Learning a foreign language can be frustrating, can start to feel like a lot of "blah blah blah," but it is always rewarding. Photo (cc) flickr user theunquietlibrarian

I’ve talked before about how fluency in a language can still mean frustration when you find yourself needing to talk about a new subject.  When I began renovating my home, I suddenly found myself tongue-tied.  I needed help learning the skills I would need to finish the project, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about it.  Words like beam, insulation, and jigsaw were not in my vocabulary; there had never been a unit on building in any of my German textbooks, and it had never occurred to me to learn them.  At least I knew the word for “hammer.”  (It’s Hammer!  Got that one in the bag.)