Joys of Being a Linguist

Joys of Being a Linguist

Now, adults are bombarded at every turn with the dubiously helpful insight that children are so much better at learning languages than are adults. Indeed, however, when the details of such findings are fully revealed, this Age of Susceptibility, this Window of Opportunity for Linguistic Achievement, is rather too small to be put to much practical use, beyond supposing that there might be some benefit in playing child’s games with more than one way to say “you’re it” or “naa na-na neh naa naa!” It may be that children can learn better only because they are content to learn less.

So let us put it out of our minds, that anxiety that learning another Civilized Language might be significantly harder than if we had set out to do it when we were three years old.

But now, why? Why learn another language? Particularly if one already knows English, which has become something of the Lingua Franca of the Modern World. Can’t one language really be enough?

Well, as in many other things, it is a matter of taste and inclination. Consider the case that one is really delighted in one’s Language, and had practically read everything, and, well, “heard it all” so to speak. Can one really continue to go back endlessly to one’s old favorite books? Many do. But many develop the urge to reach toward something more.

I have been gifted with a good memory. Many people have the vaguest memories of their childhood, but I remember a great deal. I remember being a very little boy uncertain of even my own Mother Tongue. I recall being in front of a door of a friends house, knocking, and wondering what on earth I was going to say to the mother who would open the door and enquirer as to what I wanted. Happily, when she did she knew somehow automatically that I was there to ask to play with the boy of the house, and that prescience of mind relieved me of the anxiety of having to find something intelligent to say. But Language continued to worry me. I then remembered my first years in school and how fussy teachers could be about spelling and pronunciation, and how I had to do much deliberate practice and study to keep from being put down with the stupid boys. Then I remembered the first books I actually enjoyed reading. Then I remembered the first books that I enjoyed despite their making me reach for dictionaries and grammars. I remember one teacher awkwardly suggesting I start upon Fine Literature, and I could see the doubt in her eyes as she wondered whether she was pushing too hard or two early. It was that look that sent me to the Library where I discovered the Great Literature of my Language. Then came the vocabulary notebooks. The Quote notebooks. Oh, I had other interests. There was plenty of stuff I was doing. But amidst it all was Language. And now that I am getting older, and sports, cars, girls and all those other interests recede, there still remains Language.

But the vocabulary notebooks, the quote notebooks… one can never return home again. Few new cards can be written. The cards, back then, well, they did their job. I now speak in Vocabulary Notebooks. And there are even moments, when I hit my stride, where I am even quotable. But those old joys of discovering English can not be run through again. The original wonder of a book can not be had on its tenth reading. So one looks to a New Language and a new Great Literature.

Now, even with my fine memory, I can’t remember the first moment I thought of learning French, to again break out the Vocabulary Notebooks and the Quotes, and the Verb Conjugation Charts that I had not even suspected, and the Grammars which are so necessary if only to make sense of some words which, despite their individual and separate meanings, when arranged together seem to make no sense at all. It is the colloquialisms, the mystery of the little words with their special funny meanings that I guess are so easy for the child but which pose such a problem for the adult. But since they are common, they are seen often and eventually the strange use of the little words becomes familiar.

It is all surprisingly quite fun. While Fast Cars and Pretty Young Women played such a large part in the first phase of my Mid-Life Crisis, now I find myself putting in a great deal of time studying Linguistics. It is certainly safer, far cheaper, and I get better sleep at night. What is not to like?

Oh, there are discouraging moments. When I first started it seemed like I was forever studying, going over vocabulary lists and reading, reading, reading and still it seemed as though I was always returning to a completely foreign language every time I unloaded my book bag. Then the day arrived where I read through my first entire French Paragraph without having to consult a dictionary or a grammar. I was stunned at first. I suspected it might have been a matter of lazy inattention and went back and re-read the paragraph, and, yes, while I knew some words had additional senses that had slipped my mind, I knew that as the words were used in this case, I knew what they meant. Wow! It was like a small Religious Experience, but a small one of those is better than none at all. A blip of Rapture!

Then one finds that one day one can actually begin using the Primary Language Dictionary, not having to ever resort to the English-French Cheater Dictionary. That was a strange and sneaky advance. It seemed like only the day before I could not understand nearly a thing of the pure French Dictionary, with the definitions giving me only more words to look up, with more words to look up after that, and never answering the original question… in most cases forgetting what the original question was. But then, one day the French-English Dictionary must have slid beyond my reach and I grabbed the Pure French instead, and I suddenly found I could read it, no, not completely, but enough to serve.

Finally there comes the moment when one actually enjoys a fine turn of phrase… not mistaking it for the ordinary usage of the Language, but actually being able to detect something special going on… some artful arrangement of the words and phrases that go way beyond what the grammar books would anticipate. All before that there was the Love of wanting to Fall in Love with the Language. But then to actually hear it and grasp it and appreciate it. To really feel the effect of the Fine use of a new Language… one is no longer a Virgin anymore.

Oh, there is a plodding and practical use for learning a New Language. One becomes so much more aware of one’s English… of its Grammar and usages. I had always wondered to myself why the English writers were so much better than the Americans. Well, of course, its because they all knew French.