Category Archives: language

Reading, part I: Wonder

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BloomKatie, nine-years old, is reading her first novel, Bloom by Nicola Skinner. She reads it aloud to me, a chapter a night before she goes to bed. We’re almost 90 pages into this delightful 350-page book about a play-by-the-rules girl who finds a packet of magic seeds that turn her world upside down.

A few nights ago, Katie stopped reading mid-sentence and turned to me with a look of wonder and bliss on her face. ‘I can really see all the people and places’, she proclaimed. ‘Can you?’

I got a lump in my throat. You’ve got it, I thought to myself. You’ve cracked the joy of reading, words creating entire worlds in your imagination of people and lives and places.

She’s read before, of course, but short books that can be read in one sitting and that don’t involve the immersion of the imagination that comes with reading a lengthy novel. She’s invested in the world of this book far more than she’s been invested in any story she’d read before.

What particularly made me emotional about this epiphany of Katie’s the other night is that she’s long held this misconception that she’s ‘bad at reading’ or ‘not very good at reading’. These are her own descriptions of her reading ability and, try as I might to dispel them, they have persisted. It’s probably younger sister syndrome (if such a thing exists). Lily, who is only 17 months older than Katie, was an early reader, and by the time she was the age that Katie is now, she had read all but two of the Harry Potter novels, most of the Narnia series, as well as a huge number of Jacqueline Wilson books (more on all of this next week). Lily is a voracious reader with very particular tastes and has been reading beyond her age level (if such a thing exists, which I doubt) for a long time. Katie, by her own comparison, is ‘not very good at reading’.

My past attempts to instill confidence in Katie’s reading ability have fallen short. She simply wasn’t ready. Her frequent mistakes, her slow reading pace and her lack of understanding frustrated her and deterred her from wanting to read more.

But something about this book has flicked a switch. She bought it herself, for one thing, choosing it and paying for it with her own money at Easons when we were passing through Cavan town earlier in the summer. Reading it every night, she has become highly invested in the characters and in the place. She is the one dragging me to her bedroom each night so she can read the next chapter.

At first, she read slowly, stumbling over words and ignoring punctuation. But chapter-by-chapter, her reading speed has increased, her word recognition has improved remarkably, her ability to understand new words based on context or pre-existing knowledge of similar words has improved, and she now reads with correct intonation and timing (most of the time). Her confidence has grown in leaps and bounds. Listening to her read is a joy. Her joy in reading is a joy.

She’s now got a pile of books on her desk, stacked in order of what she wants to read next. If this carries on, we’re in for a cozy winter ahead filled with adventures of the imagination.

1491

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My Friday book review…on Saturday…..via 1491

Yo soy Manuel

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Last week I wrote about the joys of multilingualism and it would be remiss of me to not follow that up with some of the pitfalls of attempted bilingualism. Having lived in Spain since 2014, I feel true empathy for Manuel in Falty Towers. In fact, at times, I am Manuel. Learning another language opens one up to making all sorts of unfortunate mistakes. I have two particular favourites that I’ve heard from other people.Manuel

One is about a young woman from New Zealand who was the youngest and only female crew member of a yacht that was about to set sail across the Pacific from Peru. The young woman was given the task of provisioning the boat with enough beer for a crew of six or seven, for up to two months at sea. With her pockets bulging with cash, she went to the nearest supermarket and bought tray upon tray of cans of beer with a name that seemed, to her eyes, quite wild. She duly bought the beer, brought it back to the yacht and stowed it, in preparation for setting sail. It was only with 60 miles of ocean separating the yacht from the Peruvian coast, when the first cans of beer were cracked open, was it realized that she had bought sin-alcohol, or, in English, alcohol-free, beer. While the sailing may have been improved, the onboard atmosphere was not.

My other favourite story was told to me by a Welshman who lives on the opposite side of Andalucia. It’s very easy to mix up similar sounding words with dire consequences. This guy met his next-door neighbor one day and, instead of telling her he had been to visit her cuño (brother-in-law), he told her he’d been to visit her coño (pussy). Lucky for him, his neighbor has a good sense of humour, but he’s never lived it down and is reminded of it every time there is a neighbourhood get-together.

I’m not above making gaffes myself. I once went to a birthday party and mixed up the words regalo and regla. I arrived to the 3-year old’s birthday party with Lily and Katie, only to discover we’d left the present aboard Carina. As I sprinted down the hill I turned to the child’s mother and the three or four women she was chatting to. Instead of saying ‘I forgot the present’, I told them all ‘I forgot my period’.

My most recent major gaffe was one of misunderstanding and I sincerely hope the person I was talking to didn’t catch my gaffe. It happened about three months ago. We’d been having ongoing problems with our boiler. I’d phone the landlady, she’d phone her insurance company and they’d send a boiler repairman out. He’d fix the problem only for the boiler to stop working a few days later. This happened three or four times. During all of this, my landlady communicated with me via my next-door neighbor, who lives with her 97-year old mother and who happens to be my landlady’s cousin. It’s generally easier to communicate face-to-face in a second language than over the phone.

That morning we had the latest boiler breakdown and I phoned the landlady. I taught English that afternoon and came home, frazzled. My leg ached and I’d just had an awful hour with a bunch of 3-year olds. Lola kept sneezing out long viscous streams of disgusting snot that I had to wipe up. Irene asked to go to the toilet and when she didn’t return after 10 minutes I went to investigate. She’d done a poo but didn’t know how to wipe her bottom, so I had to do it for her. While I was busy wiping her arse all hell broke loose in the classroom. I didn’t sign up for this when I agreed to teach English to these kids.

