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Here's a copy of my latest blog entry (as I think it's of slightly wider interest than to just my four regular readers.) I'd be interested in any comments.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | ||
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When my students at the women's college in Taiwan returned from Christmas vacation, one of them told me that when she got home, there was her brother, who had been living in Japan. He had brought with him a friend -- a young Japanese man -- and she (my student) tried to communicate with him. She was able to tell him in Japanese that she had studied Japanese language for only one year, and he responded by telling her in Chinese that he had studied Chinese for only one year. Then one of them said, "Do you speak English?" And the other replied, "Of Course !!" Problem solved. They communicated very effectively from then on .... In English. | |||
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Some years ago, when I managed a Travel Agency in Cheam, I used occasionally to get requests from our Sutton office to translate communications they had received from one of the large Spanish workforce in that area. Although I am not a fluent speaker, I can get by pretty well in Spanish and translating written travel requests was a doddle. Then one day I received a letter from one of the girls in Sutton which was written in French - so I called her and told her so. "Oh I know", said she, "but I know that you speak foreign languages, so I sent it to you"! So far as Sandra was concerned, if a person spoke "foreign" than that person obviously had a full command of each and every one of the world's 5000 plus languages! My two years of French in the first and scond forms came to my aid and I was able to deal with the request - but I am quite sure that Sandra would have been taught as much, if not more, French than I, since French was, in those days, the "default" foreign language that all British schoolchildren learnt. My own school was unusual in giving a choice of French, Spanish or German - plus Latin for the classically inclined. But then, as I suspect now, it was the inclination of most to throw away, and promptly forget, their language exercise books - along with those covering such other exotica as algebra and trigonometry. Richard English | |||
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We all learnt French in the first year. The one third of us who did well in French started Latin in the second year as well. Those in the middle third took German, and the rest took "Extra English". Quite how the logic worked there I've no idea, especially the idea that doing badly in French meant you needed further tuition in English. Spanish was an optional subject that we could start in the third year. By "first year" I mean the first year of secondary schooling, that is, aged around 11. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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It sounds as though your school was similar to mine - I went to Reigate Grammar. Although we took Latin from year 1 and had the option to drop it in year 3. Richard English | |||
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Aside from English, no languages were offered in my high school. The only one I was exposed to was the little bit of Arabic I learned from my good friends, the offspring of Catholic immigrants from Syria. (They were called "dagos" by the rednecks in our town.) Decades later when I visited one of them I saw a sign in her driveway: "Parking for Lebanese Only --- all others will be towed at owners' expense." I asked her, Why Lebanese? I thought it was Syrian." She said, laughing, "They moved the border." In the summer of my sixteenth year I worked with a Section Gang on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. All crew members except me and the Foreman were Mexicans. Seeing and hearing them communicating effectively in Spanish inspired me to learn that language, which I was able to do during the next few years. | |||
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My son has spent over a year, all told, in Mexico and used to speak fluent Spanish. Then he went on an exchange program Germany and, after he returned, to a German school here in the U.S. for two years. He claims the German has "pushed out" his Spanish and, although he can understand Spanish, when he tries to speak it only German comes out. | |||
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