Second Languages, le premier part...

(I've been trying to figure out where this is going for months...okay, that makes it sound like I've been at it day and night, which isn't really true. But I am tired of tinkering with this first half and so I'll just post it so I can finally move onto the rest.)

When people ask me how many languages I know, I always say “One – just English.” I have been fortunate enough to have studied and learned a lot about other languages, but I never feel that I truly know languages other than English. Our native tongues always feel like home, and while we can learn to be comfortable in other houses, towns, even countries, nothing every quite feels like home. I can speak other languages to varying degrees, and I’ve learned about even more languages beyond that, but do I really know another language? Does that a question even have an answer? Can I know a language even without being perfect in the grammar and vocabulary? I don’t have the answers for the moment, but I’ve been wanting to start learning another language (methinks it’s going to be Arabic) and so I’ve been reflecting on the languages that have been important to me over the years.

The first language I studied was French. The sounds of that language were so different felt so strange in my mouth, but they sounded so smooth and sophisticated, There are vowels in French that we don’t’ have in English that require us to purse our lips, as if we are constantly about to kiss someone or always holding a lit cigarette in our lips: the /ü/ in “tu” and “jusqu’a” and “une,” or the /ö/ in “jeune.” It made switching back to English feel like moving from a featherbed to a wooden plank. The delicate French vowels made English sound so harsh and cold.

It made me wonder what English would sound like if I didn’t understand it. Barring severe head trauma (fingers crossed!), I will never know what English sounds like to an outsider, but I still wonder. We seem to have a lot of /sh/ sounds, and of course there is the theta – voiced /δ/as in “the,” and voiceless /θ/as in “think” – that almost no other languages have. Greek is in the elite theta club, but they are sounds that have plagued many a non-native speaker trying to master the pronunciation of my abrupt, guttural, Germanic native English.

Though thoroughly in love with French, I eventually made my way to other Romance languages. I found that studying one Latin-based language made learning others easier. French, Italian, Portuguese – they all like to drop their subjects, put their adjectives after the nouns, use reflexive verbs (that still confound me!), and make their nouns choose a gender. It was amusing to me to say something like, “I hope that I not myself was not broke the leg right!” (“J’espere que je ne me suis pas casse la jambe droit!”)

Of course there were false friends, as there always are. The false friend that betrayed me the most often was the Portuguese word “puxe,” which sounds like “push” but which means “pull,” which will please those with a sense of irony. After slamming my face into many a public door instructing me to “puxe” when in fact I had to pull, I finally came up with a mantra to avoid further bruising. “Puxe means pull!” I would repeat to myself whenever I came up to a door. This worked fine in Portugal, but I had problems the first few times I repeated my mantra when approaching a door back here in the United States. No noses were bruised, but my ego was slightly colored when I would walk up to a door, repeat “Puxe means pull!” and then proceed to pull and keep pulling despite the big sign clearly marked “Push.”

Then I needed a challenge. I moved to Turkey knowing how to say “Hello’ (Merhaba) and “Thank you” (Tesekkur ederim), which were quite useful for my first day or so in Istanbul, but wouldn’t hold me for much longer than that. I needed things like, “Filter coffee, please, not Nescafe,” and “Can you tell me why I keep getting on the wrong bus?” It was time to attend language classes. In the first four weeks, I mostly learned the words for many different types of alcoholic beverages, courtesy of my flask-toting instructor who was never far from the halfway mark of the proverbial bag. I also learned that Turkish was English backwards and that everything depended on word endings that strung along on verbs and nouns like a freight train. “Dukkana gidiyorum” would transliterate into “store to go –ing am I.” To make matters worse, the progressive suffix would come in two different forms depending on the vowel in the verb stem. That’s right, folks: vowel harmony! Sometimes it was just a two-option harmony, but other times, such as with the possessive marker, there would be 4-option harmony: the suffix that means “my” was realized as either –im, um, Im, or üm. Speaking of possession, markers were put on both the possessed and the possessor. Oh, and there’s consonant harmony as well. The [t] in “gitmek” becomes the[d] in “gidiyor” intervocalically or in front of a voiced consonant.

Like in French, there were times when you barely had to move your mouth. My friend, Funda, used to say “three hundred and thirty three” instead of “cheese” when having her picture taken. Why? In Turkish, that number is “üς yüz otuz üς”. Just try saying that without looking like Marilyn Monroe!

