These last few days have been eventful. In the south of Morocco, you'll jump between top-notch hotels which serve delectable treats and dusty towns, which are quite the contrast, especially for tourists. As such, tourist density increases as this is the essence of Morrocan postcards, what with camels, traditional Tamazight attire, headscarves and the like.
Interestingly enough, aside from the many people who were on vacation, I seemed to blend in with just the right skin tone and facial ambiguity. After my greeting, "salam", the unsuspecting guides would often stand and start speaking to me first in Tamazight, then Arabic, and finally French at which point I'd admit that I come from the land of Hamburgers and Facebook.
Pour conclure, Morocco is not only the bridge between the east and the west, but also one of the few places in the world where you can find a 5-star resort with two pools, a gym, and a mini-golf course only a short drive from the Dunes of an arid wilderness that stretches as far as the eye can see. This is Morocco.
are you fluent?
Any language major knows how cliche this question is, as well as how difficult it is
to come up with a response. The first reaction is just a bit of false
modesty dealt alongside an uncomfortable laugh. "eheh...err I don't want to say I am, but
who's to say what fluency really is anyway? I can hold a conversation."
What follows is an existential crisis which often causes you to harbor resentment for the person who asked you the question since it's clearly their fault that you are now questioning the idea of a language. What can be said is that there are milestones. They're few and far between, difficult to achieve and subtle, but here's me taking a nice crack at a few of them:
1 - The first time you accidentally eavesdrop on a conversation
What's that?
the family next to you on the subway is having Arby's for dinner? That's awesome. They also have
a computer at their house and have a son that plays baseball. The details don't matter; you're
starting to pick up on some words in real spoken language. It's like a new club that most of
your friends can't join, and it feels great to understand things on a whole new level.
2 - The first time you figure out a word's meaning
Dégonfler. For some reason you can hear and see the action happening before your eyes, even though
you've never encountered this strange verb in the classroom. Your friend was just talking about an air
mattress and you can just picture the thing deflating since duct tape and scissors were mentioned earlier
in the conversation. You're quite the detective! It's a good thing onomatopoeias are commonplace in French.
3 - Functioning on autopilot
This is the most recent stage I can recount, and it's most certainly the most subconscious of the bunch.
You're sleeping soundly and you hear a loud banging noise. Your first reaction? An angry "Quoi?? Qu'est-ce
qu'il y a??" You check your clock, class starts in 10 minutes. Your interior monologue isn't running in English,
it's in sync with the local language. You get your lunch, say goodbye and announce your plans for later that
evening, only to realize halfway through the day that you weren't aware the conversation was happening and
don't have a recollection of the particular words you used, and yet here you are. Your understanding of
the language transcends conscious thought or attention to verb conjugations.
There may never be a clear understanding of what it means to be fluent in a language, but what's important to remember is that the progress you make is mostly internal, and when you can truly say you've lived a language, that's perhaps the most important thing of all.