One phrase at a time

I dislike our school’s language requirement for one simple reason: I dabble in languages. I don’t study them.

I’ve taken on many and conquered none beyond my mother tongue — let’s leave it at that.

It’s a totally useless skill, starting and stopping second languages and having no real training beyond a very basic conversation in present tense.

However, thanks to these experiences, I do know a lot about foreign language
instruction.

Foreign language instruction, in my experience, doesn’t teach you the important things required to function in any foreign country.

“Yes, thank you, the discotheque was pleasant,” is far less practical and pressing than “Kindly remove your hand from my thigh before I pepper spray you.”

I would argue the most efficient way to gain practical working knowledge of a foreign language is not to take four semesters of it in a college classroom but to learn it from the locals — or better yet, its young people.

Young people in any given country can educate you about functional language matters, including, but not limited to, all of the newest slang words for ‘penis’ and lots of cool, language-specific sexual metaphors for homosexuality.

For instance, a selection in Hebrew: sit on upside-down chairs, drive bikes without a seat, surprise owls, stir in coco.

I’ve tried my hand at almost half a dozen second languages, the vast majority of which I have not mastered beyond an even intermediate conversational level.

Most of the time, I can’t recall anything besides specific phrases I liked the sounds of at the time, all of which swirl in my head as static when I attempt to speak any language.

Given a couple drinks, I can speak any one of six languages to you, but likely, I’ll speak them all at once.

Any given sentence could be a mix of French, Hebrew, or Spanish, with a little bit of Japanese and Arabic thrown in there, too.

It’s always phrases that stick with me the longest: “My aunt’s pen is on the table,” “Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica,” “May I please go to the bathroom?”

If I were smart, I’d learn languages in phrases. They don’t do that in formal educational settings.

They give you a textbook, and you memorize a bunch of words, typically starting with a chapter on formal greetings illustrated by big cartoon pictures. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for me.

Case in point:  The whole of my first-semester language instruction in Israel consisted of this variety of rote memorization, and all I garnered from it was the question “Where is the grocery store?” and the accompanying reply “There.”

My second semester I was required to take an intensive Ulpan language instruction class, using an immersion approach, during which I learned more in the first two hours than I did in the entirety of the past semester.

By the end of the first day, I was reading and writing in a totally new alphabet, and by the end of the first week, I could hold a pretty solid conversation on any number of small talk topics.

When I mention to friends that I studied a given language at some point, inevitably they will introduce me to foreign acquaintances with something like, “This is Chloe. She speaks Japanese, too!” and before I can say anything to the contrary to defend my poor grammar and speaking ability or laugh off any misunderstandings, they’ll commence in their mother language. “Really?” they ask. “You understand Japanese?”
“Hai shikashi, watashi wa sukoshi dake hanasu.” (Yes, but I speak only a little
Japanese.)

They go on, asking questions and probing me for more, but I’ll predictably stop them and say, “No, really, that’s all I got.

That and ‘May I please go to my locker?’”

­— chkent@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Chloe Kent on Twitter @the_real_ck.