On being a monoglot
I have a Problem with languages. It's rather embarrassing. Especially when I have to field the most common I-don't-know-what-a-linguist-is question. How many languages do I speak? One. English.
I know enough French to understand Eddie Izzard's routines, but no more. I know enough Spanish to eavesdrop on parts of conversations in the waiting room at my doctor's office, but certainly not enough to *participate* in a conversation. I can count to ten and ask for the bus in Basque, construct several (mostly obscene) sentences in Klamath, tell you that I like coffee in Arabic, and refer to the sour smell of very bad molasses in Bengali.
Here is my Problem with languages: I am easily distracted. I took a semester of Arabic in college, and got about as far as "You do WHAT with your pharynx?" and pretty soon I was looking at spectrograms in Praat instead of, you know, learning how to say anything besides "I like coffee". Which is now completely useless, as I can no longer drink coffee.
I have been thinking about this because I recently started watching The West Wing. There is a character on the show who is Deaf (played by Marlee Matlin, who is awesome) and scenes in which she appears include a significant amount of ASL. Occasionally I look up from my knitting and try to follow along, but I only understand maybe every tenth word.
When I was in elementary school, I learned a bit of what I now know to be some combination of ASL and Signed English. I had a classmate who was Deaf, and we all learned quite a bit from her interpreters. Later, when I worked in childcare, we used infant and toddler sign in the classroom --- listen, forget all the unfounded nonsense about "increased language ability": if a 10 month old infant can communicate the difference between "more" and "all done", everyone's life is better.
In college, I took an ASL class. I got about as far as "You do WHAT with your eyebrows?" and it was all over. I can tell from your eyebrows whether you're asking me a wh-question or a yes/no question, whether you're topicalizing something or negating it. But I haven't the faintest idea what you are asking, topicalizing, or negating unless it involves Cookie Monster, common barnyard animals, or the "more"/"all done" distinction.
[Oh, and to the writers of The West Wing: some notes about New Hampshire. Concord is not pronounced like the jet, there is no space in Manchester for a farm, and I would be very impressed if you managed to get to Nashua by train.]
I know enough French to understand Eddie Izzard's routines, but no more. I know enough Spanish to eavesdrop on parts of conversations in the waiting room at my doctor's office, but certainly not enough to *participate* in a conversation. I can count to ten and ask for the bus in Basque, construct several (mostly obscene) sentences in Klamath, tell you that I like coffee in Arabic, and refer to the sour smell of very bad molasses in Bengali.
Here is my Problem with languages: I am easily distracted. I took a semester of Arabic in college, and got about as far as "You do WHAT with your pharynx?" and pretty soon I was looking at spectrograms in Praat instead of, you know, learning how to say anything besides "I like coffee". Which is now completely useless, as I can no longer drink coffee.
I have been thinking about this because I recently started watching The West Wing. There is a character on the show who is Deaf (played by Marlee Matlin, who is awesome) and scenes in which she appears include a significant amount of ASL. Occasionally I look up from my knitting and try to follow along, but I only understand maybe every tenth word.
When I was in elementary school, I learned a bit of what I now know to be some combination of ASL and Signed English. I had a classmate who was Deaf, and we all learned quite a bit from her interpreters. Later, when I worked in childcare, we used infant and toddler sign in the classroom --- listen, forget all the unfounded nonsense about "increased language ability": if a 10 month old infant can communicate the difference between "more" and "all done", everyone's life is better.
In college, I took an ASL class. I got about as far as "You do WHAT with your eyebrows?" and it was all over. I can tell from your eyebrows whether you're asking me a wh-question or a yes/no question, whether you're topicalizing something or negating it. But I haven't the faintest idea what you are asking, topicalizing, or negating unless it involves Cookie Monster, common barnyard animals, or the "more"/"all done" distinction.
[Oh, and to the writers of The West Wing: some notes about New Hampshire. Concord is not pronounced like the jet, there is no space in Manchester for a farm, and I would be very impressed if you managed to get to Nashua by train.]
posted by Wendell Kimper at 2:58 PM
3 Comments:
i was reading this post, sympathizing (i have french in my back pocket, but that is just a fluke), but then i got as far as 'you can't drink WHAT anymore?" and it was all over.
you can no longer drink coffee???? i am heartbroken! maybe i can be considered to be drinking yours as well?
Sometime last year, my stomach decided that coffee was Not Okay. The good news: since i refused to accept this for a while, operant conditioning took over and I developed a strong enough association between the taste of coffee and stomach-related Unpleasantness that I no longer desire it.
Please drink my coffee for me. When you get to the point in a very long day when you start to feel perhaps a little guilty about how much coffee you've had, just remember that *someone* needs to drink the coffee I'm not drinking.
(...and in case you worried that I was somehow having to face life without caffeine? I can still drink tea. A lot of tea. Which reminds me that it's time to put the kettle on.)
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