You had me at Привет! (part 2)

In college the bug was biting me again. As a history major, it was highly recommended that I take French. So I did deux sememstre or whatever. I did ok but not great. French I was good but French II was a nightmare. My final exam consisted of looking at a map and giving my professor directions to major Paris landmarks. I froze and could not remember left from right so I could not tell if I was on the left bank or right bank. I lost my way to the Louvre. This was all pretty surreal because I had actually been to Paris my junior year of high school, and got hopelessly lost much to the distress of my roommate. Ironically we were trying to get back from the Lourve to our hotel. It may give her little comfort now to know that I felt that the experience of being lost in a foreign country where I (at the time) did not speak the language terribly exciting. However history was repeating itself. I had become lost in Paris twice. I was done in by poor sense of direction.
At this point any discussion of language courses was purely academic. In graduate school I was thrust into Hebrew and Greek because I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to be a biblical scholar. I wanted to study ancient texts and discover the next Dead Sea scrolls. First semester of Hebrew I failed. And I had to wait until the following fall semester to relive the misery. I took it pass-fail. Not to put any more pressure on myself but my professor this time was the world’s pre-eminent scholar on the book of Jeremiah. I struggled; I studied for hours I color-coded my verb charts, which hung all over my small campus apartment. I knew however I was doomed when my professor very pastorally but very firmly said to me “Beth the problem you have here is that despite all evidence to the contrary you refuse to believe that there is a long “a” and a short “a” in Hebrew” I graciously took my “pass” and moved on. I knew biblical Greek would be tough but at least the letters were going in the right direction. I lasted two weeks dropping the course before the add/drop deadline. So ended my foray into biblical scholarship. As well for the time any dreams of working with any depth in another language. I ended up pursuing parish ministry.
I loved each of these languages for at least a time. In reflection I think it was those early moments of clarity in Spanish that glimmer like fairy dust in my head and I think, “I can do this.” All languages are meant to be conquered of course, but they have their own way of conquering and of seducing those who would crack open the cover of their textbooks or begin to write out flashcards. In the end, if I am honest, these were more than academic courses for me. These were relationships, and failed ones at that.
I married my high school sweetheart. I never was “on the market”, I never dated around. I have known rejections and disappointment but those were schoolgirl crushes. I broke one heart but never really had my heart broken. It was hard to understand this whole point of reference. I suppose I was lucky that I found that person so early or maybe this robbed me and maybe him also of some vital lessons about love and life. On the surface this story seems idyllic and fairy tale. I met my prince charming and we live happily ever after in the suburbs with 3 kids a mortgage and a dog. But we would be the first to admit that love is not a sprint but a marathon. We are as writer David Sedaris wrote “living the part of the movie no one would pay to see.” So the closest thing I have to a dating life is my relationships with the languages I have studied. This is the maybe the nerdiest thing I have ever written unless you also dear reader have loved, and perhaps lost, or maybe now struggle to win the love of a language.
I know Spanish, French, Biblical Hebrew and Greek want the best for me. Every once and again I run into them through mutual friends “Oh you are with Russian now how is that going?” “Yes Italian told me that you were with Russian now. Good luck with him, he is very complicated but you would be good for each other.” Then there is my one night stand with Latin. I know that Latin still holds a grudge and has cursed me. But I hear Latin when he drunk dials me late at night “Why him!” “He has a declension system too!” You couldn’t handle my declensions you think you can handle his! The letters are a mess” And Latin drives over to my house at a very inappropriate time for the night. I understand that he wakes up every morning facing the cold reality of his fallen empire. I understand there is really nothing worse than being told “You know he can really help you pass your SAT’s” but he really needs to know when to say when. I hear him outside my window late at night drunk and waling “O domina tue servea sunt parvae mea serva sunt magna- MAGNA!” Latin needs to get over it. The truth is I was never really that into him. In fact my mother set me up on that date. I was in high school at the time I did not know what I wanted.
