Back to basics

LANGUAGES – BACK TO BASICS

It may not have been that long since I was in Monaco, but already my family’s making plans for our next holiday; this time in Italy. Although I’m not fully expected to learn Italian for it, I decided that it would be good for me to know some; hence I have started teaching myself Italian where I can.

It has all started with a CD and notebook-size phrasebook. In the first lesson I have learned all the absolute basics, like “buon giorno”, “grazie” and “per favore”, while most of the other lessons are just lists of individual words or very short phrases for given scenarios (at a hotel, in a restaurant, obtaining directions and that sort of thing).

But assuming I do learn it all (or near enough) rapidly as I believe I will, when will it be time to actually start reading material which will teach me aspects of the grammar – which would actually allow me to be creative in this new language? As far as I’m concerned, a good start in this respect would include the following: learning case and gender agreement, verb conjugation of the basic tenses, and how to form sentences which use subordinate clauses… I’m sure I could think of more if I spent more time on it.

As I already have several years of experience of learning foreign languages, I have all the more reason to be confident about mastering Italian rapidly. I was reminded of this when I read that “Good morning” is “Buon giorno” whereas “Good night” is “Buona notte” – with “buon” in the case of “giorno” but “buona” in the case of “notte”, “giorno” and “notte” simply must be of different genders, right? And the expression for “[I’m] OK” is “va bene” – with my knowledge of French, which is similar to Italian, I imagine that this would translate literally as “To go well”; I can see the “OK” element in that and I’m sure you can too. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some learners of Italian out there would be encouraged to think of this expression as a “wish well” phrase i.e. “Be well!”, like how English speakers say “Take care.”

One thing is for certain. From the word go there’s one major difference: when I was at school, studying French and German, the syllabus and the study materials I used were all decided for me; and I was confident enough, not least because it wouldn’t have mattered if I effectively pursued the studies with all the parochial, happy-go-lucky ignorance of Wil Cwac

Cwac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d9MbtM5mOs (of course, I realise that everyone has to start somewhere). And one may imagine the voice of a narrator with “The adventures of George the foreign languages student / translator”, as I study a foreign language, like thus: “It was a beautiful day, and George was turning to page fifteen of his grammar book to study the perfect tense of French. […] ‘It’s a good thing I learn the past participle forms of irregular verbs well,’ said George, ‘for it is these verbs that tend to be the most commonly used ones.’ And then he noticed that the modal verb in question number two…” But I can promise you that will all quickly fall apart as soon as things start getting complicated. Oh, and fun – and when this happens there is generally less of a feeling that – however determined and committed you may be – you’re just going through the motions with a dull demeanour to do what needs to be done to learn what you agree needs to be learned. In all honesty, this does happen to me in my job as a professional translator at times… but that only reminds me that I can’t wait until I start doing things like mastering LinkedIn proper.
At the time of writing this I am 31 years old and, for all my talent in foreign languages that many may indeed envy, I am only realising my own limitations more and more over time. But you know something? I think it’s better that way. Because, when you think about it, I could be more confident about acknowledging the things I remembered and the things I didn’t remember so well. The idea of becoming a genius without trying is one I find attractive… but at the end of the day I would only have that much less to be proud of and that much less to look forward to. What sort of life would that be like? But anything less than a genius isn’t always something to be ashamed of. Yes, it matters what I know. Yes, it matters what I can do. But, in a way, it’s also a question of who I really am. Maybe lack of passion IS debilitating me.

I remember something: when I was still job-hunting in my early twenties, years before I actually became a self-employed translator, I saw a picture in a recruitment agency’s office with this quote: “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Today I find it easy to view that as a poetic way of saying “Never be (too) satisfied / content”, as true as it is that I didn’t at the time.