Orange the “normal” word

Yesterday in class, we were learning fruits in French. Nothing fancy. I had given my students a sheet with "pomme, poire, orange…" and we were going through…

Then one of my students called out: "Mrs Adeline, did you write in French or in English?"

I looked at her, not really understanding.

“In French, why?”

"Because orange looks like the normal word."

I smiled but I kept thinking about it. She didn't say "it's the same word as in English." She said “normal”. As if her language wasn't a language, but just reality. And honestly? She had a point That's what we all do.

We speak our own language without thinking about it because words become so obvious, so transparent, that we don't even see them as words anymore.

A table is a table. An orange is an orange, until the day we walk into a language class, and suddenly, nothing is obvious anymore. Every word becomes an effort, every sound feels strange in your mouth. You hesitate, you stumble, you feel like a child again. That thing you've done effortlessly your whole life, communicating, is now the hardest thing in the room.

That's actually the beauty of learning a new language. Not just the vocabulary, not just the grammar. It's that moment when you realise that what you always took for granted is, in fact, just one way of seeing the world. One option among many.

I saw something shift in my student's eyes, without knowing it, she had just started doing linguistics.

I didn't tell her that her "normal" word came from French, which had taken it from Italian, which had borrowed it from Arabic, which got it from Persian.

Her normal word has travelled more than me. And it didn't even need a passport.

t.