(language)
We seldom think about how fortunate we are to have English as our mother tongue, the first second language of the world. Infintely mutable, and stealing vocabulary from around the globe, and a complete cesspool of irregular verbs (what’s an irregular verb?, most native speakers will ask {younger viewers will likely ask, what’s a verb?}), which we think of as normal, and never need to wrestle with as a student..
Unhappily it leads to a certain arrogance (of course they’ll speak English), and a laziness, where most of us proceed in a monolingual life, while abroad, multiple tongues are quite normal.
I only studied my “parlez -vous” to O’ grade (Nat4 – these days), although I was fortunate to be taught French in primary, which perhaps is why a little has stayed with me. I did, in later life, do night classes at L’Alliance Francais (It was that or German at the Goethe institute#), but little use, has made whatever French I had, pretty rusty. Lovely wife – who intermitantly lived and worked in France, says my French is dreadful, although it did serve to haggle at the market on our last visit, (to the amusement of the natives no doubt).
Had I pursued my studies to Higher (Nat5) I might have been able to comfortably ask for directions to the station, or the price of a peach, and, been able to comprehend the reply.
Young Ben, now installed in central Tokyo, is there to teach English, or I suspect, for the more senior students, provide a native speaker to practise on and explain nuance and culture references. I was interested to hear how he had got on speaking English with Japanese pupils of his own age (18):
“We talked about the ethics of genetic modification…”
While as a topic, it is a niche interest of Bens, by his own admission, he could not have had that conversation with (most of) his UK peers.
We don’t know how easy we have it.
And I think I’m prepared with, “je ne prendrai pas ce panier, il est plein de serpents.”
Next week on IaDL: Eb minor . why bother?
# I was given a bief glimpse of both . In the Goethe rows of (adult) students were at desks facing a board chanting Der, De, Das. In L’Allliance they were sitting on a comfy chairs drinking coffee and discussing their aunts pen…..
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 