certification

Wednesday 13.7.2016

If you want to learn to speak a language, it is imperative to talk to people who speak so fast that you don’t understand what they’re saying.  Only by clobbering through a few months of essentially speechlessness can we start to understand the regional pecularities, idioms, and connotations of a language.

Learning a new language isn’t just a past time or a hobby.  We construct our world with the tools we are given, and for a species which articulates and organizes existence with our speech and our writing, learning a language amounts to gaining a new brain.  With a second brain, we gain the ability to see how others place value on their worlds.  We start to bridge the gap between the world views we have developed and the world views which so often occupy an alien space.

Growing a second brain is  humbling experience.  It requires a constant willingness to sound like an idiot.  We speak those second languages with unearned confidence and expect the listener to make sense of our ramblings with a polite respect for the attempt.  Of course, many back home scrutinize those attempting to speak English without the same courtesy that Spanish speakers here greet tourists, but I suppose that the latter has not had the luxury of a non-tourism driven economy.

I’ve been sick in Lima for several days now and I’m ready to leave.  The city’s diffused light is partially the result of ancient weather patterns trapping in mountain just and partially the result of uninhibited industrial production, mixing the fog with smog.  The haze produced is unpleasant smelling and mildly innocuous.  Getting out of here would be good for my health.