Roundabout

Remember the Chevy Chase movie European Vacation? Although overall pretty
weak, there were some great moments in it. I am thinking of the part in
Paris where he was driving and got stuck going in circles in a roundabout
for several hours, because the other cars wouldn't let him over. That's how
my Russian language is at the moment. I studied it for three years in
college, and had some interaction using the language from time to time since
then, but I am far from fluent. Russian is considered a difficult language
for English speakers to learn, and because of this you can raise your
eligibility for certain US Government jobs if you can show proficiency in it
(or in languages like Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu). This difficulty has been
commented on by other foreign students here, and these are people that can
speak three languages fluently, and are frustrated by the slow rate of
progress in their Russian studies. Every time I think I'm making progress, I
am presented with something new that changes everything, or someone on the
street or in a cafe asks me something that's all pops and buzzes to me.

I am often told that I speak Russian well, but people are referring to my
accent, which is minimal. They then go on to ask if I am a spy. However, I
would get caught pretty quick, as people can usually tell that I am a
foreigner after a few moments as I often say things that sound odd in
Russian, because I have not used the appropriate construction. This is the
reason I am finding it difficult - the way thoughts are expressed in the
language; you cannot simply translate the individual words and apply correct
grammar and sentence structure (unlike German, there is no rigid sentence
structure, in Russian eventually you just learn by experience what order
sounds the best according to the situation). A very simple example is job
titles. I have a Russian friend who is in banking - his business cards have
Russian on one side and English on the other. In English, his job title is
Account Manager; in Russian it is something like Manager for Work with
Individual Clients. Another example is that my Russian teacher told me the
other day that I can't say "I worked for a ballet company" in Russian. I
have to say "I worked for an organization which is occupied with presenting
ballet performances." But that is not precise, as it implies that the
organization only presented performances, and did not perform itself, but
since it is a troupe of dancers, I must use another sentence to say that.
Usually I just say it is an organization like the Bolshoi Ballet, which of
course everyone knows here and understands what it is and how it works. Then
a Russian friend told me that I can say it how I originally did, that
teachers just like to make things more difficult. But it will be some time
before I can tell the difference

There is an old language student joke: Man, those guys have a different word
for everything. I have glimpses of future fluency while sitting in lectures
like Theory of Law and Government and every so often I'll understand an
entire sentence. If you want to know what it's like to learn by immersion,
try watching the Antonio Banderas movie The 14th Warrior. I forget the exact
plot of the film, but there is an episode where the hero is traveling north
with a group of Vikings, whom he is going to help defeat some enemy. At the
beginning of the trip he doesn't know their language, but over the course of
the journey he learns it, and the way the filmmaker showed this process was
quite good. For now I'll just keep on keepin' on.