It'll come to you

"Andy explains long division"


I've often heard "you don't understand your first language until you learn a second." This has been true for me as a remember someone explaining Biblical Greek to me and comparing certain greek tenses to the gerund in English or the participle. My immediate response when someone referred to English grammar as an example was typically something like this, "What's a gerund?"

The fact is that you often don't know how to explain grammatical concepts in your first language because you've used them so long, they're just natural. You can't explain it. You just do it and you can do it because you've been using that language for decades now. When you start a second language that doesn't mirror your first language, you can on longer just do it. And you don't have the luxery that kids have of time. When you hear a 5 year old saying "He gaved me the ball," you say, he's only 5. He'll eventually learn it. But he's been studying English for 5 years!

Undoubtedly, French will be something that we will need to continue working on years beyond language school, but we need to cram a whole lot of learning in during these 18 months. Thus, a few prayer requests for us related to this is:

1) the ability the comprehend the different grammatical concepts in a timely manner
2) the patience to not become frustrated when things don't come in a timely manner


3) and probably the most important, pray that God will develop patience within us as we learn French, and that the patience He gives us will spill over into other areas of our lives.