Idiomas
I have various loosely related thoughts about languages and language learning bouncing around in my head right now, so here's where I write about them all in one place.
1. Improving my Spanish through volunteering. Clearly, one of my major reasons (if not *the major* reason) for volunteering last month was to practice my Spanish and to help it improve through forced use. Although I think I am getting better at expressing basic ideas, and I picked up a new few phrases/word usages here and there, I didn't internalize a lot of new vocabulary nor did I feel that my comprehension improved that much. The reason for that is since I don't learn languages easily via osmosis, I really needed to be studying my new vocab every night and reviewing grammar stuff continuously, for me to be able to then *use* the new stuff and have it start to sink in. But I didn't end up doing much outside studying last month, mostly because I had other projects I was excited about--organizing my pictures and updating my blog, for example. So most of the time at work I was tripped up by the same words and phrases over and over again, which was kind of a bummer. So on the one hand, I'm kind of sad about my "missed" opportunity to focus on real life Spanish for a solid month and improve, but on the other hand I'm happy with what I accomplished (and the fun I had, both inside and outside of Santiago) during the month, and hey, this language stuff is a hard, slow process. There are many things I can do to work on it--study more flashcards, take more classes, watch more TV, find more volunteer work--and at any given moment I'm not sure what would be the best use of my time, but nor do I think there is any one "order of operations" for me to learn. So, I guess I'll just keep trying to do a little of everything, and keep on living here of course.
2. My inferiority complex as an English speaker. I have always been alternately in awe of and jealous of people from other countries, especially Europeans, who speak English fluently as a second language and often other languages as well. Not surprisingly, I have thought about it a lot here as I struggle to learn Spanish and most of my friends in Santiago are European. With my friends, I'm just happy that I've met interesting people and we can get to know each other using a language we both feel comfortable with, rather than facing a huge language barrier. But this weekend I had the experience of being the only native English speaker in the hostel we stayed at and on our excursion on Sunday. I always just feel lame when I'm sitting around shooting the shit with a bunch of people from all over the world, and everyone's speaking English and I'm the only one who can't have a side conversation in another cool language. Or on our excursion, where I think I was the only one other than the guide who couldn't understand German (the non-Germans either spoke German as another language or could understand it because their native language was close), yet the tour was in English (and some Spanish). At lunch, I felt like the only reason anyone was speaking English was because I was there. And then I became *really* jealous/annoyed/protective when someone mentioned that Spanish classes were becoming popular in Europe because everyone wanted to travel in South America because it was cheap, because Spanish is the only language that Americans are more likely to know/have studied than Europeans and I want Americans to keep some shred of language learning credibility. (of course it's funny that I only thought of this then, since I've spent the last 3 months with Europeans who are learning or speak Spanish)
But after this burst of jealousy, I had a second thought on this whole multi-lingual thing. Yes, speaking multiple languages is cool because you can communicate with more people, you can understand better other cultures, and you can have secret side conversations if you are careful. There will always be people who learn new languages easily, who just pick up new languages for fun or to enable them to do specific things like travel, and kudos to them. But for the rest of us, in whatever country, it doesn't necessarily make that much sense to worry a ton about learning a skills that won't be used. So in the States (with apologies to my French teachers and other francophiles out there), Spanish and Chinese are the only languages that are useful and necessary on a general level (obviously any language could be useful in a specific situation or community). For people in the rest of the world, learning English is almost always useful, and in Europe it is clearly useful to speak multiple languages since multiple language areas are only a short car/train trip away! And not it's not only useful to those who are gifted in languages--my friend Geert said he never paid much attention in his French and German classes, and thus he doesn't speak those languages and has traveled though Europe fine without them, but American sitcoms are on Dutch TV undubbed, and his advanced textbooks were in English, so of course he speaks it. And now he's learning Spanish because he's living here and working for a Chilean company. So it's silly to feel too bad about "only" speaking English, especially since I'm trying to learn Spanish now that I need to. And I'm trying to quash my complex that monolingual (or 1 1/2 lingual)=dumb, and also trying to not to let it bother me when I sense that other people have that perception (which is harder).
Having said all that, I do want to make clear that I think the process of second language learning is invaluable, because of the way it makes you think about communication, other cultures, and your own language, and therefore everyone should study at least one other language in school. And the opportunity for kids to become fluent by learning multiple languages at a young age should be exploited whenever possible. But if you didn't start studying a second language until you were 14 and have never lived anywhere where you needed to speak a language other than English, that's ok too.
3. Ok, this will be short because this post is already way too long. I completed the "grammar awareness module" in my teaching english class this afternoon. I have though about this before in the process of studying Spanish, but the module reminded me again--English is such an inelegant language. Instead of specific conjugations, tenses, moods, and specific vocabulary (which are a pain to memorize but are beautifully expressive), English is just a bunch of bits and pieces strung together--so many common words and phrases have no meaning on their own. I don't know how people figure it out (although I'm supposed to be learning how to teach them). My guess is that they watch a lot of bad American TV and movies.
