Become polylingual

My friend Adam is making learning Japanese his summer project and wants me to do it with him. He’ll definitely have a head start, having studied Chinese for several years and me with only Romance languages. Eh, whatever. Pourquoi pas? Why not?

1) Not forget Italian – maybe even try to improve it.
2) Relearn French.
3) Decide what language comes next.

...and I still can’t roll my Rs.

I’m almost conversationally competent in Italian. I can ask for directions, order food in a restaurant, all the sort of basic things – not perfectly, mind you, I falter and search for words and it’s pretty obvious that I’m not fluent, but I can get by. I can have simple conversations about random things with Italians; the instances of conversations where I have no idea what the hell is being said are getting fewer. A few of the times I’ve talked with Italians I’ve been told that I speak really well, that I don’t have an American accent (which I couldn’t recognize if I heard it anyways), so I know that when I know what I’m talking about I sound fine…my biggest problem is that I just don’t know very much so I slip pretty quickly into the “uhh”s and the “umm”s and searching for words that I don’t know. I know several of the verb tenses, probably the most important ones, and it wouldn’t be hard for me to teach myself most of the others. Not sure how I’m going to keep up my Italian skills at home. Maybe I’ll try to teach my sister some Italian (she takes Latin in school) and in that way I can keep mine up.

For the next few weeks before I have to leave here (tear), I’m gonna try to have at least one conversation with a random Italian a day, so I can improve my speaking abilities as much as possible before I leave. Also, I want to go back to that bookstore up the street with the friendly clerks and pick out a book to read in Italian. I saw a couple Nicholas Sparks books translated, those might be simple enough for me to handle in Italian, and he’s a guilty pleasure of mine anyways.

My little brother (currently 13 and in 7th grade) decided he wants to take French next year in high school. Our high school offers French, Spanish, German, and Latin; for most people, my family included (I made sure of this, with my siblings) it’s not so much a question of whether or not you’re going to take a language (even though it isn’t required to graduate) as which language you will take (and then how long you’ll stick with it). I did three years of French in high school before I decided that I wasn’t really getting any better after the first year-year and a half or so. Maybe now that my brother is planning on picking it up (not sure why, I thought it would be cool if he took Spanish or German (my sister took Latin) and then we could have five languages in the family), I can help him and in doing so hopefully improve my own French. Pourquoi pas?

So there’s a new club at GW, Global Languages, the point of which is basically to bring together native or fluent speakers of various languages and have them teach free classes or give tutoring sessions to people who want to learn those languages. An awesome idea, I’m so glad the guy who founded it thought of it. Anyways, I went to an Italian class yesterday. The Italian class was right after a Portugese class (both taught by the guy who founded the club, who apparently speaks like 8 or 9 different languages), so I walked in on the end of the Portugese class and was confused. I know one word in Portugese – “obrigado” means “thank you”. So anyways, for the Italian class, he basically only spoke in Italian (with random bits of Portugese (cause one of the other girls with me in the class also spoke Portugese), Spanish (the other other girl in the class spoke Spanish), French (for me), and English (for all of us stupid Americans). The cool part was that even though I know precious little Italian (the stuff from the cd lessons that I bought hasn’t sunk in yet, since I haven’t listened to it in months; other than that, I know music and pasta terminology), I could understand just about everything he said, because it’s fairly close to French. It was all basic intro language stuff, like “What’s your name? Where do you live? What do you study?” and that sort of thing, but I understood what he said almost immediately just about every time – I just didn’t know how to respond to him, since I don’t actually speak Italian. But that will come in due time, I guess. I just thought it was cool that I understood so much. That and that he thought I was Italian when I came in and when I said I was from Pittsburgh. He was surprised when after I came in, after he asked me how I was (in Italian) and I responded and asked him how he was (in Italian), I then said I didn’t actually speak it.

So hopefully if I keep going to these classes I’ll have some Italian speaking ability before I go to Rome. Maybe I should go to the French classes too…

The culture chapter my French class is currently studying looks at the languages spoken in France besides French. There’s 7 main ones, all regional languages. Let’s see if I can remember them: Basque, Corsican, Catalan, Breton, Flemish, Occitan, and Alsacien. No idea if I spelled most of those right. Anyways, the professor has decided that for our test, we need to know a few words in ALL of these languages. All 7 of them. That means that for my French test next Wednesday, I need to know vocabulary in 8 languages. {scream!!!} Most of them are nothing like French! Nobody knows where Basque came from, Breton’s Celtic, Alsacien’s Germanic, Corsican is Italian-ish, Catalan is sorta Spanish-y, Occitan is almost like French but not, I don’t remember what Flemish is….ahhhh!!!!

I’m so sick of French right now. REALLY can’t wait to try Italian (in Italy) instead.

So today I had my first French quiz of the year, which, if I do say so myself, I didn’t do all that well on at all…

Every Wednesday afternoon, behind the metro stop near school, there’s a farmers market. I just found out about this last week. So I walked over today, because I love farmers markets. (This does relate to my French speaking abilities, just wait.) One of the vendors had about 3 tables full of pastries and tarts and breads and all sorts of wonderfully-delicious-looking stuff. So I walk over, because I am, if nothing else, a sucker for fresh bread and pastries that involve fruit, especially the little tarts with different kinds of fruit with glaze…anyways. So I walk over and there’s 2 people, a man and a woman, behind the tables talking to customers. The woman was picking out pastries for a couple standing next to me…and they were conversing in French. A sign stuck on the cash register was in French. So I think, sweet! Opportunity to practice my French! I bumped into the customer guy on accident and muttered “Excusez-moi”, and he turned and smiled at me. I listened to the vendor tell the customers about all the different kinds of pastries she had, and what kinds of fruit were in them…and I UNDERSTOOD HER. You don’t understand, I have the hardest time understanding spoken French. But I understood just about everything she said! I missed one of the ingrediants in one of the pastries, but I recognized that it was some sort of cream or topping that I just hadn’t come across before. I UNDERSTOOD what the customer asked her. I understood their whole little interaction! I was so proud of myself, I just had to try buying something. So I asked the woman how much her little fruity tarts were (“Combien est-ce que ces tartes?”), and she told me how much they were, and I understood her! I bought a tart from her entirely in French. I was so proud. I have a tart I bought in French.

She then turned to talk to another customer, and since I was still standing at the table, the other vendor, the guy, came up to me. I asked (in French) if they owned a pastry shop…and then he started talking to me in English. I was a bit disappointed. So for the next like minute or so I was talking to him in French, hoping he’d go back to French, but he’d talk to me in English. So apparently my accent sucks immensly or something.

But I did buy a pastry in French! Small victories. I told my boyfriend about it, and that I was proud of myself, and that I could get around a French market, and his response was, “Yes, but you’re going to Italy.”

C’est la vie. :-)

I bought an Italian cd set late in the summer, in preperation for my (hopeful) semester in Italy. I’ve listened to a little bit of it, not enough to really remember anything yet, but its a step in the right direction.

Since I plan on going to Italy next spring (must start that application…), this summer I’m going to get myself Italian cd’s and start the learning process, so maybe by the time I get to Italy I can get around and survive in Rome while I take real Italian classes.

I think it would be really cool to be fluent in many languages…I want to be fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, and then hopefully some language that isn’t a Romance language.