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Friday, May 13, 2005
If The King's English Was Good Enough For Jesus, It's Good Enough For Me!
So I'm not in town coffeeblogging from the Bean today. Too many things to do before I head out for a gig, including a haircut scheduled at precisely the wrong time, so I'm home while the boyz do our schtick without me. Boohoohoo.
I have been chatting with the gang, though, and coffeeblogging by proxy. I had a very nice IM conversation with flameape's girlfriend about science, Shakespeare, foreign languages and other stuff. She apparently started school in Montreal when she was a wee lass, and told me an interesting thing about French which sparked me to Google something wherein I stumbled upon this funny blog post:
It's a shame so few Americans ever get the opportunity to learn a foreign language. I admire those who take it upon themselves to study a foreign language in college, but let's face it, unless they have some degree of skill with languages and the opportunity to travel, it's just not going to happen. Occasionally some adult learner reaches conversational level thanks to sheer determination, but for the most part, there are some things you just can't learn if you wait too long to get started. Language is one of those.
But how can you expect anything more from a nation of stubborn monolinguals? Many of my students probably never heard a foreign language other than restaurant Spanish until junior high. Without early exposure to other phonèmes, connections are not made, linguistic skills are not developed. It's doubtful that many of my students will ever be able to say "tu" without it sounding like "tout," or "déjà vu" without it coming out as something closer to "déjà vous." And when a Texan with a heavy accent says "Merci beaucoup," I have to supress a little laugh, because I know that what he's said is not "Thanks a lot!" but "Thanks, nice ass!"
...
Americans should be sick of being made to look the fool because of our lack of linguistic skills. It's time we start opening our minds before we open our mouths. French has more to offer than romance and fries, and Spanish isn't just for ordering Mexican food.Get your shit together, America. English is not God's fucking language, and you're not the goddamn center of the universe any more.
How do you say 'A-fucking-men' in French, anyway?
ntodd
May 13, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
Yeah, besides being a mind-opener, I'm sure that, for kids anyway, learning multiple languages just so that they learn what goes into the language they speak would probably be good for their brains and skills.
If only Latin didn't have such a bad rap, I'd recommend it as a possible learn-for-fun kind of language, in that, once you have the hang of the conjugation and declination, German's a cinch, and French grammar becomes less intimidating.
Posted by: TheaLogie | May 13, 2005 4:27:15 PM
I believe the exact translation would be "les hommes baisant." or something like that.
Posted by: watertiger | May 13, 2005 7:15:49 PM
I started with German my freshman year of high school, and switched to French when the German teacher left and the school district decided not to replace her. Which made Greek a cinch as a college major, and also made it possible to soak up two years' worth of Latin in a summer my first year in graduate school. After that, tourist Hebrew was fun, and tourist Italian was a flippin' breeze.
Now, I happen to have perfect repetitive pitch and a very good ear, so accents have not been a problem even given my late start. My main problem in France this January was being woefully out of practice at vocabulary recall at conversational speed, but I managed without too many problems--and I got better over the course of the month. I'm still puzzled where that slight British accent I apparently have to my French crept in, unless it's an artifact of years of enunciation training for speech team, theater, and choir.
Watertiger: "les hommes baisant" just means "men screwing" (baiser is colloquial for "fuck," but it's along the lines of "screw" in English, since it literally means "kiss"). And the French don't really use the gerund of foutre much, at least not in anything on French slang I've ever read or what I heard in the Métro and along the streets earlier this year. My best approximation, NTodd, would be a simple participle: foutu--which is among the more versatile bits of slang in French. Like "fucking" and cognates with us, it serves as virtually any part of speech, and in combinations with all sorts of other things.
Posted by: Michael | May 13, 2005 11:01:35 PM
I took some French, but can't remember, anymore. Never had a chance to use it.
Posted by: oldwhitelady | May 14, 2005 1:59:46 AM
OK, I'll bite. We have two kids, and we are raising them as best we may. "As best we may" does not typically include a capacity to introduce them to fricatives of other linguistic competencies. It doesn't even mean reading to them as often as we would like in very good English-language storybooks. Our failure in this regard owes to a need to work a lot so these children can be fed and appropriately attired. We get very, very tired our own selves.
