Fluency

We were talking about the definition of a word.
My husband was sure he was correct.
You took Latin so you should know, he said.
I never took Latin, I said gently in correction.

You didn’t? He asked quite surprised.
I could have given a know-it-all kind of answer.
I could have said, You should know; we went to high school together.
I rejected that impulse and told him, No, they gave me Greek instead.

Our youngest daughter was home and just listened to us banter back and forth.
I had taken German all through high school.
I needed another class in my schedule and the Latin classes were full.
So they put me in a Greek class.

That lasted less than two weeks.
It was the one and only time I dropped a class in high school.
I replaced it with an art class, which suited me more.
I never got the hang of Greek but often wished I had taken Latin.

Latin would have helped me learn root words.
Latin would have helped me with my spelling.
I actually bought a Latin book many years later and studied it a bit.
Words interest me, so that book was a good purchase.

The problem with the study of languages in our country is that there is lack of practice.
Since we speak English, we never get a chance to use another language.
If we lived in a foreign country, we could easily travel from country to country.
Traveling between countries means hearing and speaking different languages.

I remember when we were on our honeymoon, a German couple was in the hotel.
I tried to listen to them, not to eavesdrop but rather to see how much German I understood.
It was minimal at best, even after all those years of taking German in school.
When you think of how we learned to speak English, it is easy to see why it is so difficult.

We were immersed in the English language.
We heard our mothers speak while we were in the womb.
We are born into a world of sounds as we listen to words and songs.
We look at faces and try to mimic the movement of the mouth that is speaking to us.

Immersion is the key to learning a language.
Language is practiced.
Language is all around us.
Language becomes second nature to us before we even realize that we were learning.

Languages fascinate me.
Accents intrigue me.
As a little girl, if someone spoke a different language, I didn’t think I would be able to hear them.
Obviously, we can hear other languages but we cannot understand them unless we speak them.

Bella Devyatkina from Moscow speaks seven languages.
That may not be unusual for a linguist.
It is unusual for Bella.
Bella is four years old.

Bella speaks English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, French, German, and Arabic.
She speaks those languages fluently.
Bella’s mother, Yulia, says that her daughter has learned different languages from birth.
She first learned Russian and then English.

The other languages came a bit later.
Bella learned the languages from nannies who spoke in their native tongue.
Bella was immersed in the various languages.
She is able to transition between them with ease.

The languages Bella speaks belongs to three different groups.
The groups are: Indo-Euorpean, Semetic, and Sino-Tibetan.
Each of these groups lack structural similarities.
However, Bella thinks clearly in each language.

Bella was on a Russian talent show called, Amazing People.
She was asked age appropriate questions and answered them correctly.
She was asked questions from the school curriculum.
School begins for Russian students at the age of seven; Bella is still three years away.

Videos of Bella have appeared on the internet.
Some people are accusing Bella’s mother of robbing her of her childhood.
A neuropsychologist, Anna Semenovich, said that there is nothing to worry about.
Semenovich explained the reason why.

It is too early to tell if Bella is truly a polyglot or not. If the girl is learning languages through curiosity, if her parents managed to build a schedule that works as a game – it will only benefit her. She’s not studying, she’s playing! It’s natural for children to pick languages up – it’s how they (languages) evolve with age that matters.

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together on one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard the sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in their own language. (Acts 2:1-6)

When I watched the video of little Bella, I understood only English and German.
The other languages were lost on me.
I heard each of the other languages, I just could not understand them.
If it wasn’t for the English subtitles, everything that was said would have been nonsense.

The Holy Spirit must open our eyes and our ears.
Until then, we cannot see or hear spiritual things.
They are nonsense to us.
They are sounds with no meaning.

Once the Holy Spirit comes to us when we come to faith in Jesus as Savior, we can see and hear.
Spiritual thing are not nonsense.
God’s Word begins to make sense.
We begin to understand.

We become Biblically fluent; we become Biblically literate.
We hear and we understand.
As we immerse ourselves in God’s Word, it becomes part of us.
We can speak the Words of God and understand the Words of God.

We can share God’s Word with others.
We will speak with ease as we immerse ourselves more and more in God’s Word.
Keep talking the language of God so that others begin to understand.
Immerse yourself in God’s Word so that you will be Biblically fluent.