A first second language...
My first second language was French. I was exposed to a smattering of it growing up because both my parents had studied it at university - my mother fell just short of a minor. In high school - not till high school did I really study another language! - I took French and quickly picked up on the grammar and vocabulary. Putting them together to speak was another matter.
I was not sure at the time what I would do with languages. And even during my time at the bookstore, bitten by the language bug, I still wasn't sure how far I would go with languages. Then I read Les Misérables - in translation and abridged - and decided I would like to read it in the original.
By the time I hit college, I had fussed with Spanish, Italian, German and, of course, Arabic (and just a touch of Chinese). But French was my focus and I proceeded to minor in it. My junior (3rd) year, I went to France where I promptly discovered that the ability to get top marks on exams was not the same thing as being able to say even your name. Fortunately, after a few weeks I got the hang of it. Unfortunately...
In Foucault's Pendulum, one of the characters had studied German, and another character remarked that as far as he knew, once you'd studied German, you spent your life knowing German - nothing else left to do. That's sort of the way it is with French in the United States - not a whole lot to do with the fact you know French except spend your life knowing French. Which is how I wound up in grad school and on the verge of a PhD in French lit before life got in the way.
Today, I work for a language school. Ironically, it's my small business experience and brief time in business school that got me the job. But it's given me the chance to study lots of other languages and to start a career path related to my hobby.
I'd like to have more to say about French, but strangely, I don't. With most of my other languages, I study off and on, work at them when I can and regret that I haven't learned more. But having given 13 years of my life largely to the study of French, it's just something I now. When I want to talk, I talk. When I want to read, I read. But, like English, I no longer think of it as a language to study, but something I use for its own sake. Which is to say that I read in it, write in it and teach it. But I don't study it anymore.
As I write this, it occurs to me that the best way to tell my story, or confession as a language addict, is to run through all the languages I've fussed with, how far I've gotten, and how they have contributed either to making me a polyglot or limiting me to being an aspiring polyglot.
Next time: Arabic.
I was not sure at the time what I would do with languages. And even during my time at the bookstore, bitten by the language bug, I still wasn't sure how far I would go with languages. Then I read Les Misérables - in translation and abridged - and decided I would like to read it in the original.
By the time I hit college, I had fussed with Spanish, Italian, German and, of course, Arabic (and just a touch of Chinese). But French was my focus and I proceeded to minor in it. My junior (3rd) year, I went to France where I promptly discovered that the ability to get top marks on exams was not the same thing as being able to say even your name. Fortunately, after a few weeks I got the hang of it. Unfortunately...
In Foucault's Pendulum, one of the characters had studied German, and another character remarked that as far as he knew, once you'd studied German, you spent your life knowing German - nothing else left to do. That's sort of the way it is with French in the United States - not a whole lot to do with the fact you know French except spend your life knowing French. Which is how I wound up in grad school and on the verge of a PhD in French lit before life got in the way.
Today, I work for a language school. Ironically, it's my small business experience and brief time in business school that got me the job. But it's given me the chance to study lots of other languages and to start a career path related to my hobby.
I'd like to have more to say about French, but strangely, I don't. With most of my other languages, I study off and on, work at them when I can and regret that I haven't learned more. But having given 13 years of my life largely to the study of French, it's just something I now. When I want to talk, I talk. When I want to read, I read. But, like English, I no longer think of it as a language to study, but something I use for its own sake. Which is to say that I read in it, write in it and teach it. But I don't study it anymore.
As I write this, it occurs to me that the best way to tell my story, or confession as a language addict, is to run through all the languages I've fussed with, how far I've gotten, and how they have contributed either to making me a polyglot or limiting me to being an aspiring polyglot.
Next time: Arabic.
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