I am ashamed to admit that my husband Greg and I have failed to learn not one, not two, but three different languages; which is highly embarrassing to say the least. Many would claim that we can’t even speak
English, such is the confusion over our kiwi accents, but that is another story.
Our excuses and reasons for our linguistic failures are varied, but I
like to tell myself it has nothing to do with lack of intelligence, and
certainly was not from lack of trying. 
We started
our first language learning experience in Bangladesh (I
don’t count my attempts at school girl French, which were mostly spent trying to write love notes
in French to a certain boy I was keen on at the time).
“My name is
Greg. I am from New Zealand. What is your name? How is your mother? How is my
mother? Do you have a school bag? I like to eat oranges, the apple is red,” he would repeat in
his kiwi Bengali over and over to every man he met wandering around our
neighbourhood. Sometimes he would get mixed up and say: “My name is New Zealand,
and I am from Greg,” which did not even bother him, whereas I would have been mortified. His new male friends would laugh and
shake his hand and then not let go, wanting to walk along the road holding his
hand so they could introduce him to their friends and on it would go. (In
Bangladesh it was very normal to see men holding hands which took him some getting
used to.) My language attempts, on the other hand, usually
consisted of me planning and practicing the perfect phrase in my head for hours
and by the time I was ready to say it, everyone had gone home to bed or had died of old age. Or I
would say something that I thought was perfect only to be met by completely
blank looks, or worse, laughter, and I was usually left feeling stupid and
irritated. Other times I would nod and smile and say “ha, ha, bhalo,” (yes, yes, good) and
Greg would ask me to tell him what they had said and I would have to mutter through clenched
teeth, still nodding and smiling, that I had absolutely no idea. I kept telling
him to stop doing this but he persisted as my nodding and smiling was obviously
very convincing and fooled even him.
We were even worse at Arabic, which we attempted to learn when
we moved to Jordan after Bangladesh. Fortunately though, Arabic is full of
praises to God, blessings, greetings and farewells so we learned to carry on a
five minute conversation in which we praised and thanked Allah for the person's health,
the lovely day, asked how they were, how was their mother and entire household, did they sleep
well, blessed their house, their heads and hands, saying how much we
missed them and it was a long time since we had seen each other and insha'Allah we
would meet again soon, then goodbye, travel safely, may God go with you and
keep you safe etc etc. By by the time we had
finished, we felt like we had carried on a fluent conversation without actually
saying anything new, but at least we were talking. Greg had a few innovations, such as asking taxi
drivers where they kept their combs (usually they kept one in the glove box of
their car which they always seemed happy to show him). He also loved to say; “min
zayman ma shuftak,” (I haven’t seen you for ages,) to people he had never met. Fortunately, Jordanians have a great
sense of humour and are extremely friendly and hospitable, so we managed to get
by with a lot of smiling, nodding and doses of our kiwi charm. 
Sometimes though, that hospitality and charm would be stretched to its very
limits. Greg seldom had this problem
as usually some of the men would speak English, but we were often separated and
I would be ushered into a room full of women, who, especially
in rural areas, could not not speak a word of English. After I had exhausted my
greetings and blessings, asked them how many children they had, what their
names were and where their children went to school, told them how delicious
their food was and that I was from New Zealand and had two children, I was
stuck. This would take about 10 minutes. The meals would last about 2 hours so
I think you get the picture. Sometimes (thank you God) there would be some
children who were studying English in school, so that always helped a lot as we
muddled through together. I learned to always take my camera as this takes up
time and I cuddled a lot of babies. But there was always plenty of smiling and nodding
and by the time I came to leave, hugs and blessings and you must come again soon,
God willing. Greg always came out looking full, happy, rested and a little
smug, while I would almost run for the car and demand to know why he had to
take so long and couldn't he eat a lot faster, or better still, next time suggest takeaways.
So alas, language learning is another thing I am not very good at. By the time we got to Tanzania, I was languaged out. I went to
language school for a while, but my tired brain seemed to be saying; “you
already have two failed languages banging around in here, add another and I may
just explode.” When we moved to South Africa we did not
even try. There are so many languages spoken here that we
thought we should just stick to the one we know, which fortunately the majority do speak. We were very fortunate that in all of the countries we have lived in, English
was a strong second language, so we could usually get by. But this was also the
main problem, as I am convinced the only way for me to learn a language is to be
surrounded by people that don’t understand a word I say. Then I am sure I would
be fluent in weeks, as the thought of not being able to talk for three years would, most certainly, drive me crazy.
