Foreign Languages
Last edited Wed Apr 27, 2016, 03:49 PM - Edit history (1)
Anyone here speak a language other than English? If not, what language would you like to learn?
I speak French. I haven't picked what language to learn next. Although I would like a challenge. There are so many that I want to learn.
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Had four years of French in high school/college, but have forgotten far too much of it (forty years later!) Would like to review it, but can't find my old books. They probably got shoved in the barn, like everything else I cherished. 
(Can't get started on that shit.........)
its true and actual name is Anishinaabe. 
In other countries, it's not so unusual, but we seem to expect everyone to speak English - which they often do. I took French, seemed most practical since we're not far from Canada and it was offered starting in junior high, but I wasn't ever that proficient. I know a little Polish, since that was my mother's first language, wish she had made a point of passing that on. And I know a little Russian, mostly polite things, since I spent time there, but most Russians (post WWII generations) speak English and a couple of more languages besides. I took an ASL course a few years back, but you tend to lose it unless you use it... 
My dad's dad spoke fluent Yiddish, but the entire family refused to teach the children because they wanted them to be assimilated. Want to hear a really ironic thing? I have three brothers, and, of course, my parents, and a husband; none of them can speak another language, Can you guess who is the only one in the family who has never left the country (other than a trip to the Bahamas in college)? 
There was a PBS show here in Oklahoma that taught sign language to children. I taped all the shows and watch them to remind myself.
I really should pick up my language books again.
It really is much easier to learn a language when you're very young. But it's the same with my mother and grandparents. They came from Poland and so Polish was my mother's first language, she and her sister even went to school to learn to read and write it, but my brother and I and my cousins only know certain phrases, learned how to speak about food from my grandmother and insults from riding in the car with my mother, LOL. 
I went to Russia (the USSR back then) with my other grandmother as part of a peace group and they tried to learn Russian before they went, but it's so different that they barely got past the alphabet. I learned polite phrases while I was there, but most people - at least the younger ones - spoke English - and probably another language or two besides.
I sat next to a Russian girl in the theater and tried to converse with her during the intermission. She obviously spoke Russian and was fluent in French and Italian, as well, but kept apologizing to me that she "didn't finish her English!"
In Russia we went to an English class and the kids were elementary school age. I wish that learning other languages was a priority here, think it was unusual that French was taught in my junior high, most schools don't offer languages until high school, not nearly as easy to pick it up by that age. And, as Americans, we just expect everyone to be able to communicate with us. 
I thought ASL would be helpful to know and I learned the alphabet as a kid when reading about Helen Keller, but that was only one course. For awhile, I went to a meetup with my fellow students and teacher, as well as several who translated professionally and a few deaf members, too. But that was several years ago and I've lost most of what I knew... 
..how about Cherokee? Not common. Non-Latin alphabet. Amaze your friends.
When I learned it we still used punched cards.
I used to have some German, I was hanging out with people who spoke it, but that's fading.
I live in a community where many speak Spanish, my wife is bilingual, and our kids are somewhat bilingual, but I'm not. In the "real world" I don't speak much at all because I'm a master of saying inappropriate things and have learned by painful experience to keep my mouth shut most of the time.
I've always been fascinated with constructed languages such as interlingua, but I figure I can always hammer English into whatever shape I want and demand others follow along if they care to know what I'm thinking.
We have a family friend who is a language wizard, making a very good living doing simultaneous translation. He speaks a half dozen languages fluently, and is always studying more languages for just fun. He grew up in a tri-lingual household and community, so maybe he had a head start.
Language isn't always a good thing. In many ways our minds are slaves to a language. Some people are very skilled at manufacturing lies and propaganda taking advantage of the structures of a particular language. That's why it's important to be multi-lingual, or to have other languages like mathematics or music or dance to think in.
