For the past month, I have been working on learning the Czech language, and let me tell you, it is kind of difficult. From different pronunciations of letters to new word endings to new verb forms, it has not been the easiest learning experience of my life. I was not expecting to become fluent in a two and a half month span or anything, but I have definitely been challenged more in this class than I have before in other language classes.
In my academic life post, I dived into a little of what we have been learning in our class, so I'll try not to rehash everything again. Instead, I will talk a little bit about what it is like living somewhere where English is not the primary language. Living in the U.S. for all of my life, and being an English speaker, I have never really had a problem communicating. However, I have had many opportunities here to practice my smile and nod when I am not sure what is being said. In fact, we have even had some people continue to try to talk to us in Czech, even after we told them that we do not understand the language! Now just because quite a few people do not speak English, does not mean that everyone here does not. And it can actually be kind of fun sometimes to try to guess what you should order off the menu since there is not information about the items in English anwhere. Nevertheless, it is always nice to find people at the places you go to who speak English, so trying to do even basic things like buying groceries is slightly less problematic.
Being fluent in the common language is something that I have taken for granted for most of my life. I never really understood how hard it would be to move somewhere new and get adjusted, mainly because of how much the language barrier affects everyday life. Because even though trying to learn a new language can be fun sometimes, it is also one of the most challenging parts of trying to adjust to life here.
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