MS Learn

Revelation number 1: We remember things we like and that makes us laugh

I guess the main reason for this is that we only really remember neutral facts when we have to, whereas fun learning moments we enjoy coming back to every now and then.

When I got to Israel, I stayed in a boarding school for a while, with other Russian speakers. We studied Hebrew in an Ulpan, but spoke Russian with one another. As I said, I was a pretty hard working student. I spent hours on end reading to myself out loud from a book, preparing for the oral exams we had every week. We learned a lot of Hebrew grammatical rules (and believe me, there’s quite a few of those!), but even after spending months there, I could hardly speak a word.

It was only one Passover, when an Israeli family took me in for the holidays (thanks, Roza!), that I started talking for the first time. None of the family members knew any English, and the little Russian one of them remembered was more entertaining than informative. I had to speak Hebrew, so I did. Slowly at first, but gaining confidence quickly, I left their house a week later a whole other person. No more “davai” for me (a wonderful Russian word, used as alright, let’s go, or give it here). From now on, it’s only “yalla, yalla!”

Revelation number 2: We remember out of necessity

You can go live abroad for years, but if you live, work and hang out with people who speak the same language as you, you’ll never have to speak the local tongue. Unfortunately, language learning is a road best travelled alone.

As I said before, we remember emotional events much better. But it doesn’t only happen with fun light-hearted moments. We also remember fear and frustration. I once spent an hour in a supermarket in Michigan trying to find “Adashim”, a form of legume that I couldn’t recall the English translation of.

I think my exact words were “I’m looking for a small, bean-like food”. I wanted to make them for dinner, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what they were called in English (this was BSE – before the smartphone era). It was only after 15 minutes of playing a guessing game with one of the saleswomen (Black beans? Peas? Chickpeas? Alfalfa?!) that I found what I was looking for – lentils. I’ll never forget that word for as long as I live.