The last language that has figured in any major way in my life was American Sign Language. I have always loved making and doing things with my hands: knitting, cooking, playing piano, wrapping presents, and even finger painting. I must have gotten that – along with my talent and interest in languages – from my father, who was both polyglot and mechanic. The language of ASL perfectly merged these two loves of mine. I absolutely fell in love with the fact that twisting, clenching, tapping, waving, folding, curving my hands created meaning and did so in such a beautiful way. I would tie my fingers into knots trying to increase the speed of my fingerspelling and practice in the mirror to make sure my movements were fluid, not too big (don’t want to shout!) but not too small (who likes a low-talker?). I loved how subtle movements, even without changing the shape on the hand, could create the difference between, for example, “grandmother” and “vomit”, or “thirsty” and “horny.” I also was so impressed how emotion or extra dimensions of meaning were conveyed with movement. The sign for friends could be altered to signify “acquaintances” (alternately tapping index fingers), “friends” (alternately hooking index fingers) and “close friends” (hooking index fingers and not letting go). The closer the friendship, the harder you would clench those hooked fingers together. The closeness was literal. It was beautifully symbolic.

My other studies led me to brief forays in Italian, German, Latin, not to mention the countless languages I learned select rules for during my linguistic studies. (Go ahead, ask me about tones and syllabic nasal consonants in Luganda! I dare ya!) Throughout it all, I wondered how it was changing me, this constant attention to other languages. Okay, I’ll occasionally throw in a Turkish hedging technique (şey, yani) and I apparently believe that lights and computers are now open or closed rather than on or off, but apart from that, did my relationship to English or thought change?

That discussion has to wait until Part Two, Deux, Dois, Due, Zwei, Iki…

Words I Hate For No Particular Reason

Munch. Why do we need it? We have perfectly good words that indicate eating. Munch sounds like a combination of something an animal would do and something an animal would eat. I suppose that’s somewhat silly, considering the fact that we humans are, in fact, animals, and it does, in fact, describe what an animal does when it eats. However, it feels to me like it indicates some kind of mindless, gratuitous eating but without even enjoying it. What the hell is the point of that? If you are the kind of person who just eats because you have to, then you’re not eating gratuitously, so there’s no need to “munch.” And if you are eating mindlessly, shouldn’t you be doing it because you are enjoying it? Then it would be ‘snacking’ or ‘indulging’ or hell, even ‘enjoying’! But no munching, please. Yes yes, there are those who might say that someone could very well be enjoying whatever it is they are ‘munching’ on (it even irks me to have to use that word when complaining about it!) but you just won’t convince me that it’s any different than a slack-eyed cow standing around chewing her cud all day long, which just seems gross to me. Finally, that awful word also, in my admittedly biased mind, means that you can hear the action of chewing, and that folks, is just plain disgusting.

Split Book Personality

I seem to hold somewhat contradictory opinions about books. I hold them in such reverence and yet, I love when they look used and worn. (But not dog-eared. I decided long ago that bookmarks were the way to go. ) I hate the way the spines on paperbacks get cracked and lined after reading, but I love that my Turkish dictionary has a dark smudge on the side of the pages from thumbing through it so much. I love the clean, crisp smell of a brand new hardcover, the freshness of the new print. However, I also love an old musty bookstore, filled with books that have been passed from hand to hand and used by unknown readers before me. I absolutely hate when a book is written in, and yet I find it hard not to annotate the books that I use for teaching (though granted, I have switched to sticky notes for annotation).

I love libraries but I hate the sterile atmosphere that they can have. Libraries are so careful to preserve, which is good, but at some point you can cross a line between preservation and mummification, especially when books are kept behind glass doors, presumably to keep them away from the great unwashed. When do we get to use these books? Where can we live with them, drink coffee with them, talk and laugh over them while they sit open on the table? This brings me, of course, to bookstores. I often find myself in the bookstore café. Here I can drink and eat, listen to music, people-watch, write or read, and when I lift my eyes up, I can see shelves upon shelves of books. They are comforting and they keep me company. I could be utterly alone in a bookstore and not feel alone. I would be surrounded with the ghosts from all of the books around me. Books hold stories and ideas and whole worlds – how can’t they be alive? As much as I love to wander amongst the books in the library stacks, it seems an injustice to keep them sequestered in sterile, quiet, lifeless vaults. I can understand how one may want to revere the books and treat them delicately so as not to ruin them, but I don’t waste them by being too afraid to have them out in the open, near voices and coffee and breadcrumbs.

Button Pushers

“Where’s it at?”
“I could care less.”
“Less people.”

The first two sentences are or contain linguistic items that drive people crazy. I’ve heard any number of people complain about them. They are equal-opportunity annoyances. The third phrase is one that only a few people seem to be bothered by anymore, and I’ve already addressed why in this very sentence. We’ll get to that.

The at in the first phrase is actually a preposition that lends the sentence more precision. It’s not correct grammar in the traditional sense, but it does serve a purpose, albeit a redundant one. “At” is used to denote a specific location in time or space. No one cringes when “at” is used in a sentence. “She’s at home/school/the mall/a friend’s house.” “The party is at 10:00” The preposition serves to locate the item in time or space. Why is it cringe-worthy in a question? Is it because of the drilling we’ve all gotten about not ending a sentence in a preposition? Hasn’t that already been debunked? We have come to view the question ending in “at” as uneducated and that is what we are railing against. See? I just ended that sentence with a preposition, for just as Churchill, whether he said it or not, there are some things up with which I will not put.

