Instead of anything substantial, a brief personal essay about language learning
▧ This is a brief personal essay about learning languages. Imagine as you read it that there are invisible line breaks between sections on orality and literacy. Some languages I learned only to speak and others only to read. The second theme, which does not need those invisible line breaks is: emotion. Some languages I loved and some I did not. Sometimes, I learned languages because I fell in love with people that spoke them, whether living people, figures long dead, or fictional characters. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I can still remember being able to speak German. Some of the words are missing in my memories. My father was in the Air Force. We lived in left-behind French officer’s quarters on the edge of an air base, with Strasbourg a half hour north, over the border, and Freiburg a half hour south. His father was in the Air Force, too, so he grew up touring the Cold War. Although his inability or unwillingness to learn French may have held back his career, he seemed to have a knack for languages. He picked up German from local contractors. He passed it on to his children. He instilled in me a certain amount of shame about speaking English in foreign countries. This turned out to be significant. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ From a young age, I was taught French. Bilingualism was encouraged in overseas schools for military kids. When I went to Canada, going to a Catholic school meant learning French. We said the "Notre Père" each morning. We memorized verb conjugations. This was not French immersion, which seems to actually turn out fluent speakers. I loved my French teacher, who seemed like a connection to another world. I remember M. Leonard smoking tiny cigars in class. I remember his story about visiting Fragonard in Paris. In the end, the result was that I can read and write French. I would hesitate to speak it, though, unless it was to recite a common prayer. It exists in my mind now only as ink on paper. This is true for most languages that I have learned. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ When I was a boy, my sister and I tried to learn Japanese from a weekly program on the a non-commercial educational cable channel run by the province. I was too young or too sheltered to understand why anybody would want to learn Japanese. Looking back, perhaps it was still early enough for some to believe in the relevance of the language to the wider world. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ In my first semester of university, I took Spanish and German. Cultural enrichment attempts took up most of the class time. Lecturers showed us Rick Steves documentaries and brought in food for us to taste. At my small prairie college, perhaps this intended to inform the students of the existence of these countries. The lessons were in guidebook language. We listened to cassette tapes to learn the proper pronunciation and intonation of phrases like, “How much is the umbrella?” and “I would like two queen beds.” It was easier to learn Spanish by grinding through books in the library. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ Working at the slaughterhouse that summer, I tried to pick up phrases, rhythms, or accents from my colleagues. I worked at a station with three Vietnamese men that chatted all day in their native language. I didn’t learn anything from them. I came to love the sound of the Burmese spoken by the women on the gut line, which filtered through the hiss of the lactic acid sprayer nozzle. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I attempted to switch to Arabic in the second semester. This seemed like a valuable choice, given the state of the world. The course was cancelled for lack of interest. For a while, I tried to teach myself with audio files downloaded from the internet. I put an advertisement on a school bulletin board for a tutor. Three times a week, I sat in the cafeteria, trying to read from lists of common phrases prepared by a young Egyptian woman that was studying chemical engineering. None of these lessons held for more than twenty-four hours. Eventually, we met to proofread her homework. Every so often, she surprised me in my messy dormitory room (she lived three floors above me) with a meal, which we ate seated on the floor, watching a movie on my laptop. Now, I even forget her name. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I took a class in Cree. Most of the students in the class spoke bits and pieces, picked up from their grandmothers and aunts. It seemed that nobody yet knew how to teach it in a classroom. It was a puzzle. I learned about linguistics. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ Pressed to do a semester abroad, my first choices were Brazil and Vietnam. The spaces filled up too quickly. I went to China instead. I learned my first words in Chinese on a flight to Beijing. They were the names of beverages offered by the flight attendants. I missed a connecting flight to Nanjing and spent a week wandering in Beijing. I learned a few more words. When I finally got to my school in Nanjing, I learned very little in the classroom. Chinese seems to be a difficult language to teach. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I fell in love with a girl. She didn’t teach me anything but she made me want to learn. I wanted to understand her. Perhaps I was also worried that she looked down on me for not being able to speak her language. She could speak mine. We read books together, translating passages for each other. I picked up the local accent. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I went back to Canada and changed my major. I moved to Vancouver. I learned Chinese in a way that nobody does anymore, now that everything is digital. I learned to read and write Chinese by writing characters, hundreds and hundreds, thousands and thousands, and eventually millions. I sat at a picnic table in the park across from my apartment. I copied out characters from my textbook. I copied out poems and passages from books. I made my way through novels by looking up characters by radical and stroke in a dictionary. This is the only way to learn, even if nobody wants to hear my advice. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I learned to speak Chinese fluently by renting a room in a house in Richmond that had been carved up into a dozen apartments with particle board walls. I sat in the kitchen at night. I went back to China as soon as I could. I talked and talked and talked. I talked to everyone in the country, I swear. It cured me of my shyness. This is the only way to learn, even if nobody wants to hear my advice. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ Most languages exist only as ink on paper, but Chinese is still alive in my head. I love it. I find myself narrating things to myself in Chinese, sometimes absentmindedly, sometimes intentionally. It is locked in there forever. I will love it forever. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ Part of the reason is that it has given me another version of myself. When I speak Chinese, I am giving voice to another soul, who has read more books, who is more erudite, who has never been ashamed of his choices, and who has been adventurous. My Chinese-language self has been granted audiences with famous poets and convicted criminals. You would be lucky to meet him. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I learned enough Cantonese to get by at the auto parts shop I worked at in Richmond. I spoke Cantonese like a Mainlander. I took informal lessons from one of the accountants. We went out on chaste dates every Wednesday night, switching between English (this is what she wanted to sharpen), Mandarin (a shared language), and Cantonese. I was broke, so I appreciated the chance to ride from Steveston to downtown Richmond in her Honda Civic, then eat a meal together. I usually think I remember only simple phrases, curse words, and lines from films, but there is much more buried. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ Working overnight security at a hotel, I sat in the back office while co-workers taught each other curse words in their mother tongues. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ I flew to Korea, thinking that I could pull off the same trick as I had with Chinese. It was impossible. I was not in love with the language. I found I could not learn Thai in Thailand, either. I locked myself in my slum hostel. I went out around with braying Australians. This is about an emotional connection, I might say, even if that sounds too grand. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ When I came to Japan, I started to try to learn other languages, if only to put off learning Japanese. I learned Vietnamese from the dishwasher at a restaurant where I got a part-time job as a runner. I liked the way she spoke it. I learned enough to contemplate the films of Nguyễn Hồng Sến. I learned enough to order in a restaurant. And then I switched to Russian. I began to fall in love with Soviet cinema. I liked the way the language sounded. This was the first time that I tried to learn a language in the way that everyone learns languages now. I used phone applications and flashcards. This is a scam. It’s all a scam. I learned most everything from an old grammar book, which I flicked after watching films or trying to muddle through short stories. I joined a Russian class, taught by an Uzbek. After that, I tried other languages: Lao, Swedish, Persian… I enjoyed learning enough to follow a film, read a menu, or maybe even slowly work through a book. This is enough. It keeps my brain alive. ▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣ ▧ In Japan, I am like a dog. I understand everything but I cannot speak. I bark timidly in reply. Simple phrases will come out, but the fear of tripping across the grammar holds me back from going further. This is frustrating. I can read but I cannot write. This is maddening. I have nobody to blame but myself. Dedicated study is required, I remind myself. But this, sadly, is not a language that I love, even if I do love people that speak it. I have absorbed enough to function. I persist because I am too ashamed to prompt anyone to switch to English. I will not go that far. ▧