Learning Romanian

This is a picture of what learning Romanian looks like. I sat in this room about six days a week, for four hours a day, for two months. I passed my Romanian test at the end of the two month training session, that is to say I place in the intermediate mid range according to some international standard for second languages. Still, passing this test and speaking to teachers is a world's of difference than communicating with people in everyday life. Some people talk clearer and slower than others, some people are more patient with me than others when I am searching for the right conjugation of a verb, and others just simply can not understand what I am saying because of my accent. But for the most part I find people glad and willing to listen to me butcher their language simply because I am trying to speak their language. Recall that Moldova was part of the USSR for close to 50 years and during that time Russian was spoken, so today speaking Romanian is a point of national pride to most people.

I have found that learning a second language to be the most challenging, exciting and frustrating aspect of my PC experience so far. Some days I can talk clearly and efficiently and others I struggle to tell someone some thing as simple as 'I like water'. Most of the time conversations are a guessing game for me; I can pick words out here and there and then I have to place it in context and then I have to translate it into English in my head, then think of a response - in Romanian- and then hope what comes out of my mouth is at least close to being correct, or at least intelligible. The language barrier leads to some very interesting, strange and surreal moments which keeps these long cold winter days interesting. Soon, I hope, language won't be a barrier at all...