Indeed, it is FUCKING HARD to rear kids in the US nowadays. And we're two PhDs who read to our kids and all that happy horseshit -- and if you have never read a stupid dinosaur book for the 900th time to a cranky 5-Year-Old, c'mon, merci!
Look, yeah, we should be doing better to teach other languages. But please. Have kids, and then realize that's like 15th on the "they should" list nowadays, in this nation.
Posted by: Thersites | May 14, 2005 2:04:03 AM
Thers - one would think that our schools would teach our kids the foreign languages.
For several years I attended a private school in Toledo, OH (same as Mustang Bobby). I started French in 3rd grade and took it until I switched back to the public school system in 7th. We didn't offer languages then, so it wasn't until my sophomore year that I took German (my folks sent me to a continuing ed class at the University of Toledo to fill the gap)--couldn't frosh year because it conflicted with English in the schedule. Those learning experiences really helped me with my Russian and actually my philosophy, as I was able to compare idioms and examine the influence of language on perception and reality.
English is the canonical form for business and pretty much everything else in the world today, for better or worse. But you can have such a richer communication with other people if you learn a bit about how they speak. Even if you don't become fluent. I found just trying to apply a little Italian in Italy and Spanish in Mexico made everything more fun for me, was courteous to our hosts, and actually got me much further than the arrogant Americans who refused to listen and learn.
Posted by: NTodd | May 14, 2005 10:50:56 AM
Part of the language ability is opening up the mind to accept other countries as equal to the GreatUnitedStatesofMerkica.
I think you could get foreign stories in English for your child to teach him a multi-cultural appreciation if there were no time to teach a foreign language.
It comes again to the idea of what a real education is able to give you. The less you know, the less you question, the more you will believe what you are told.
The neocons would very much like to uneducate the masses.
Posted by: ellroon | May 14, 2005 12:38:30 PM
I studied French all four years of HS and Russian the final two years as well, but I've never had an opportunity to use it (unless that trip to Paris 25 years later counts), so most of it's gone. I can still read the Cyrillic alphabet and pronounce it, but forget translation of same.
I was as fluent in Spanish as a kindergarten kid could be when we lived in Puerto Rico, but most of that was gone by the time I moved to Arizona.
It's like any other skill, I think; without use it atrophies badly.
Posted by: Linkmeister | May 14, 2005 7:56:12 PM
Thersites, you don't actually have to teach 'em foreign languages, though if you know one, you can babble to them in that language as well as in English. But the earlier they get started, the better. I remember having a teacher's aide (probably one of the myriads of education majors at the university here in town, doing her student teaching) in like first grade teaching us a little Spanish. And I had a chance to take a Russian "elective" when I was in sixth grade, but it was more like an after-school thing and wasn't very systematic. (But I do still know a few words of Russian.)
Let your kids watch foreign TV, or listen to foreign radio. Buy 'em a couple of foreign-language books; I know they're available, because I caught sight of a section devoted to just such items in the local Borders the other day, as I was killing time before my appointment to have my physical therapist work me over.
Posted by: Michael | May 14, 2005 10:39:58 PM
When the then Governor of Texas, "Ma" Ferguson was asked if she supported bilingual education she said, of course, "If the English language was good enough for Jesus Christ, it is good enough for the school children of Texas."
I wish I was kidding.
Posted by: Jaye | May 15, 2005 3:23:02 PM
Michael: молодец! It's too bad more young Americans don't have the opportunity to learn 'exotic' languages. Spanish and French have their uses, of course, but in terms of geopolitical strategery we should be teaching a LOT more Arabic and Farsi and Russian (which is useful throughout the FSU) and Chinese. (And NOT kicking linguists out of the Army when they admit they're gay, but that's neither here nor there...)
Posted by: vaara | May 16, 2005 11:51:30 AM
Buy me stuff off my 
