When people hear my nice accent in a foreign language, they naturally assume I am fluent. But my language-learning journey reveals a very different reality: smooth pronunciation often hides struggles. As long as I can remember, even back in middle school, I made more progress in class than in immersion.
My friend said that a lot of grammar makes a language hard for her. For me, it is the exact opposite. Languages with a lot of precise, strict rules—like Finnish or Spanish with its clear verb patterns—give me kind of a roadmap. Also, both of these languages are phonetic, meaning they are written just the way they sound, which makes them much easier for me to learn.
However, languages that rely on social context, exceptions, or hidden meanings are an uphill battle. For example, I struggle with the subtle nuances and politeness levels in Japanese and Korean, the irregular grammar/spelling of Dutch and English, or the lack of grammatical markers in Mandarin. While I excel at learning Cyrillic or Kanji, I fail when I have to “guess” meaning from social context or absorb the grammar just by listening in any language.
Speaking skills:
This cognitive “traffic jam” happens in my native French, too. Expressing thoughts on the spot requires juggling ideas, words, and social cues all at the same time. If someone asks a simple, closed question, I am fine. But an open question makes me completely freeze up, or my thoughts come out unstructured. I also make mistakes when sentences get too long: I lose track of the pieces.
This challenge of manipulating multiple pieces of information simultaneously shows up everywhere:
– In written exercises: If a concept is isolated, I succeed. But if an exercise tests all notions at the same time, it feels like I can no longer recognize what I have learned.
– In listening comprehension: If speech is mumbled or filled with slang, I struggle to recognize syllables, as if I cannot just “guess” the missing words based on context.
Rosalie
I don’t think everyone with NVLD experiences things the same way I do, and I am probably wrong about many things; I just wanted to share my experience. I needed help putting this text into words; otherwise, my thoughts would have been a tangled mess.
