NaDruWriNi 2018 Chapter Two: Speaking in Tongues

[the_siobhan]

Current alcohol count: My second g&t

Many years ago I decided I was going to learn German.

It was a good idea at the time. Axe speaks German so we could start speaking it at home and that would help me practice. English is partially derived from German so the vocabulary is super easy. And you know, German Industrial bands and all that.

So that was the theory. As you know Bob, theory and practice - sometimes they differ. I started with a lot of enthusiasm but I kept getting bogged down. German vocabulary may be very similar to English but their grammar is (to me) very different and therefore feels complicated and I never really got my head around it. Axel speaks it, but he doesn't really understand the grammar very well - his family moved to England when he was pretty young and so his German is kind of stuck at the elementary school level - and my plan to practice at home never really took off.

Probably the most proficient I ever felt was when I was visiting Italy with BC and when I was sleepless from jet-lag I would watch their one TV station that broadcast in German. I could mostly follow along with what the story was about although the details were lost on me. After that it was all downhill, I just got too busy with other things to practice regularly and it fell by the wayside. Then when I was actually in Germany with Axe a couple of years ago I mentioned to his cousin that I had tried to learn German at one point and he said, "What for? Everybody here speaks English anyway."

Sooooooooo maybe you can call it short attention span, but I recently made the decision to give up on German. And gave all my German books to my daughter[1], who is hella enthusiastic about it. Good for her.

But me, I have a new love.

Spanish.

I figure it's a language that's a lot more likely to be practical. There are many, many countries, some of them ones I can drive to, where a variant of Spanish is the main language and people don't necessarily speak English as well. Of the Latin-derived languages it's probably simplest, only two genders and no silent letters. And it's accessible. Even Sesame Street has a Spanish component. (Well in my country it was French, but YouTube is thing.) The vocabulary is very close to that of Portuguese and Italian - at least according to my Portuguese, Italian & Spanish-speaking co-workers who are constantly talking the piss out of each other in their respective languages. AND my dad's wife is a Spanish teacher.

I have no idea how long this particular project is going to last. But every night on my way home from work instead of pulling a book out of my knapsack I slap my headphones on my ears and open duolingo on my phone. I'm having fun with it and that's the thing that usually drives me to keep going on a new project.



[1]Except for Struwwelpeter which Axe wanted to keep because of childhood memories and seriously that is a book you give to children?! What is wrong with German people.

Comments

[fidget]

Spanish. That's cute.

No, really. You're right. Out of the three languages I've learned in my life, Spanish was by far the easiest. It's very straightforward, and there aren't many exceptions to either grammatical or spelling rules -- upfront, anyway. As far as languages go, it's pretty chill. Way back when, I got to be fluent fairly quickly.

I learned Japanese on a whim when I was in college and got up to conversational level. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't so bad, really. More than anything, it was just a fun time.

And then there's Irish Gaelic. I swear to God, nobody actually ever spoke this language. No, it's just that Irish people are both inherently insane and have one of the best collective senses of humor on the planet. Whenever a foreigner crash-landed on their island, they just started chattering away at this poor person who had absolutely no hope of ever figuring out what was going on. And then, in the twenty-first century, upped their game and made an entire TV station that broadcasts in nothing but the vocal craziness that is Gaeilge.

Down the line, this is the hardest language I've ever seen. That includes English, which is just downright bizarre whenever you think about it.

Anyway, I give two thumbs up to DuoLingo. As far as language learning goes, it's really good and actually kind of fun.

[the_siobhan]

I have always wanted to be good at languages and I am just not. I have a very procedural brain, I want to learn things in logical sequence and language just... doesn't really do that.

I have read though, that learning a couple of languages makes enough new neural connections that subsequent languages are easier. So I hold out hope.

[fidget]

See, I'm the opposite. I'm one of those language types of people. If you leave me to flounder for about three weeks, one day I'll wake up just ready to go. From that point, I'm pretty much unstoppable.

But, yeah. That didn't happen with Gaelic. I mean, I'm not terrible. It's just that there aren't any set rules. Or the ones that do exist make literally no sense. Or they change all the time, anyway. And the alphabet doesn't really exist here, unless the alphabet has taken a ton of acid.

