It’s all in the Language

This post is going to be intense and probably not suitable for little kids or people without a college kid sense of humor. I’ve been kicking it around in my head for a while now (like half the semester) and I think I’ve finally got enough information to convey my feelings. Ireland has been quite the learning experience for me and not so much in the class room, lecture sense. Most of my lessons learned have come from my friends and sorry American buddies I’m not talking about you…

The majority of my friends here are from other parts of Europe which mean English is their second language. That alone impresses me. But I have a few friends that know 3 or 4 languages. It impresses me as much as it depresses me. I know one language, English. I took 3 years of French in High School so I can sort of understand my French friends when they talk to each other. I also took 4 years of Spanish in middle school, but that pretty much doesn’t count since I didn’t pay attention and as my Spanish housemate points out I was taught “Mexican Spanish” which she dislikes because she says they pronounce things wrong.

So I know 1 language. Because of this I feel like a typical “stupid American”. Yet I had a friend point out to me that English is the language every one wants to speak, he said I was lucky to have been born in an English speaking country. That might be true but I still feel odd around my European friends and I don’t feel lucky at all. Just because I was born speaking English shouldn’t mean that I should be satisfied with it and sit tight for the rest of my life knowing one language.

I don’t mean to point fingers… but school never encouraged me to really learn another language. Sure it was required to take 2 years of a language in High School… but the classes sucked. Turns out the French we were taught is about 50 years old and I’d be laughed at if spoke it in France. I’ve been informed that the average French person basically shortens all the words making everything pretty much slang.

There is also the fact that in Europe you’re so close to other countries that you can’t just stick with one language. And you have the chance to go on Erasmus in college. And Erasmus is the chance for them to study in another country and learn the native language there. All my European friends ended up in Ireland because they wanted to learn English. In America we don’t have such a unique opportunity. We can learn Mexican Spanish to go to Mexico or Canadian French to go Canada. That’s really all that we have near. It makes me a little jealous that Europeans can travel to another country in a matter of hours and pratice a language if they wanted.

So what should I do? Learn another language of course… but that’s proving to be a wee bit hard. I’m picking French back up. I downloaded a bunch of pod casts and what not to relearn a lot of things from high school and I can’t help but wonder if I’ll even be understood when I visit France this fall. Probably not. But another thing that I admire is that no one is afraid of making mistakes when they speak English. While I’m too scared to speak what little French I know since I know I’ll say it wrong.

Apparently Europe breads kids that are unafraid to try new things and make mistakes. While America bread insecure kids who are too afraid to learn something if they pronounce a word wrong. I know I’ll have to just give up the idea that I’ll sound stupid and actually just sound stupid and have someone fix my mistakes then keeping it all in my head.

Over the course of the semester I did a lot of teaching, and again it’s not the conventional teaching… Since I’m an American youth I obviously know a lot of slang and other such odd words or expressions. Before I never realized I spoke in such a way. Expressions like “That’s a good game” and “Cool beans” were part of my regular speech pattern at home but it turned out they needed lots of explaining when I first used them.

And there are other words like, douchebag that are quite odd to have to explain. With words like that it’s easier to just relate it to another word like a**hole then to explain it literally.

Then there’s the fact that I use words out of their normal context such as wicked or sweet. Some things are easier to explain then others so needless to say my brain has gotten quite a work out this semester. Also they ask odd questions. One night my French friend and I were watching How I Met Your Mother and they said something about a blob and he asks me “What’s a blob?” I didn’t know how to answer properly. Another unanswerable question came from watching the Hangover. My French friend said he wanted to watch it in English because some of the jokes didn’t translate. So we watched it, I did a lot of explaining. And Then he asks me “What’s a hillbilly?” Again I had no real answer that made sense to him. I guess hillbillies must be an American thing.

My housemates also work my brain out by asking me to spell things. First off I’m a horrible speller so I’ve explained to them that I take no responsibility for misspelled words. They also ask me grammar questions that I know I should know the answer to but I don’t. My Spanish housemate was better at English Grammar then I am… oops.

But as I think on the whole grammar thing now I can’t recite rules on when to use certain words but I know when to use those words. It’s all in my head and I might not have the same titles associated with the rule that the rest of society has. But spoken grammar and written grammar are different yet I must be proficient in both since I’m a third year university student now… I just can’t explain very well without examples.

This past semester has motivated me to not be content with knowing one language. It stretched my mind to come up with definitions for words and phrases that I use all the time without thinking. It also opened my eyes to the fact that I have some awesome, intelligent friends and I’m lucky they put up with my “Americanness”.

New goal for the fall = travel Europe, see all that can, learn a new language… and get good grades.
Cheers,