At the moment I was about to drift off into sleep, I had the brilliant idea to study Latin. What could be better than a language I don't have to speak? I would be able to read inscriptions on statues and maybe even read the poems of Sulpicia or Catullus. When I was a child, my cousin gifted me a small book, "Springs of Roman Wisdom". Why I have no idea but I liked the stern profiles of the "illustrious" men of the time and the mysterious quotes.
My first language was Latvian. It gives me a world of nature, fantasy and names of strange ailments. I learned English at school. Although Latvian has a "sh" sound, my first grade teacher sent me to a speech therapist who showed me pictures of shoes and made me pronounce the word. I never understood why and was upset because this made me late for lunch.
I studied French in school and made it to Paris in my junior year of college. Like anyone who has studied a language in school, actually speaking it is very different. In a Paris bar, a guy explained to me how to correctly pronounce the language and how to form the unaspirated p. It worked because I could talk to the workers downing red wine in the morning cafes and use the telephone system with no problem.
French functioned until I learned Spanish which took over that part of my brain. I decided to learn Spanish the natural way, which meant I didn't study it formally for a long time but just spoke it with endless mistakes. It was my way of testing language acquisition theory which worked but always left me with the doubt if I was saying things correctly.
I had a short stint with Russian. I loved drawing the letters but I had a Russian teacher so strict that I developed a tic in my eye and dreaded attending class. The fear system worked up to a point because you never went to class unprepared but in the end the tic won out. I tried a very short-lived Chinese class when I was in Malaysia. Mostly I decided to try it out to give some work to a friend's Chinese wife who was going crazy with nothing to do. I remember absolutely nothing of Chinese. Once a psychic told me I'd had a horrible life there so I became afraid of visiting. The closest I got was Hong Kong.
My years of living in Barcelona made studying Catalan a must. I struggled with the politics of the language which is exclusive so I never took to it though I studied it. The highlight of my Catalan studies was explaining to the class how I grew up in a county with more cows than people. That fit in with the Catalan glorification of rural culture.
Back to Latin- it will never be a political statement but perhaps an elite one but since I never went to private or Catholic school and am proud of my working class background I don't care. I love words so what could be better? I'll never have to feel foolish making the simplest of mistakes and most importantly, I'll be able to read those inscriptions in museums.
