When do you ‘know’ a language?

Except there isn’t a magical point when you know, for certain, that you ‘know’ a language. From the instant you begin to embrace it, allowing it to gestate within you, you already are speaking it

Today’s Italian class took place inside the contemporary arts museum in Bolzano. It was an intriguing situation to be in, considering so much of my professional life involves visits to museums, and I’m often offered guided walkthroughs either by the director or someone directly responsible for the show, like the artist or the curator. Today, instead, our class of five students were greeted by the person in charge of education and outreach. It was amusing because given our beginner level of fluency with the language, we were essentially treated like high school students. It was not a terrible experience. In fact I felt, because it was the complete opposite of what I’m accustomed to, I enjoyed myself tremendously. Walkthroughs for adults and art world professionals are usually conducted in a language that is intensely jargon-filled, with most sentences infused with a deliberate complexity that is always gratuitous in my opinion. The lack of narrative clarity is what tends to distance us from the art we see on display, which is, in any case, a manifestation of artistic subjectivity, therefore inherently subject to opaqueness.

Today was the first time I had to attempt to compose responses to artworks in a language I do not at all feel proficient in. The exhibition currently on display at Museion is called Techno. The poster for the show is supremely ugly—featuring a burning earth with limbs. I had very few expectations. But our initiation began in a corner, on the floor. We were asked to think of words in Italian that we felt described with some adequacy the times we currently inhabit. Our Italian teacher instructed our guide about our level, asking her to speak slowly, which she did. She managed to get us to communicate, using broken or half-remembered words. We had to then express words that related to our personal lives. When she turned to me I felt tongue-tied. I couldn’t remember the word for hope in Italian. It’s La Speranza.

As we toured the exhibition, we were asked to essentially use words to describe what we saw. In between we were urged to do some exercises, like writing words on post-it notes, using scissors and a pen and glue to create statement lunch boxes that critique capitalism. Towards the end, we had to respond to an LED curtained work with trippy choreographed lighting animated by techno music. We were given pens and blank paper and had to engage in automatic writing. Under normal circumstances, this would have been a dream assignment, except how to write continuously, without pausing, in Italian?

I pushed myself to perform outside my comfort zone, giving myself permission to make mistakes. In three minutes I composed about six sentences. Mostly about how I didn’t like techno, preferred jazz instead, and found techno too repetitive. I was genuinely surprised that I was able to be somewhat eloquent. I suppose that’s what the pressure of writing continuously as a response to a prompt does to you.

I wouldn’t say I’ve been super thrilled with the teaching methodology of the institute in which I’ve been enrolled. I don’t regret joining the class because it at least compelled me to make some strides in terms of entering the language. But whatever residual FOMO I had had about learning German extra-institutionally has long since dissipated. Given that most of the people who would have joined the paid class would have been Italian, it would have become the default in-between language. It was definitely wiser for me to learn at home. That’s how I’m going to take my Italian forward now, with the assistance of my partner, of course, who, thankfully, is a patient teacher and someone who can actively explain a grammatical rule or convention and whose linguistics background enables a greater phonetic thoroughness.

Since I began the process of investing time learning new languages, though not necessarily out of choice, I have realised that the most valuable quality is not possessing an aptitude for languages; it is humility. Allowing oneself to be led by newness, not feeling angered or triggered by how much time one needs to absorb, and being patient with oneself as you work through mistakes, as you make sense of grammar that feels super bizarre in certain ways, are so enormously helpful. I think what I felt sure of today is that there is no magical point at which you “know” a language. From the instant you begin to embrace it, allowing it to gestate within you, you already are speaking it. 

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx

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