Gobbledygook

I'm certain that every linguist has noticed that there is a distinct period of linguistic adjustment on arriving in another country, one which thankfully gets shorter and shorter the more familiar one is with that language. For example, on the train back to France after having gone home to England for Christmas, I was fairly certain that most of the conversations being held around me were in some sort of alien tongue, however by the time we pulled in to the station I could understand everything sans problems. It doesn’t only work in one direction; I’ve found that going to the UK has the same gobbledygook effect for a little while, particularly when I’m picking up conversations. The brain has a fascinating way of creating expectations – I’m accustomed to hearing French in the streets, so that is what my brain is listening out for when I first get back to England, and my native tongue makes no sense.

What I didn’t expect was for this effect to be so specific. As I’ve just mentioned, I expect most daily speech to be in French, no problems there, and conversations with my Anglophone friends to be in English. No problems there either. However, I was doing some work with radioclassique.fr on in the background, which was merrily tinkling away with sonatas and whatnot. After a while, the presenter began to speak and I barely understood a word. I can only imagine that this was due to my expectation that classical music on the radio is followed by an English-speaking presenter (I usually listen to Classic FM), and I was totally thrown by it. Now that I’ve got used to it, I wonder if the same thing will happen once I get back to the UK?

Going home?

Over the last week, people have started to mention that my time in Poitiers is nearly up and I’ll soon be going back to England, which really isn’t something that I wanted to hear. My French is still not up to the standard that I’d like it to be, and the thought of not being constantly surrounded by it worries me – how on earth am I going to keep it up?

                On the one hand, in October I’ll be back at University, with essays, classes and lectures all in French. Obviously, this is not the case for everybody and it will only be so for me for the next year or so, so what on earth do real adults in the real world do to keep up language learning?

                In my dream world, there is a plethora of bilingual book clubs, coffee mornings, clubs etc., but a quick Google of my local area has not come up with the goods. There is an encouraging amount of activities for children, such as playgroups and Saturday schools, but precious little for their parents. Naturally, for many of them (the parents), English will be their second language, so chances are that their maternal language won’t need much practice. However, surely there must be an opening for socialising in their native tongue, with the added benefit of helping out those of us who want to become fluent in it?

                But sadly, the search goes on. If, in my post-university life, I fail to find any of these groups, I will definitely be at the helm of a new one myself.

Chinese?

So I'm coming go the end of my Rosetta Stone Spanish course now, and thanks to that and the fantastic Practice Makes Perfect grammar book collection (also available in many other languages), I think I'm ready to get out into the real world and start boosting my vocabulary with genuine Spanish literature. This is clearly going to be a lifetime's worth of work, like my French, so I'd better get on with it.

This means that I'm looking for a new linguistic project. I was intending to pick up my German or Polish again, as I hate to leave any work unfinished (as far as I'm concerned, if I'm not fluent, I've not finished), but then Rosetta Stone informed me that their (Mandarin, I think) Chinese kits are £100 off at the moment and I find this very tempting. Both Polish and German are fascinating in their own way, and both are very useful as Europe's borders are getting more and more blurred, but Chinese has an allure that I find very hard to resist. I put the suggestion off learning some basic to Chinese to my friends; some found it equally intriguing, however two who studied Chinese and Japanese as their degree warned me to stay as far away from Oriental languages as possible.

On the one hand, they should know. They've spent four years of intense study (one of which was in year in Japan/ China) getting to know these languages and their complexities, which I know hasn't been easy for either of them. One of them warned be that 'no amount of studying actually prepares you for the reality of China', and I fully believe her. On the other hand, I just can't resist the age-old attraction of the exotic. Granted, it's the 'otherness' of the language that makes it so difficult to learn, but that to me is what makes it so fascinating. I wouldn't expect to become even conversational in it, let alone fluent, in the same way that I hope to in Spanish, but the mental challenge of learning a tongue with no relation to our own is incredibly hard to resist.

The Conjugation Station

II had an interesting little conversation with a student yesterday:

A:       Est-ce que tu connais les conjugaisons ? (Do you know how to conjugate verbs ?)