When I arrived home, I went straight to the bedroom to change my clothes, as I always do at the end of the day. When I was half-dressed, I heard an insistent knock at the door. I hopped to the door (on my bad leg), half in-half out of my clothes. My friends and their giant puppy were standing at the door. I invited them in and said I just needed a minute to get dressed. They said they’d wait outside, on account of the dog. So, I returned to getting dressed. A moment later, there was another insistent knock on the door. ‘What do they want now?’ I wondered and opened the door again. My friends were still standing there, but they hadn’t knocked. Instead, it was a woman I recognized as someone who regularly visits my neighbor and her 97-year old mother. You’ll have to understand, I was quite wound up by now and probably in need of a strong cup of tea, so I didn’t quite take in everything the woman was saying to me. I caught the words ‘pain’, ‘doctor’, ‘4 o’clock tomorrow afternoon’. I put 2 and 2 together and came up with, erm, about three hundred and five.

With my friends and their giant puppy looking on, I put my hand on the woman’s shoulder and said, ‘I’m very sorry’. She looked at me strangely.

‘Is she in hospital or at home?’ I asked.

‘At home’, the woman said, and seemed very confused.

‘I’ll definitely be there tomorrow’, I said. ‘4 o’clock, right?’

Why was she looking at me so strangely?

‘Was she in much pain?’ I asked. ‘How’s Manoli?’ (for that is the name of my next-door neighbor).

By now the woman was looking at me so strangely, that I knew I had very seriously got the wrong end of the stick.

‘I’m sorry’, I said. ‘Can you explain all this to me again. I don’t understand’.

The woman then slowly and carefully explained that Manoli had a toothache and was in pain and didn’t want to leave the house. And she had asked this woman to convey to me that the boiler repairman would come at 4 o’clock the next afternoon.

Rather sheepishly, I thanked the woman for conveying the news. I sincerely hoped she didn’t catch my gaffe and couldn’t see the machinations of my brain as I considered what I would wear to the funeral at 4 o’clock the next day and what ingredients I had in the house to make a cake to bring around to the wake.

I really need to improve my Spanish.

Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies

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My Friday book review via Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies

Tower of Babel got a bad rap

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Those of us who live in predominantly monolingual English-speaking parts of the world are particularly poor when it comes to speaking other languages. We make excuses, such as ‘I don’t have an aptitude for languages’ or we convince ourselves that we can’t do it. The fact is, we have the luxury of speaking an international language, and that makes us lazy and scared. Our language is the majority language of North America, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the UK, and an official or minority language in large parts of Africa, India, Oceania and elsewhere. In addition, many northern Europeans speak English as a second language. And let us not forget the millions of indigenous peoples worldwide who have been forced to adopt English to the detriment of their own languages. From our privileged position, we English speakers tend to view monolingualism as normal. But it is a one-sided privilege. When we travel abroad, we expect others to communicate with us in our language, without realising that our dogged monolingualism necessitates others’ bilingualism.

Far from people having or not having an aptitude for languages, bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm. South Africa, for example, has 11 official languages and recognises 8 other regional languages. I have met South Africans who can fluently speak five or six languages and have a smattering of three or four more. This is common. Papua New Guinea has over 850 indigenous languages, many from unrelated language families, and yet, the majority of Papua New Guineans are multilingual. I have friends from mainland Europe who can easily converse in Swedish, Dutch, German, English and French.

We are all born with an innate ability to speak language, but the form that language takes is moulded by our culture. There is nothing in our DNA that makes us capable of only speaking one language. One of the driving forces behind our decision to settle in Sanlúcar was our desire to give our children the opportunity to learn a second language. When we moved here, I had a poor grasp of French, an even poorer grasp of Japanese and Irish, and a smattering of Inuktitut. Julian had a similar grasp of French, Spanish and German. Neither of us were in a position (as home-schoolers at the time) to instil in our children a solid grounding in any language other than English.

The opportunity to enrol the girls in a small rural school, where they would be immersed in Spanish (Andalucian) language and culture, was not one to turn down. The girls were five and six years old when they started school and they didn’t speak a word of Spanish. They’re eight and nine now, and are pretty much fluent. Lily is equally comfortable in either language, while Katie finds it easier to read and write in Spanish.

What I didn’t anticipate when we made the decision to enrol our children in school in a small Spanish village was how multilingualism would become the norm for them. We are not the only immigrants to this beautiful part of the world. Here on the Rio Guadiana, we have friends and acquaintances from Holland, Lithuania, Germany, France, Belgium and Japan. The river separates Spain and Portugal. I’ll never forget Lily’s birthday party last year, where eight little girls ate pizza and played on the beach and between them spoke Spanish, French, Dutch and English. Their waiter was Portuguese. My children are often in the homes of their Dutch, Lithuanian or Japanese friends, immersed in the language of those homes. It’s a wonderful thing.

I’m not expecting my daughters to become fluent Lithuanian or Japanese speakers any time soon. Rather, their immersion in those environments normalises multilingualism. They become used to and comfortable with being in spaces where their language does not dominate. They accept that people change languages depending on to whom they are speaking and the topic of conversation. They understand that, when someone is speaking a language they do not understand, they are not doing so in order to exclude. And they are learning that language expresses culture and some things are not easily translatable from one language to another.

Language is a powerful and beautiful human trait. And every language opens up a new window on the world. We made a good decision when we dropped anchor in this multilingual little corner of the world.