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So far, my favorite moment of this crazy language-learning adventure took place in a Viennese subway station in 2012. I was returning home from a show when I saw a Russian colleague coming toward me. Our common language had always been German, and so, in that language, we greeted and caught up on the events of the past year. Then I dropped the bomb.“You know, I speak Russian now,”I told her in Russian.
The expression on her face was priceless. Her jaw actually dropped, like in the cartoons. She stammered,“What? When? How?”as we launched into a long conversation in Russian about language learning, life, and the intersection between the two.
My first attempts to learn languages were significantly less jaw dropping. I went to Hebrew school for seven years. We sang songs, learned the alphabet, lit lots of candles, drank lots of grape juice, and didn't learn much of anything. Well, except the alphabet; I had that alphabet nailed .
In high school, I fell in love with my Russian teacher, Mrs. Nowakowsky. She was smart and pretty, she had a wacky Russian last name, and I did whatever she asked, whenever she asked. Five years later, I had learned a few phrases, memorized a few poems, and learned that alphabet quite well, thank you very much. By the end of it, I got the impression that something was seriously wrong. Why can I only remember alphabets? Why was everything else so hard ?
Fast-forward to June of 2004, at the start of a German immersion program for opera singers in Vermont. At the time, I was an engineer with an oversized singing habit. This habit demanded that I learn basic German, French, and Italian, and I decided that jumping into the pool was the only way I'd ever succeed. Upon my arrival, I was to sign a paper pledging to use German as my only form of communication for seven weeks, under threat of expulsion without refund. At the time, this seemed unwise, as I didn't speak a word of German . I signed it anyway. Afterward, some advanced students approached me, smiled, and said,“Hallo.”I stared at them blankly for a moment and replied,“Hallo.”We shook hands.
Five insane weeks later, I sang my heart out in a German acting class, found a remote location on campus, and stealthily called my girlfriend.“I think I'm going to be an opera singer,”I told her in whispered English. On that day, I decided to become fluent in the languages demanded by my new profession. I went back to Middlebury College in Vermont and took German again. This time, I reached fluency. I moved to Austria for my master's studies. While living in Europe in 2008, I went to Perugia, Italy, to learn Italian. Two years later, I became a cheater.