There has already been much discussion on “I could care less” and about how it is infuriatingly ungrammatical or illogical. If we are looking at syntax only, of course it does not mean the same thing as its respected counterpart, “I couldn’t care less.” However, looking at syntax alone isn’t enough, as Chomsky proved in his famous example of syntax sans semantics: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Language isn’t used in a vacuum. Language is used in context, during life. It is an imperfect system used by imperfect users, which means it is subject to our whims, our creativity, and our ignorance. Would it bother you less if you heard someone say “As if I could care less!” along with appropriate tone and gestures to convey sarcasm? No? Perhaps it is the omission of the obvious cues that makes us think that the person is simply ignorant of the “correct” phrase, and this bothers us.

The third phrase represents a valid linguistic distinction that is still valuable and recognized, but for some reason, the grammatical difference between less/fewer is going away. Only a few people realize these days that “people” is a countable noun and if we want to say that the number of people who understand that has decreased, we would say fewer people understand why it’s wrong to say less people.

Once again, this leads me to the conclusion that it is not the phrase itself that offends, but the ignorance behind it. Each phrase implies ignorance of something to each person. For me, the first two don’t offend because it seems to me that they are learned as entire chunks, a la Michael Lewis, and therefore are simply mis-assigned a meaning. The third is a perfectly valid and current generative rule of English grammar that is being ignored or improperly learned. That’s why it bothers me.

So, doesn’t this tell me as much about myself as it may about the person uttering the ungrammatical statement? Our language reveals much about us, both intentionally and unintentionally, and not just what we say, but what we hear and how we hear it.

The Lazy Days of Summer

I've got some pieces in the works, but my entire month has been utterly consumed by my summer classes, so until I can finish them, here's a quick overview of what's been consuming me. I'm teaching two sections of Composition and Literature 2. I had the students buy How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster as their "textbook." It's a really accessible introduction to concepts and techniques of literary analysis. I love not using a traditional textbook, but it certainly does take more work. Here's the reading list we've covered:

1. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates
2. "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield
3. "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" by Ernest Hemingway
4. "Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances" by Walt Whitman
5. "After Apple Picking" by Robert Frost
6. "The Power of Myth" - video interview of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers
7. "Talking New York" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" by Bob Dylan
8. "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin
9. Anthem by Ayn Rand
10. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
11. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (okay, we actually watched the Kenneth Brannagh film adaptation)

(Speaking of Much Ado, I will be going to see a production of that in August, which is something I'm very much looking forward to. The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival always puts on such a wonderful show.)

The students have also chosen the following stories for their upcoming group presentations:

1. "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury
2. "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell
3. "Salvation" by Langston Hughes
4. "The Chaser" by John Collier
5. "Hunters in the Snow" by Tobias Wolff
6. 3 Shakespeare soliloquies (from Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet)
7. "The Lady or the Tiger?" by Frank Stockton
8. "Lament" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
9. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger
10. "Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe
11. "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou
12. "Eveline" by James Joyce

Not too shabby. We've been following what I like to call a "Learn, Practice, Teach" philosophy of gaining knowledge. I started out teaching them certain concepts of literary analysis, they they practiced with essays (so many papers to grade - what was I thinking???), and now they will teach their story to the class this coming week. I'm really pleased with the response I've been getting from the students so far. Of course, I'm still being chewed up with papers to grade and some lessons to plan, but after next week, when I've been spit back out, I'll have time to create a more thoughtful evaluation of the work we've done.

For now, here's an activity I like to do on the first day of my literature classes. It's something that the students are generally quite wary of at first, but then they find themselves absorbed in the challenge and I've been told it was one of their favorite activities. First, I ask each student to give me their favorite word, or at least a word that they really like. They go up on the board. Then, in groups, the students must then write a poem using the words. There are only two basic rules:

1. Use only the words on the board. Do not use any word that is not on the board.
2. Words can be repeated or modified for part of speech.

Usually at this point, students beg me for permission to use function words. "Please, can't we PLEASE have 'the'?? Or at least 'and'??" After they get over the shock of being forced to understand relationships between words and creating meaning without the use of grammatical function words, they start to get excited about how imaginative they can actually be by creating associations and images using only content words.

Here's a list of words from one of the classes this summer:

power, pride, what, ridiculous, dying, bent, change, amazing, rambunctious, turn, exuberance, quiet, shenanigans, excessive, money, exclamation, jealousy, respect, entertain, friendship, awesome, and (yes, someone said that before they had any idea of what they were going to be asked to do.)

I may have missed a few words, but that's most of them.

Ready to write a poem? Knock yourselves out!

My kind of people, fighting the good fight.

http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/righting-wrong-writing/article118948.html

I want...

...this t-shirt.