Learning Languages, Battling the Lernaean Hydra
Somdutta Sarkar
Language evolves.
We know this.
It’s alive, dynamic, influencing, and prone to influences. Perhaps something that has its own nerve centre, distinct from itself, allowing it to function on multiple planes at once. A Lernaean Hydra of sorts.
I studied history of English language and literature in college; Germanic and Anglo-Saxon roots, the influence of invasions, Chaucer et al. The Oxford dictionary compiles a new list of words every year, picked from popular colloquialism, and inducts it formally into the annals of modern English. The internet has its own lists… of exotic words that have no parallel in English or beautiful foreign words you should know and name your daughter after. Goya. Cafuné. Mångata. Wingardiam Leviosa.
In my country, we have a spoken hybrid called Hinglish, an adaptation of the Hindi language with a smattering of English. It used to be the language of the youngsters, the modernistas who texted and IM’d and wore Levis when it was cool. Today, it is the norm, the lingua franca.
When I moved to the UK as a student, I knew I was moving to an English-speaking country. I was as proficient in the language as I was in my native tongue. I had this. I was wrong. I was in a class with students from over thirty different nationalities. My immediate group of friends had people from over a dozen varied countries like Italy, Colombia, Uruguay, Macedonia, Portugal, Japan, Malaysia, China, Greece, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey, and of course, the UK.
The more common languages spoken around me were Italian, Spanish, and Cantonese. My foreign language proficiency extended to a smattering of French, which had been adequate for a trip to Paris two years ago but didn’t prove to be of much help here. A Japanese friend started taking Spanish classes to keep up with the changing universe. I found a language exchange partner and picked up sufficient Spanish to be able to inform someone they were mad and a fool.
Then came the holidays. I flew to Germany to spend Christmas with some friends. Now German coffeeshops in the bigger touristy cities always have an English-speaking barista. And everyone else… speaks German. I messed up while ordering food in a beer garden once and got served cabbage instead of sausage. By the end of my first week, I could order a meal in decent Deutshce as long as I rehearsed my lines. Ich möchte bitte einen kaffe. But the moment I was asked a question (groß oder klein?), I lapsed into – not English – but halting French, my immediate recourse when it came to foreign languages. Oui. Sil vout plait. Merci.
This wasn’t an anomaly.
Two months later I am in Spain and struggling to phrase Spanish phrases together and this time lapsing intermittently into – voila – German. No hablo español. entschuldigen, sprechen sie Englisch, por favor?
Not only was this not an anomaly, this was a pattern. Next month, I am in Halifax volunteering with a counselling group, interpreting from English into my native language and vice versa, and having a hard time – to my horror – with the first part of the task. I remember an Italian friend; who incidentally struggles enough with his English, telling me that when he now writes something in Italian he has to get it corrected by his friends back home.
During a particularly long-winding seminar in class, I declare dramatically in Greek that I won’t survive the hour. The lecturer turns and looks at me pointedly; I realize he is from Cyprus and can probably understand my Greek better than I can. There are polyglots, and then there are the linguistically confused. I swear to myself silently. In Italian.
Next week, I am interpreting again.
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