Okay, so now I've got to buy Jo a new stressball, but it definitely helped. Boy, those things make a mess when you tear 'em to shreds …
Back to reality (or what passes for reality on the Small Glass one):
Japanese classes are still going great. Like an acid induced sitcom called "When Languages Attack".
If I'm tired and trying to speak another language, I tend to lapse mainly into Portuguese, but with bad French and German mixed in (especially after a drink or three). It makes sense to me, but is complete gibberish to anyone listening.
Lin does the same. Mayuko askes her something in Japanese and her brain answers in French with added Spanish. Add in a classroom containing two Greek Cypriots, a Chinese guy and an Irish girl and poor Mayuko's in for a tough couple of years.
Which brings me to a sudden and strange realisation: I cannot speak my native language; or more accurately, the language of the country in which I was born. Strange and sudden because, even though I must have known this all my life, it only really struck me yesterday.
Back in the fifties, dad was based in Cyprus, serving in the RAF on 'V' bombers (our nuclear deterrent). The RAF wives were based in Malta, and that's where I was born in November, 1958. We flew home to blighty when I was a kid and I've never been back.
There's nothing to go back for. The land where I was born no longer exists. According to friends, our flat in Marsa was probably demolished long ago, to make way for a tourist hotel. My birthplace, the David Bruce Military Hospital, is now a housing estate (I've seen it on Googlemap).
I check online this morning, and find that Maltese is an Arabic/Semitic language, and the only one written in the Roman alphabet. I wonder if I should find out more, but decide that learning Japanese is tricky enough for my wizened and crumbling brain.
It turns out that I only know one word in Maltese. All through my childhood, whenever any of us left the house, my mother would shout out "Sahha" in a sing-song voice.
Sahha … The only word I know in my native language is the word for "goodbye" …
How fucking sad is that?
6 comments:
It's stories like this that make me wish the US educational system took a different approach to learning languages other than English.
My father-in-law was Brazilian, and he said that Portugese was the equivalent of drunk Spanish. Good luck with the Japanese.
Thanks, Robyn.
Portuguese is beautiful. My office is in the middle of a Portuguese enclave. We have a Brazilian deli opposite, or I can sit in the sun outside Delicias de Portugal, just down the street, sipping a bica and munching on rissoes and natas, and listen to everyone around me speaking one of the world's most joyous languages.
It's a bugger to learn, though …
I know enough Spanish to not understand it, enough French to butcher it, a few of the words to "Stop in the Name of Love" in Portugese (from teaching ESL), and about five words in German. Makes me feel freakin' ignorant.
I think that your word is poetic and appropriate.
Pathetic admission time:
One reason for not learning any more is that it does sound kind of romantic.
"My birthplace is gone. I only know one word of my native tongue. The word for (sob) Goodbye …"
I can use it the next time I try (and fail) to get a date.
Yes, I am that shallow …
And thanks for filling my head with Motown. In Portuguese …
That pathetic line might actually work because it doesn't really matter what you say in Portugese--it's all beautiful and will make any girl swoon.
It won't work on the girls in the deli. They think my Portuguese is hilarious.
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