Debunking Some Myths About Foreign Language Learning

--Only children can learn a foreign language. Children do seem to learn more easily, but it's perfectly possible for an adult to learn a new language.  And it's great exercise for the brain.

-- Two years of high school foreign language instruction should guarantee fluency. Because of this notion, the U.S. is full of people who are convinced that they are no good at languages, when the truth is they weren't given a real chance to learn.  Short of moving to a foreign country, the best thing you can do is to immerse yourself in the language as much as possible.  Sign up for courses, both live and online.  Watch kids' TV programs--the vocabulary and the concepts are simple, but the language is real.  Movies are a great tool.  Watch the movie first with subtitles, and then watch it again but cover the subtitles with a piece of paper.  You may only catch a few words at first, but you'll be absorbing the rhythms and tones of the speech.

--You do not truly know a foreign language unless you sound like a native. This goal is unrealistic for most adults, and unnecessary.  It is possible to master another language and be perfectly understood by natives without ever being confused with one.  Henry Kissinger, whatever you think of his politics, is a good example of this.

--Learning a language is like learning to ride a bicycle.  Actually, it's more like learning to play the violin.  If you don't use it often, it will get rusty.  This can happen even with your native language.  The good news is that, unlike playing the violin, your language skill will come back quickly once you start to use it again.

--Learning a language is only about grammar and vocabulary.  Body language is a big part of communication, so you need to be a bit of a ham.  Try to impersonate native speakers.  If it's Italian you're learning, move your hands;  if it's French, shrug a lot;  if it's Spanish, drop your American smile and look serious.  A glass of wine helps with all this.

--Every word matters.  Only true if you're interpreting for a head of state.  Perfectionism is the enemy of fluency.  Expect to make hilarious mistakes when speaking, and realize that you're not going to understand every word you hear.  Aim for the gist.  Be pragmatic.  And leave (almost all) your pride at the door.

For Want Of A Hyphen...

While the snow piled up outside today, I thought it would be a good time to replace the ties on my (home-made) duvet cover with the snaps I bought in Rutland last week.

Rutland is the second-largest city in Vermont, and the ugliest.  It even has a  strip on which are stores like Bed, Bath etc., Joanne's Fabrics, a mall with K-mart and Sears.  When we need stuff beyond raw cow's milk or layer pellets, we sigh and go to Rutland.

That is where I bought a little snap-inserting gizmo, which came with enough snaps, I thought, for my purposes.

As the blizzard raged outside, I wrestled the king-size duvet (we have a queen-size bed, but I believe in over-duvetting) out of its cover, and set about unstitching the nine pairs of ties and replacing them with snaps.  The snap-inserting gizmo came with a fairly complex set of directions involving pencil erasers and hammers, but after some false starts I figured out what to do.

No sooner had I inserted the first set of snaps, however, than I realized I didn't have enough--I needed nine sets, and only had four.  How was this possible?  I remembered clearly checking the package label and ensuring that the gizmo came with  more than enough snaps for my purposes.

I pulled the label out of the trash, and here is what it said:  4 size 16 snaps.

Obviously, in the store my eyes had focused on "16 snaps," and that is what I assumed was in the package.  Had the benighted souls who write such things possessed the rudiments of grammar (I know I'm sounding priggish, but too bad), the label would have read 4 size-16 snaps, and I would have bought an additional five size-16 snaps.

As it is, we are going to have to make an extra 45-minute trip to Rutland, past the lake with the ice-fishing shacks, past the snow-covered cow-farms and the country stores selling local goat cheese and expensive wines, to the awful strip to buy five snaps.

But all is not lost.  We can have lunch at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Endangered Tenses

You've all got me thinking about the shrinking use of verb tenses in this day and age. If language reflects how we think and who we are, Western civilization is going to hell in a handbasket.

French long ago retired the preterite indicative and the preterite perfect (the passe simple and the passe anterieur, as we learned in Intermediate French) to literary use, replacing both with the present perfect, or passe compose, for real-life purposes. Spanish, I am glad to report, still hangs on to the significant distinction between the preterite (indicating actions that were completed in the past) and the present perfect (indicating actions that have just been completed). Those nemeses of anglophones, the imperfect and the pluperfect (indicating actions begun in the past but still ongoing) seem to be holding their own in Romance languages, for the time being.

But in English, quelle horreur! In a language that already has a pared-down verb system (no distinction between preterite and imperfect), people these days can't even seem to be able to deal with the past perfect, the tense that allows you to specify that a certain action preceded another action in the past. Thus routinely you hear “if I knew you were coming, I would have baked a cake” as opposed to “if I had known you were coming, I would have baked a cake.” The knowing preceded the coming, and it would be nice to have it expressed accurately. How hard is that?

The situation is especially grave regarding the subjunctive. In her comment on my last post, Elizabeth mentions someone who has established a Society to Save the Subjunctive. Would that it could! The subjunctive is not a tense, but a mood with its own tenses. In contrast to the indicative—the mood of factual reality—or the imperative—the mood of command—the subjunctive expresses longing, desire, wishful thinking as opposed to what actually is, e.g., if I were rich, you would love me; or, may you rot in hell for putting your mat on my spot in yoga class.

Why are we losing the subjunctive? Is it because wealth and technology have erased the gap between wanting and having? Is it because of a more subtle philosophical shift, Kant dressed up in New Age lycra, that posits that subjectivity constitutes the only valid reality? Either way, there is cause for alarm, and the only solution I can see is to bring the subjunctive back in hopes that, if we speak well, we will think well.

If you were to have a happy Thanksgiving, I would be delighted.

Presidential Speech Coach

At Monday's news conference the President painted a dire picture of the country's situation. While he did so, however, I kept thinking, wow, isn't it wonderful to hear such well-constructed, complete sentences, flowing one into the other, powered by the strength of a rational mind? And the voice, smooth and snicker-free—what a delight! And finally, at last, after eight long years, the word “nuclear” properly pronounced! (Why didn't Bush's advisers advise him that “nucular” is wrong and sounds awful? Were they afraid of him? Or did Bush think that he was The Decider in matters of language as well as policy?)

Finally, a President we don't have to be ashamed of when he steps to the podium and opens his mouth!

That said, I have a tiny grammatical bone to pick with Obama. Well, maybe not so tiny, because it bothers me a lot. He often uses “that” redundantly, as in (not an exact quote), “I am afraid that, if we don't intervene in the economy, that we will have a catastrophe on our hands.” See what I mean? That second “that” sounds like a hiccup. It implies that the speaker, or the listener, has gotten lost in the subordinate clause, and can't click back to the main clause.

And one other little thing, but one that might get bigger if, as I hope, we are going to be listening to Obama for the next eight years. It's his habit of dragging out “and” with his voice, as in “...unemployment aaaaaand lack of consumer confidence...” He does it a lot.

I'm not being petty here. I'm just invested. I want him to be 150% perfect, so that everyone—Republicans, the Taliban, the entire Middle East—will love him and will make it possible for him to save the world.