In school you study a language because essentially you have to. It is a requirement for graduation and for college admission. That is the practical level. From teaching high school and observing my students as well as reflecting on my own time in foreign language study, as a student one can enjoy studying a language rarely does one fall in love with the language? I liked Spanish we had a good, I may have even been infatuated with French and for a time I thought Hebrew and Greek would form a more permanent relationship or even a partnership. But it is so different with Russian. I am obsessed with his language. I am drunk in love with his sounds, his music. I am ready to dive headlong into the curls and sounds and wrap myself in all Russian has to offer. It is the most beautiful and romantic language on the planet. The more I learn each new word and phrase propels me deeper in this mysterious language and world. I am determined to learn to speak beautiful Russian. Я хочу говорить красиво по-русски. I don’t want to become a scholar or change careers. I am looking for a deeper connection to a language, a people and a world that for most of my life was closed to me.
I am grown now I know what I want. I want the hard edged romance that French could never give me, Spanish and I knew it would never really work. Except for baseball we have so little in common. Greek and Hebrew were really just too old for me. They knew it and I knew it. We parted as friends we had to admit there was no real fire. But Russian, ah Russian I should not love him but I do with a tragic passion. It may in the end come down to a duel between Latin and Russian. I hope Russian in this duel fares better than Pushkin did.
But now Latin is having a laugh because he knows Russian and I are having difficulty in our relationship. We cannot understand each other. I am often confused and sad not understanding why I can’t make this language work in my brain. At this point the most I can do is point out cars and their color unless they are green. I cannot seem to make that word stick. My kids think I am losing my mind. I know I need some help. I need someone to explain this to me. Russian and I need couples counseling. He talks to his friends,Ukrainian and Belorussian “she is too soft”, “she is too weak” the other Slavic languages talk behind my back. Polish knows, we once had a blind date. He and Ukrainian have been snickering about that since Russian and I started dating.
I need to really reflect on if I am giving enough to this relationship. How much of a girlfriend am I really? I listen to his music, we go for long walks together. I spend time with him trying to understand him. I study him, his landscape. Every muscle and bone, every soft and vulnerable place. I pay attention to every sound he makes. I work to get it correct. I practice saying his name as my own. I can write my name in Russian, my full name. I see us as together forever. The more I learn the more I love. What does he give me? Is this one sided? I plead with him. “I love you with a passion. Give me one year, one more year and if it does not work then maybe it is best and we will go our separate ways.” And of course things change or begin to change. I know the dates; on March 17 and April 4, 2008 I begin to meet native speakers. June 2008 I start my class, I begin to really work at this relationship. Russian is impressed I am making an effort.
After a year of work I am standing in a bookstore and I see a woman I know our daughters played soccer together and are classmates. She is looking at the Russian reference books and grammars. It is the height of irony to me that in the language section of almost every bookstore Russian is on or near the bottom of the shelf. This is so typical of him. “You want me?- work to get to me.” She is contemplating various grammars and the even more ridiculous “Learn Russian in your Car 5 min a day” I am contemplating a title called “….The Real Russian Tolstoy Never Used” I was planning to surprise one Russian friend who thinks bad language is an important part of my education.( Upon reflection I put the book down. I am a rude speaker in English perhaps I need one language where I am polite and well spoken) She has that look in her eyes. I know it so well. The key to success is choosing the right book, software, and dictionary. My first impulse is to channel my inner Russian hockey player and body check her. Not out of jealousy, it’s for her own good. I am thinking of her mental well being. But I can see she is dating this language, or thinking of dating him. After a year now Russian has decided I can move in with him. I have my own set of keys and am packing my toothbrush.
