Language Barriers

The longer I'm at Maxwell, the more and more I notice my english skills deteriorating. It's part sad, part hilarious, and part down right depressing. Communication is kind of important in life, and since I have no other language to fall back on, being able to speak english effectively is kind of important!

My biggest problem has been verb tenses. Who knew that conjugating verbs could ever be this difficult! Some all too common examples:

"There is two packages floating out in Africa somewhere with my name on it!" - Katie 

"I do like another doughnut...." - Tanzi 

Not only are verbs a challenge, but words are made plural here without much of a second thought. In the cafe, you pick up your fruits juice after you grab your silverwares, and people will leave campus to get their hairs cut instead of their hair cut.

The top two phrases that I've picked up are "even me" which is used the say way "me too" is used, and then "Me, I...". Both of these are already bad english, but I have taken it an extra step and smashed them together into the oh-so-incredibly useful "Even me, I . . ." I'm ashamed to admit how often my sentences have started off this way.

Part of me is almost excited to come back to the States having picked up various sayings from my year abroad, however, an even bigger part of me knows that if I come back to the States talking about fruits juices and hairs cuts, people might give me strange looks.

Side note: Writing this blog post was incredibly difficult. Much more than it should have been! I'll try to work on my english skills and get back to you guys later....