Second Languages in a Time of Face Masks

Me in central Lausanne wearing a face mask I bought from a local clothier. May 20, 2020.

If you ever run a marathon or a very long footrace—whatever length you’d consider long for a race, whether that means one mile or fifty miles—you’ll find well-meaning-but-misguided people lining up at about 90 percent of the race’s distance—about 10 percent ahead of the finish line—to scream that you’re “almost there.”

And when you run past these well-meaning-but-misguided people, you will want to scream back that hollering such a miserable, awful, cruel thing doesn’t help at all, not one bit, because you feel utterly smashed and the finish line seems nowhere near close enough—much less “almost there.”

In fact, you don’t scream back at these well-meaning-but-misguided people only because you have no energy to spare for screaming.

Language learning feels a lot like running an endurance race. However, this race doesn’t have a finish line—just multiple, endless stages.

Language Learning and Face Masks

Some people have facility with foreign languages. I don’t count myself as one of these people.

If someone doesn’t speak to me in clear, slow, neutrally accented French, I can’t understand at all. In fact, even if someone speaks French clearly, slowly, and with a neutral accent, I don’t catch most of what someone says at this stage of my language learning.

Add a face mask and physical distancing in the COVID-19 era, and you’ve exponentially complicated the problem.

Rarely does anyone speak to me in French while wearing a mask because, since this crisis began, I’ve mainly spoken with people on-line. Even the few people with whom I haltingly speak French, like my language teacher and my language-exchange partner, speak with me on-line.

When I run errands, properly masked, I flit about a stranger among strangers, which precludes much more than a simple “bonjour” when necessary or polite or both.

However, now that more stores, shops, cafes, and even restaurants have reopened—even with safety measures in place that include distancing and capacity restrictions—I have only a few days or even weeks before I’ll need to communicate a bit more in a French-speaking world.

And I’ll have to do it through voice-muffling masks.

Aiming for Baseline Communication (before Masks)

I’ve worked hard to learn French to at least a somewhat conversational level.

I’ve studied French at least two hours a day, every day, for more than seven months. I listen to several French-language podcasts daily as I exercise, cook, tidy, dress, ready myself for bed, and so on. I’ve attended several free workshops and seminars in French during the crisis to try to improve my French comprehension.

My near-term goal: To get fluent enough in French to make a few friends and attend a few events without too much struggle.

In a race with no finish line, just endless stages, getting to a point at which I can attend a Molière play and fully understand it may never happen. I don’t even yet aim to attend a contemporary play in French.

Second Languages and Muffled Speech

Lest someone reading this figure I exaggerate the endlessness of language learning, let’s take Arnaud as an example.

When you add up his different stints, Arnaud lived for more than two decades of his life in English-speaking countries. Though he has an accent when he speaks, he fluently speaks English. He reads books in English, and high-level books at that.

Yet he says he cannot follow along when my brother and I speak to each other. (We do speak rather quickly). He prefers to turn on English or French subtitles when we watch television and films at home. He doesn’t like to make calls in English.

And if I’ve muffled my voice in any fashion, fluent-in-English Arnaud struggles to understand me, even when a native speaker would comprehend easily.

Examples: When I say something to Arnaud in the hallway at our building—where we have a lot of hard surfaces and everything echoes—he rarely knows what I've said. If I cover my mouth in any fashion when speaking, he usually needs me to repeat the comment.

For this reason, we minimize speaking when wearing masks out in the world.

Moving the Language-Learning Finish Line

Finishing a stage of this endless endurance course after which I can at least go to a game night and get along okay, attend a festival and make small talk, or join in a business event and passably explain what I do for a living would feel like breaking free from a locked room. (Update: I’ve almost reached freedom and have discovered a few language-learning side benefits in the process.)

And just when I feel I’ve reached a somewhat passable level of French comprehension and communication—just when I feel I’ve gotten somewhat close to the end of this stage of the race—COVID-19 has moved the finish line.

In the new world order, speaking and understanding French passably well no longer suffices. Today, I need to understand and speak French at the level of passable-while-mutually-masked.

Very funny, universe.

P.S.—Click here for stories about my journey and the language-learning resources I used.