In the year I have spent in formal Russian learning. And by formal I mean 20 weeks of classes and the spending the slide into June practicing, reading and writing in Russian and subjecting my Russian friends to some pretty inventive mangling of their native tongue. As proof history is repeating itself one friend said to me “Elizabeth it is two sounds; й and и do you hear the difference?” Some things have worked some have not. So what does he give to me? When I think about it Russian has given me something no degree or career has given me: courage! I remember when I conquered what I considered to be the first really difficult word in Russian. (находится- verb which means where is as in Где находится почта? Where is the post office? It is pronounced nakhoditsya) I walked around my house for days «Находится красная площадь? Находится церковь? Где находится школа?» To everyone else I sounded ridiculous but I felt powerful, really powerful. It was such a little thing such, really a little word. But I could say it and use it. I could ask where Red Square is! I would have no idea how to get there but I could ask. Russian makes me feel strong, competent and capable.
This is what love does. It makes you a better person. It makes you courageous and strong. It challenges you to be more than you are even if you don’t want to be more or especially if you don’t think you can be more. Passion is nice and necessary but it has to be sustained by something deeper. I never felt I was a strong person, I never felt I was a courageous person. But I am starting to become strong and courageous because of this language. So when he offered me the key to the apartment I took it. Will it be a marriage? I think we are not making any plans but we are committed and still very much in love.

You had me at Привет! (part 1)

With womankind, the less we love them,
The easier they become to charm,
The tighter we can stretch above them
Enticing nets to do them harm
- A.S. Pushkin, Evegeny Onegin

At the end of sixth grade we all had to take a test to see if we had what it took to study another language. This was in 1980. I had bad hair, was boy crazy and had no sense of style. I looked to others around me for identity and self-definition. I was not at a point in my life where I worried or cared about my grades. School was a big social adventure. It was a place to try to be a different person than I was at home. I always thought I was a braver more daring person at school. That was in my head but junior high school is an awkward time when the last thing you want to do is stand out and take a risk. The sad fact was I was growing up in a small town. The same town my mother had grown up in. the same town where other mothers and fathers had gown up. There was little room for creativity or bravery in a place where everyone assumed that they knew everything about you.
A good friend who is a guidance counselor believes that junior high school is more difficult than high school. I tend to agree. I am basing much of this on my own experience. But I am also keenly aware that junior high school for me was only the beginning of the most squandered and confusing time of my life. Looking back I now know that I wasted a lot of time and energy during that time doing nothing but spin my wheels. Teaching for almost 10 years has shown me that my life is not unlike those of some of my students. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to get kids focused. I am not sure if it helps them or hurts them. I have seen the highly focused ones burn out before senior year and the less focused kids turn out happy and well adjusted. Some of it is the kids and some of it is the parents. It is all a great struggle.
Having already stated that did not really care very much for school in general, this language test was different. There was no guarantee that I was going to get into a language class. I wanted to get into a language class. The test was devised like this. We sat in a room listening to a recoding of some gibberish language we had to answer a few questions based on what we thought was going on in the conversation. The “tape” also taught us a few “words” from this language. We then had to listen to determine if we could pick the new words out of the conversation. It was a very strange kind of test. If it was determined that you did not have the aptitude for a foreign language it was the first nail in the coffin for any hopes at a college education, although, I think few of us knew that at the time. I just knew not everyone was going to take a language and I did not want to be the only one of my friends not able to Habla espanol. So I concentrated very hard on the made my best effort. I don’t remember caring for a test that year more than this one.
I guess I passed. In seventh grade I began Spanish and so also began my very fickle and complicated relationships with language. My poor long-suffering Spanish teacher was Ms. Distefano. The first day of class she handed out our textbook. I still remember the book. Churros y Chocolate. I still remember the first day. Texts books full of fascinating new words and idea were handed out. We paged through seeing chapters on meeting people, food, culture and lists and lists of words. Then we were subjected to the ritual all language teachers live for. All language students must pick a name in the language they are speaking. If you are lucky you have an appropriate analog. Thankfully, my name is easily translated in any number of European languages. Almost every Western language has a version of Elizabeth. My friend Sheryl was not as lucky. And I really feel for all the Tiffany’s and Brooke’s out there that have to find something so exotic they do not even recognize when they are called on. So I became Isabel my friend Sheryl was stuck with Concha.
