Traveling Truly

Learning a foreign language in a new country with… zero background knowledge.

When I arrived in Kosovo in July, I had done no language study in preparation for my move. Why, you ask? Well, believe it or not, the Gheg dialect of the Albanian language does not have a plethora of online resources. If fact, there are none. Shocker, I know.

My only experience with Albanian was knowing how to saying “thank you”, “good morning”, “good afternoon”, and “goodnight”, and I definitely was not even saying those correctly; I had picked them up on a week-long trip over two years ago.

Despite my complete ignorance of the language, my living situation with an American family, and my inability to start lessons right away, I was determined to go ahead and do whatever I could do introduce myself to Albanian. In my first couple of weeks, I learned the alphabet system and my numbers to 100. I wasn’t even in a place where I could use these numbers in any sort of context, but I could get the kids in our neighborhood to count with me for practice and this was a great way to interact before I could get any sort of thought or message across in Albanian.

In the next couple of months, I continued to pick up the small bits of language that I could, paying lots of attention to the music we sang, the passages we read at our meetings, and anytime someone was speaking and being translated, I tried my very best to find any little scraps of language that I recognized in what they were saying. I hung on every word. Funnily enough, listening comprehension is my biggest struggle, so I continue doing this even though it is to little avail most of the time.

I think that a pretty big misconception that people tend to have about moving to a country where they speak your target language is that, once you get there, you’ll be fully immersed and picking up the language naturally and quickly. While this can definitely be true, unless you are living and working and interacting everyday with people who do not speak your native language and being forced to understand and interact in your target language, you are not immersed.

I live with an American family and have local friends who speak English. Just because I live in a country where everyone speaks Albanian does not mean that everyone speaks Albanian to me. In fact, I often struggle getting conversation practice because most people want to practice their English skills with me!

In September, I finally got to begin taking language lessons. I was only able to do three days a week for one hour at a time, but this was still great because I was never able to go days at a time without making any progress! I was forced to put my mind back into Albanian mode multiple times a week when it would have been wayyy too easy for me to have gotten by doing absolutely no language learning. But I have end goals in mind that do not allow that to be an option!

For two months I continued these lessons. I learned a lot and was able to have some simple, small-talk conversations in Albanian that were painful for everyone involved but typically got the message across.

In November I moved to Prishtina where I have been substitute teaching at an American-style school. The lessons are all taught in English and most of my co-workers are English speakers, so once again, definitely not an “immersive” experience for my language learning.

For the past month since my move, I have been trying very hard to be intentional with independent language learning by journaling, using my Albanian app, and engaging in conversation in Albanian whenever I can (in a taxi, with my neighbors, etc.).

Journaling has been a HUGE game-changer for me. I’m sure that the sentences I manage to string together are chock-full of so many errors that they are absolutely laughable, but I have seen my conversational skills improve in a really big way since I started taking time nearly every day to write a few sentences in Albanian about what is going on. Constructing sentences is hard, but the more I practice it, the more vocabulary I learn and the more natural it becomes for me to use full sentences when speaking as well!

Recently, the Lord has blessed me with a wonderful friend who is at roughly the same level of Albanian as me (way ahead of me with dialect) and is also very determined to keep learning! It is so helpful to have someone with whom I can study and who will help keep me accountable to my studies.

The truth, though, is that it’s hard. I feel like a fool 90% of the time that I attempt to speak in Albanian. If I have a successful language interaction in one store and feel like I’m making progress, I usually step into the next store and have an extremely humbling encounter where I can’t even begin to communicate what I need or want.

I have a long, long journey of language learning ahead of me. I have no pro-tips or recommendations on the best ways to learn a foreign language because, well, I haven’t done that yet. I have no idea. But I know I’m trying. And I’ll keep trying. And through the grace of God I AM seeing progress. Little by little, or, in Albanian, hap pas hapi. I’ll get there.