My Life in Languages

     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.