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Are You Fluent in the Language if You Don’t Know What a Plunger is Called?
Language learning and translation have long been of interest to me, especially since I have spent all of my adult life trying to learn Chinese. It’s particularly in the forefront of my mind right now, while I am staying in China for a few months taking language courses. It’s been fun so far, and very challenging. I’ve been focusing on writing, which is by far the weakest part of my Chinese language ability. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had many reasons to be encouraged, not least of which was last Monday when my writing teacher told me she thought that my written language, with practice, could get to the same level as my spoken language, which she described as “good enough that if someone didn’t see your face, they wouldn’t know you aren’t Chinese.”
I was happy when I heard that. But.... I suppose any time one begins to get to be just a bit too pleased with oneself, it doesn’t hurt to be knocked down a notch. I’ve had plenty of those opportunities during this extended stay in China too. The best (or is it worst?) came last week, just a few days after my teacher’s encouragement had me feeling pretty good about myself. 
Now that it is over, the story is kind of funny. My best friend and her two kids (my 2 oldest godchildren) were here visiting me for the week. It was great having them in town with me, as I’d been hoping to show them about the place for a very long time. We had lots of fun together, and no one even seemed to mind squeezing into the small quarters I’ve rented here. It was all part of the fun.
The second night, though, we did have a bit of an ordeal. The toilet got blocked up, having considerably more “traffic” than it is accustomed to. My friend and I tried everything we could think of to fix it — plunger, coat hanger, powders that are supposed to work on the blockage, the whole works. In the end, we just had to wait till morning and call the landlord. I realized, when telling the landlord about the problem, that I don’t know the word for “plunger” in Chinese.
The next night, we were in for a much bigger surprise. Upon returning home a little late that night, we found a leak flowing under the washing machine and running across the kitchen floor. It was not a terrible leak, and it was late, so I decided to make do with some towels for the night, and call the landlord in the morning. As the evening wore on, the leak got worse. With a little investigation, I found that the problem wasn’t the washing machine at all, but a pipe under the water heater. The water was flowing rather persistently by this time, so I decided to turn off the tap then, and not disturb the landlord till morning.
There was some sort of corroded gunk gathered around the tap and along the pipe. I barely turned the tap, and it cracked, spewing water all over the kitchen, quickly flooding the small room and flowing into the bedroom.... 
where my godson was sleeping on the floor. We got him up to dry ground on the bed beside his sister, and went to work at damage control. I couldn’t find the tap to turn off the mains, and so you can easily imagine the mess. I called the landlord, now really disturbing them late at night. The husband began making his way to my flat while the wife was calling the plumber. She called back several times, each time giving some bit of advice about where to find the main tap, or asking some question or another, and you know what? I found out just how bad my Chinese really is. I couldn’t construct a simple sentence, and kept losing words, and was thrown off by even the simplest of unfamiliar terms — things I would normally have no problem figuring out using context and all. That was frustrating enough, but it became really embarrassing when the landlord was later talking to the plumber on the phone from my house, and I overheard something like, “Oh yeah, sorry about the misinformation. My tenant is a foreigner and I didn’t know what she was talking about when she was trying to explain the problem to me.”
There was one bright spot in all the excitement — at least the kids slept through it.
After all this happened, I couldn’t help but think over a question I’ve pondered many times in the past — when do you know you are really fluent in a language you are trying to learn? Some say it is when you dream in that language, but I don’t think that is true. I have dreamt in Mandarin for a long time, and often dream in Hakka, a dialect that I don’t even speak but understand very well. Others say you are fluent in a language when you get the humor. I know that can’t be all there is to it either, though, because I have also found jokes in Chinese funny for a very long time.
I’ve always thought of fluency in a new language like this — if you can go to a university, sit in on the freshman level courses in pretty much any subject (i.e., “introductory” or general education courses) without feeling lost, then you are fluent. I might be wrong though. It might simply be when you don’t panic and lose your language ability in stressful situations.
Or, more likely, you are fluent when you know what a plunger is called.
© 2008 Shelly Bryant
Monday, 17 March 2008
