remember[ɹɪˈmɛm.bə]
to keep something in your mind
Synonymsrecall
ExamplesRemember to call me.
Word tags
English – abstract and connecting words, the ones that carry an argument
Nadia had been in the for eleven weeks, and she still could not which of the two bus stops was hers. She would at the wrong one, nothing, and have to walk back. It was a small , and she made it often enough to stop being embarrassed by it.
The was the harder part. She could well enough to buy bread and where she lived, but a conversation moved faster than she could , and by the time she had chosen a word the moment for it was gone. Her teacher, a woman named Iva, told her this was normal. "You more than you can say," she said. "That is always true first. Give it time, I know nobody to hear that."
Nadia had come for one : an at a small firm that someone who could in two . It was work and the pay was enough. Her plan for the did not go much further than that, and she had decided not to more of herself for now.
The city was in a way her own had never been. The buses were full, the streets were full, and the was wet in a manner that seemed to a particular kind of coat, which everyone but her appeared to own. She would an umbrella from her flatmate and to it, and her flatmate, who was in a way Nadia admired, would her another one without saying anything about the first.
She began to differently. Instead of trying to every new word at once, she would three a day and them around like coins. She would a sentence she already knew and the new word instead of the old one. It felt slow. It was slow; , it was the first thing that had worked. But by the fourth month she could a conversation about her at the doctor's, which had been impossible in January, and she could follow the news, which had been impossible in February.
Iva she stop apologising for her accent. "It is not to apologise for who you are," she said, and Nadia thought this was probably about more than grammar.
There was a in May, and Nadia took a north with two people from work. The there was different again – quieter, older, and it no to be enjoyable. On the train back, one of them asked whether she to stay in the for good. She said she did not know. It was an honest answer, and it was the first time she had given a difficult one without rehearsing it in her head.
She had , for a long time, to feel . What she got instead was something smaller and more useful: she stopped to feel before she spoke. Her had not become easier. She had , quietly, in the only way anyone does – by getting things wrong in public and the next day.
That is , and like most it is easier to give than to follow. But the to slowly, out loud, in front of a that was not paying much attention, turned out to be the one that worked. For : eleven weeks in, she could not find her bus stop. A year in, she was the person a newer asked.