My Dream Birthday Present: Fluency

Since my pre-teen obsession with the best epic adventure trilogy in the history of the written English language, also known as The Lord of The Rings, I have dreamed of some day being a polyglot.  I have also, however, been sobered by the notion that polyglots are generally people who simply have a gift for languages.  I, unfortunately, am not one of these people (although I do know one of them). 

A famous picture of J.R.R. Tolkien-
look at how classy he is with his pipe
http://nerdfighters.ning.com/group/languagenerds

My desire to speak languages fluently stems from the aforementioned masterpiece of J.R.R. Tolkien, because of the presence of multiple languages in the story.  Tolkien created over 20 languages, each with not only its own grammar and vocabulary, but also its own people and history.  The depth of Tolkien’s languages is probably what makes his mythology (which extends far beyond The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings) so enthralling – it’s like real life.

Even to this day, I cannot claim fluency in more than one language – English.  I do speak French, but ça reste, and my Wolof is at about a basic-intermediate level – Maangi jang.  In the fall I decided to aim for 5 main languages – French, Wolof, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish.  Somewhere around March, however, I became quite pessimistic about the feasibility of this goal. 

A few months ago, picking up and moving around from country to country, staying long enough to master the language (about a year), sounded like a pretty good way to start off life after college.  And it is – in theory.  I love travelling, I love learning languages, I love meeting people and making friends, so it seems like a perfect plan, right? 

Wrong.  I also love knowing and belonging somewhere, continuing to speak those languages that I’m learning, building and maintaining those friendships.  All of a sudden constantly moving from country to country, language to language, culture to culture, people to people sounds a lot more complicated than I thought. 

Thanks, honey
http://www.paradisebabyco.com/baby-travel-checklist/

How will I maintain links to each place, if I’m constantly going to a new one?  And then there’s the whole settling down and making a living thing.  As boring as it may sound, I will want to get married and have a family and drive my kids around in my shiny mini-van.  That’s right, I said it, a soccer mom.  But can’t I be a soccer mom who takes her kids around in airplanes instead of minivans?  Can’t I take them from Senegal to Chile instead of from soccer game to ballet practice?  I guess that is asking a bit much of my future spawn, not to mention my future spouse.

Luckily for me, there is hope!  Yesterday while browsing through Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips, I discovered Benny the Irish polyglot.  At the age of 21, Benny spoke one language – English.  Now, eight years later, he is fluent in eight languages and working on others.  He claims to have discovered language learning “hacks,” making fluency in three months possible. 

Although I highly doubt that I will ever create my own languages like Mr. Tolkien, I will not give up hope on fluency in my five (already existing) languages just yet.  Three months in each country sounds much more do-able than a year – what do you think, kids?