1. Improving my Spanish through volunteering. Clearly, one of my major reasons (if not *the major* reason) for volunteering last month was to practice my Spanish and to help it improve through forced use. Although I think I am getting better at expressing basic ideas, and I picked up a new few phrases/word usages here and there, I didn't internalize a lot of new vocabulary nor did I feel that my comprehension improved that much. The reason for that is since I don't learn languages easily via osmosis, I really needed to be studying my new vocab every night and reviewing grammar stuff continuously, for me to be able to then *use* the new stuff and have it start to sink in. But I didn't end up doing much outside studying last month, mostly because I had other projects I was excited about--organizing my pictures and updating my blog, for example. So most of the time at work I was tripped up by the same words and phrases over and over again, which was kind of a bummer. So on the one hand, I'm kind of sad about my "missed" opportunity to focus on real life Spanish for a solid month and improve, but on the other hand I'm happy with what I accomplished (and the fun I had, both inside and outside of Santiago) during the month, and hey, this language stuff is a hard, slow process. There are many things I can do to work on it--study more flashcards, take more classes, watch more TV, find more volunteer work--and at any given moment I'm not sure what would be the best use of my time, but nor do I think there is any one "order of operations" for me to learn. So, I guess I'll just keep trying to do a little of everything, and keep on living here of course.
2. My inferiority complex as an English speaker. I have always been alternately in awe of and jealous of people from other countries, especially Europeans, who speak English fluently as a second language and often other languages as well. Not surprisingly, I have thought about it a lot here as I struggle to learn Spanish and most of my friends in Santiago are European. With my friends, I'm just happy that I've met interesting people and we can get to know each other using a language we both feel comfortable with, rather than facing a huge language barrier. But this weekend I had the experience of being the only native English speaker in the hostel we stayed at and on our excursion on Sunday. I always just feel lame when I'm sitting around shooting the shit with a bunch of people from all over the world, and everyone's speaking English and I'm the only one who can't have a side conversation in another cool language. Or on our excursion, where I think I was the only one other than the guide who couldn't understand German (the non-Germans either spoke German as another language or could understand it because their native language was close), yet the tour was in English (and some Spanish). At lunch, I felt like the only reason anyone was speaking English was because I was there. And then I became *really* jealous/annoyed/protective when someone mentioned that Spanish classes were becoming popular in Europe because everyone wanted to travel in South America because it was cheap, because Spanish is the only language that Americans are more likely to know/have studied than Europeans and I want Americans to keep some shred of language learning credibility. (of course it's funny that I only thought of this then, since I've spent the last 3 months with Europeans who are learning or speak Spanish)
But after this burst of jealousy, I had a second thought on this whole multi-lingual thing. Yes, speaking multiple languages is cool because you can communicate with more people, you can understand better other cultures, and you can have secret side conversations if you are careful. There will always be people who learn new languages easily, who just pick up new languages for fun or to enable them to do specific things like travel, and kudos to them. But for the rest of us, in whatever country, it doesn't necessarily make that much sense to worry a ton about learning a skills that won't be used. So in the States (with apologies to my French teachers and other francophiles out there), Spanish and Chinese are the only languages that are useful and necessary on a general level (obviously any language could be useful in a specific situation or community). For people in the rest of the world, learning English is almost always useful, and in Europe it is clearly useful to speak multiple languages since multiple language areas are only a short car/train trip away! And not it's not only useful to those who are gifted in languages--my friend Geert said he never paid much attention in his French and German classes, and thus he doesn't speak those languages and has traveled though Europe fine without them, but American sitcoms are on Dutch TV undubbed, and his advanced textbooks were in English, so of course he speaks it. And now he's learning Spanish because he's living here and working for a Chilean company. So it's silly to feel too bad about "only" speaking English, especially since I'm trying to learn Spanish now that I need to. And I'm trying to quash my complex that monolingual (or 1 1/2 lingual)=dumb, and also trying to not to let it bother me when I sense that other people have that perception (which is harder).
Having said all that, I do want to make clear that I think the process of second language learning is invaluable, because of the way it makes you think about communication, other cultures, and your own language, and therefore everyone should study at least one other language in school. And the opportunity for kids to become fluent by learning multiple languages at a young age should be exploited whenever possible. But if you didn't start studying a second language until you were 14 and have never lived anywhere where you needed to speak a language other than English, that's ok too.
3. Ok, this will be short because this post is already way too long. I completed the "grammar awareness module" in my teaching english class this afternoon. I have though about this before in the process of studying Spanish, but the module reminded me again--English is such an inelegant language. Instead of specific conjugations, tenses, moods, and specific vocabulary (which are a pain to memorize but are beautifully expressive), English is just a bunch of bits and pieces strung together--so many common words and phrases have no meaning on their own. I don't know how people figure it out (although I'm supposed to be learning how to teach them). My guess is that they watch a lot of bad American TV and movies.
posted by HelenO at
11:20 AM
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