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