I remember a lot from that first year. Spanish was fun. Every week I had to make flash cards for all the new vocabulary. This spoke to my creative side. The cards had to have a picture to accompany the word. I spent whole evening’s carefully drawing pictorial representations for these new words. Every unit we had an oral presentation a small dialog, which we had to perform in front of the class. I still remember the first one.
Hola Juan
Hola Pepe Que tal?
Yo estoy bein y tu
Yo estoy muy bien.
With each dialog we became more involved in the fictional lives of Juan, Diego, Catalina, Maria, and Alonzo. We developed costumes, sub plots, background stories to help us get into character. One particular oral presentation finally explained to us what the heck a “churro” was. It is a like a Mexican donut, looks kind of like a cruller. Anyway Diego cannot sleep and get up in the middle of the night for “Churros y chocolate a la medianoche!” The back story for this was that Diego was a hopeless insomniac who never quite made the connection between his insomnia and the large amounts of sugar he was consuming in the middle of the night. My friend Kristin just thought he was on drugs.
One day Ms. Distafano showed us how to make fried bananas. That was truly cool. I had no idea you were even allowed to cook in school outside of Home Economics. We had drills at the beginning of each class. The alphabet, count to 20, count to 100 by 10’s, days of the week, months of the year, the date, the verb we learned yesterday. It was as closest to a cult as I ever got. And I loved it.
Eighth grade not so much. But eighth graders are not known for their really liking much of anything. It is a precursor to senior year of high school. In eighth grade you have reached to apogee of Middle school. You are the top dog and you really do not have to care about anything except the eighth grade class trip. (we went to New York for the day and could not visit the World Trade Center because someone was threatening to jump) and the eighth grade dance (it was semi formal my mother made my dress and as fate would have it my friend Corrine’s mother had made her the exact same dress) where you were hoping that boy you have been ogling over all year finally asked you out. But ultimately eighth grade can never live up to the hype. And it becomes just a huge zit infested slide into high school where you are once again on the bottom.
It was also the year Ms. Distefano was getting married and because of some rule about spouses working in the same school (this was New England after all) she moved up to the high school. I decided to take French or Latin anything but another year with Senorita Distefano, pardon, now Senora Filer. Now, she was not a bad teacher on the contrary she was really very good and if she ever reads this I hope she knows that I am truly sorry for all the crap I gave her. I would not be in this situation if I had horrible language teachers. It’s just that by 8th grade, Spanish was making me feel stupid. I blame the subjunctive tense.
And that is how it always happens; there is just one thing about a language that screws you up. One grammar issue that snatches you off the floor and body slams you into the rows and bounces you out of the ring. In Spanish it was the subjunctive tense. Looking back, I have no idea why this was so difficult. When I took French in college it was indirect pronouns. In Hebrew it was practically everything but specifically the Pu’al tense. I only lasted a week and a month in Greek and Latin respectively. But I know the issue there it haunts me now. Noun declensions.
I thought about French freshman year but the teacher was so distasteful to me and I knew we would have all manner of conflict I opted back into Spanish. Sophomore year my mom had talked me into a year of Latin, for the SAT’s. Again as I said I lasted a month. So, it was back to Spanish class. My grades were never that great but here’s the thing, I knew I was learning Spanish and leaning it well despite my bad attitude. I listened to Spanish language radio out of Springfield MA. I asked my father to pick up a copy of the Spanish newspaper for me. I began to dream in Spanish. I began to think in Spanish. My internal dialog was becoming bilingual. And then I had reached the end of my required time in foreign language land so I bailed. I was done. I think it was my frustration at never being able to prove in any meaningful way that I knew Spanish. In educational terms I “could not objectively demonstrate competence.” My spelling was always pretty bad, quizzes killed me, and tests I tended to blow off. I swore off language and all the promises of being truly bilingual. This was what I wanted to be able to fully communicate in another language. I still want this, but when I was young I thought it was easier to give up so I did.