Language Essay

When we were very young, we came into this world seeing things but not knowing the names. We discovered that there were words when associating them, so we remembered them, so we could tell our parents exactly what we wanted once crying failed us. We face this same frightening prospect when we face a different language. We decide to stay or not to stay, at least when not knowing the language is detrimental to one's survival for more than a week. Learning a language is merely wanting to learn, having the ability to learn and having the time to learn.
It becomes tiring when we have to resort to sign language or pointing, especially when we face doing this long-term, so we decide we need to learn the language so we can survive, for the most part. We are in a situation where we cannot communicate with peers, and need to be able to say more than what’s necessary to buy groceries at La Boqueria. Essentially this is the situation where we find ourselves motivated to learn.
We go into a school, already knowing many things in our own language and not much in this new language. In a way, we have to anticipate not being able to translate every word from our language to this one, especially in the first class. We just have to stay open to it, and not have expectations, except that we'll learn how to associate things with the words (kind of in the same way we had to when we were young and didn't know the words for the things we wanted). When I arrived in Barcelona, I came wide-eyed, taking everything in, associating the stores with what they sold, and figuring out that the signs next to the produce said that the onions we're actually called cebollas here.
We can figure that we'll figure out more about the words if we have someone telling us how to associate these words in the most convenient way. Still, without the proper time and patience necessary, we'll find ourselves lagging behind. In my experience, if there's something stressful going on, it's going to be very hard to devote as much time to learning anything. We must be prepared to go into this ready, our minds empty and eager instead of brimming with the useless assumptions that'll make any more learning fruitless. We give ourselves time because otherwise we'll be very lost for a lot longer.
Learning a language takes us through the steps of being motivated to learn, being in the right mindset and having the time to learn. Each time we do this, we have a tool to go into this country or place where we have to know the language. Consider it a rebirth when we can relate what we see to different words in different languages as if we had known them our whole lives.