Admittedly, the first posting of a travel blog could and probably should include some sort of itinerary of the proposed travel: dates, locations, modes of travel, dreams and hopes for the future....all that good stuff. But there are far more important issues at hand-and this week it's the language barrier.
Oh yes, the countries of Europe have mostly unified the monetary system, and some governmental forms. Yet there's still no common language. Now I love listening to languages, I love listening to accents, I find accents very attractive. However, I spent five years in high school learning Spanish. Struggled through five years of language, trying to understand what the devil was going on. I watched movies, took an AP course in Literature and forced myself to not only understand, but to analyze poetry in a foreign language. Five years I half-slaved to have passable skills, skills that I have since let slide from disuse, and the fact that my university is not in the most Hispanic-oriented area of the world. As such, all I can ask is the ability to greet and read a menu, and hopefully renew those skills should I ever need it for an advanced degree.
As it turns out, I will be spending four months in an area of the world that communicates in Italian. How wonderful for me, surely! I spend five years with a romance language, only to end up in an area with another romance language. On paper this should be easy-the skills I learned once upon a time should surely extend to this new language: the structures are the same, and the vocabulary is remarkably similar. Which, as I said, looks really good on paper. The practice is horrible.
Every time I try to count to ten, I begin in Italian, and by 'seven' I'm well ensconced in Spanish. I've realized that I knew far more Spanish that I ever realized, because every time I try to write a sentence in my extremely limited Italian vocabulary and shaky verb conjugations, it comes out as a remarkably complex and detailed Spanish sentence. I'm not sure the grammar is entirely correct, but it sure sounds good.
My roommate, who will be going abroad with me, has been having problems as well. Her linguistic background lies with Latin and a semester of German-which it turns out is entirely useless. The Latin should help in principle, it being the root language for the romances, and a certain percentage of English. It could be that the problems lie with a professor that didn't make a good first impression, and that sets up a barrier. If I don't have faith in a teacher's ability to teach, I'll resist learning, whether or not I can actually absorb the information. That means I feel the need to do extra practice with the other resources provided, and yet my reluctance to do work combined with my existing work load prevents me from that practice.
That inevitable lack of skills that comes from resistant learning and procrastinated practice means that I will have to rely on my natural charm to get around cities-which will end badly I'm sure. Although I've been told I can get out of class work if I can catch a glimpse of George Clooney. So maybe, I don't need to overcome the language barrier as much as the charm barrier.
1 comment:
Eh, you would think that - considering my terrible four years of Spanish and the massive difference between that and Japanese - I would be able to keep the two separate. No, I have a wonderful habit of using fun Spanish nouns like "brother" in my Japanese sentences when I speak. Also, casa in Japanese is umbrella, taco is octopus, and demo (which is "but") is way to close to pero for comfort.
You'll heart studying abroad, it's pretty much the most amazing thing ever. I'm planning ways to mess up the time-space continuum that will allow me to go back to Japan, not spend money, and still attend school and have a job. I'm close. ; )
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