Re: Learning languages

It's kind of a challenge to learn several languages in
the same time, or nearly. To be more precise, it's
VERY hard to have to manage in a foreign language for
some, say, weeks, or months, and then suddenly to have
to speak another foreign language. It looks like the
brain decides that it should either think in the
native language, either in "the" foreign one, so if
you tell him (it?) that "the" foreign language is no
more the same, it feels quite disconcerted.

I was once in Spain short time after having spent some
weeks in Norway, where I did all I could to speak and
understand Norwegian. The Norwegian words and
expressions came out in spite of my efforts. Imagine
the Spanish interlocutor, knowing that I was French,
and wondering why the hell I tried to speak to him in
Norwegian. I also attented a Russian course after
having been in Norway. It was nearly impossible to say
"i" instead of "og" (and), "i" meaning "in" in
Norwegian. The Russian teacher found it hard to
understand, and yet I knew very well that I had to say
"og" (pronounced somehow like "o"). Now if I try to
form a sentence in German, which I learned long time
ago at school, automatically the Russian words come
out, and I have to think a long time to find the
German expression again.

Something else also happens sometimes: when you are in
a foreign country, you sometimes read a book (before
sleeping, for ex) that is, neither in your native
language, neither in the country's language. If the
book is a good one, the next day you think about
sentences you read (or deciphered), and you think them
in yet another language, and you have to make a
considerable effort to determine what was the original
language in which you read it, and retranslate it. I
remember I read Kerouac in English in Iceland, and the
next day the sentences came back in German...

--- Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>
wrote:
> Just as an aside, I've been (supposedly) learning a
> bit of swahili and I
> find it fascinating and different. I haven't found
> much time for it
> recently mainly because I kept slipping swahili
> words into spanish (I'm
> afraid I need to learn to separate things, I keep
> saying "gracias" to
> bus drivers when I get off the bus too), but the
> grammar is *very*
> interesting and very different from english.
> Learning a new language
> really changes the way you think.... Its really a
> good thing to experience.

=====
Philippe Caquant

"He thought he saw a Rattlesnake / That questioned him in Greek: / He looked
again, and found it was / The Middle of Next Week. / "The one thing I regret',
he said, / "Is that it cannot speak !' " (Lewis Carroll)

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