being owed to the fact that I am always surrounded by English speakers, and none of us have enough knowledge of the language to coach each other enough to practice) that my favorite word to practice tripping over has become ljesnjak. We’re currently on our second night in Banja Luka (our last night in Bosnia!), and so I haven’t been out getting ice cream in the past couple of days — but as soon as we get to Belgrade (where I hear they speak a lot less English) I’ll be ready to order with my fingers and very rough pronunciation!