Me :   Ouais. (Yup.)

A :     Même l’imparfait ? (Even the imperfect ?)

Me :   Ouais. (Yup.)

A :     Même le plus-que-parfait ? (Even the pluperfect ?)

Me :   Ouais. Même le subjonctif. (Yup. Even the subjunctive.)

A :     Même… le passé simple ? (Even… the past historic ?)

Me :   Plus ou moins. (More or less)

A :     (Gasp… pause…) Quelles sont des terminaisons de l’imparfait en anglais ? (What are the verb endings for the imperfect in English ?)

Me :   En fait, il n’y en a. L’anglais marche pas comme ça. (Actually, there aren’t any. English doesn’t work like that.)

A :     Quelle chance… (You’re so lucky…)

She seemed pretty impressed until I pointed out to her that I’ve been studying French for longer than she has been on this planet. But it highlighted to me how much you really do have to work at learning a language. When I moved here, I sort of assumed that I would just absorb all new vocab that came my way, but sadly that has not been the case. Even when you’re a young child, you have to work at the words that you don’t hear every day, you just don’t realise that you’re doing it. Unfortunately with a second language, if you’re not going to be totally immersed in a language for several years or more, it does take rather more active dedication. In my case, this comes down to noting down every single new word that comes my way and having daily vocab tests – not fun, but I can see how much I’m progressing!

On the spot

You can sit in a classroom for years learning vocabulary for essays and exams, as I have, but there is a surprising amount of vocabulary that you won’t come across until you come across it, if that makes sense. For example, although I can happily discuss existentialism, euthanasia and the importance of props in Racine’s plays, it wasn’t until I was playing games with some of my students that I came across ‘sauter à cloche-pied’. Sure, it doesn’t come up in everyday speech (in fact, I don’t think I’ve used it since then), but it’s fascinating to think about how much you don’t know until you find yourself in a situation where you need it.

I’ve also come across some pretty fascinating idioms and phrases, which seem rather bizarre until I started looking at our own and seeing how random they are. My favourite French one is currently ‘se prendre pour le nombril du monde’ (literally ‘to take oneself for the belly button of the world’, the English equivalent being of course ‘To think oneself God’s gift). I think it’s once you start becoming familiar with these sorts of phrases that are you unique to a particular language that you’re really getting to grips with it. I’ve got many left to discover!

Gratulatus sum, Caecilie.

When I was about 8, I had a huge argument that lasted for days with my dad about the value of Latin. I remember it pretty vividly; like most children, I could see absolutely no value in learning a dead language, despite my interest in history. At 12, I was presented with the choice of studying Latin or Business studies – a choice quickly made as Business Studies seemed to have even less value (making posters has never appealed to me.)

 I quickly came to realise that Latin is far from a dead language buried under millennia of mutations and borrowed terms it is still very much the beating heart of contemporary speech for a large part of European tongues. Recently, I’ve been asked for language learning tips (in fact the reason I started this blog), and I have to say that if you’re going to go the whole hog and really commit, start with our old friends the Romans. A knowledge of where all Romance languages stems from gives you instant access into an enormous vocabulary and builds bridges between languages that make learning an awful lot easier and quicker. I only regret not having given up my ICT GCSE in favour of Ancient Greek when it was offered to me.

Sadly I think that my school no longer teaches Latin now that my teacher has finally retired (I remember it being her 75th birthday when I was 15), and has lost a huge opportunity to give other children the vital leg up that they gave me. All the same, I very much hope that Caecilius is still in horto and that he remains there for millennia to come.

(PS: He was there when my parents were at school and is still there, just waiting for you to find him deep in the ruins of Pompeii: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Latin-Course-Book-Level/dp/0521635438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327009401&sr=8-1)

For my first post, I'll just share a couple of my favourite quotes on language and literature before I get down to the more interesting stuff:


'Miss a meal if you have to, but don't miss a book.' Jim Rohn


'I have always imagined that Paradise is some sort of library.' Jorge Luis Borges


'A different language is a different vision of life.' Federico Fellini