When learning a language

I'm learning to speak French, which is rewarding, especially when Mademoiselle Jeannette (my teacher) is telling me a story in French and my mind is whirling with sounds and translating her words into English in my head. It's hard to describe learning a language. Sometimes it's romantic, tasting the cracks and ridges in the words and letting them color your brain. It's relearning everything you know, and involves so much of you on so many levels. It's brutal and systematic on paper, when you're dealing with grammar and verbs.

But it's different reading French aloud or speaking it--rerouting the primal knowledge of air in your lungs and patterns on your lips. It's an exercise in itself to make foreign noises and you learn to wrestle your mind in sync with the sprawling sounds.