All of my good intentions flew out the window months ago, and now I'm just learning this language out of spite. Which, I'm pretty sure spite is encoded into Irish DNA, so there you go. It all makes sense now.

[the_siobhan]

I try to explain Irish phonetics to people who can't pronounce my name and I'm just winging it really.

I took an Irish class once. Once. My favourite moment was the instructor explaining that Irish doesn't actually have words that mean "yes" or "no" it's all just various degrees of "it depends". I felt that really understood my family for the first time in that moment.

I read a site recently that explained the Irish alphabet and it stated that although there are letters in the English alphabet that don't exist in Irish, they will still be used for words that are imported wholesale from English because there is no translation in Irish. The example they use, no shit, was the 'j' in job. I laughed so hard I had to lie down until I could breath again.

[fidget]

Oh, no. No. It's a beautifully lyrical language that has a word for literally everything except "yes" and "no". You have to answer in a complete sentence, always.

I found some old-school Gaelic text from Victorian times or so, and some of it was printed partially in Ogham or whatever. I could read it just fine. I didn't know what the symbols meant, but they were easy to figure out in the context of the word. In fact, the symbols were a million times easier to read because each SYMBOL had a specific SOUND, not EIGHTY NONSENSICAL CONSONANTS SLAMMED TOGETHER OH MY GOD THIS LANGUAGE SUCKS

[inulro]

I have a friend who is fluent in more languages than I can count, including Serbo-Croat, who hit a brick wall with Irish.

I was toying with the idea of learning it for shits & giggles until that revelation.

[elusis]

I have been close to "functional in a childlike kind of way" in Spanish twice in my life, and never made it there. When I don't use it, the vocabulary just vanishes. Though I can often listen to something untranslated in a movie or TV show and remark to F "what she actually said was something about needing a new briefcase" or whatnot. But getting my brain to spontaneously produce the words I need on cue? Impossible.

However, when we went to Montreal in 2016, I got up to speed in French well enough to do your basic tourist Q&A remarkably quickly via Duolingo,* and so I suspect that if I'd put in a bit of time via their Spanish module, I'd regain a lot fairly quickly. But we're going to go to France to see friends there next fall, and so I need to get back on le cheval pretty soon here and not confuse myself. Just the other day I was trying to remember how to say "I like cheese," and came up with "j'aime el queso" which I'm pretty sure is not right.

*Well, the Q anyhow. The problem is that my accent is apparently passable enough that I ask where the bathroom is, and then people tell me. In French. And apparently the lessons where you learn "to the left of the bar, down a hall, take the third door on the right and then go up the stairs" are quite a bit later on. This seems... unhelpful, in retrospect.

[the_siobhan]

You have inspired me to make another post about the bollucks that is French language education in English Canada.

[the_axel]

'J'aime le fromage', I believe.
And no, I have no idea why I would remember the word for 'fromage', except possibly to ensure it didn't appear on the menu for anything I might consider ordering.

[nicklausse]

Haha, yeah, despite eleven years of study and two exchanges, my German is stuck in 'grade ten 1989' and also graduate school. Total fail. I figure I can order a MischMasch in Kitchener then lecture on Charlemagne.

[inulro]

My French is pretty good, as is my Latin, which means learning Spanish was a bit of a cheat. Having said that, despite having had far more education in and exposure to French, Spanish is the one language that I feel that, if I tried hard enough, I could actually become fully fluent in. It's like French & Latin with the difficult bits taken out.

I do however really struggle with European Spanish. Most of my exposure has been to Mexican and other Latin American materials, and while I struggle to hear different accents in French even though I'm more fluent (except North African French, I can hear that a mile off), I can tell instantly whether a Spanish speaker is European or American.

[kest]

I'm 'kest23' on duolingo if you (or anyone else) wants to add me. I am apprently 47% fluent in French but I'm not sure I believe it. I did enjoy reading all the bilingual signs when I was in Canada in September (and unfortunately, because of our timing, reviewing a number of different ways to say 'things are on fire.')