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What does it mean to speak in another tongue, to think in it, to dream in it? Do those strange words comprehend a style and structure different from this one we know and share, when we speak English? Does a French femme see another world than we do, where even her colors and feelings are somewhat askew to ours, since they are clad in French names and nuances?
I have never been a French femme, not in this life. I have thought in French—long ago, when I was still fluent—and once I woke from dreaming in French, which delighted me no end. Except for those instants, I have always thought and dreamed in English. Or, when drunk enough, in gibberish.
I have studied eight languages; I will get to which, in a minute. It is wonderful and bountiful that I had these opportunities, indeed my life has been blessed in many respects, and in learning most of all. But I have also forgotten six and a half languages, down through my years. It is perhaps shameful of me, certainly neglectful and absent-minded. You see, I come from a family of linguists, but I am the dunce among us. Several of my siblings practice their many tongues daily in Duolingo. Two of them were language professors. Then there’s our prodigy, Todd, who earned a PhD in linguistics, and was Chomsky’s prize pupil. Whereas I only took one poli. sci. course from the great man, and he once ripped me to shreds in an argument. I asked Todd, “How many languages do you know?” He replied, “It’s hard to say what you mean by know—but I read books in twelve.” He used to allot each month to brushing up on one tongue. For instance, in February, he’d listen to Latin on cassettes while he commuted.
It’s just as well that I have a brother who is obviously smarter than me, or I’d be even more conceited than I already am.
How did I (partly) learn eight languages, even if they are mostly dusty memories now? My parents, who separated when I was eight, disagreed about many things. But they both loved learning, and worked together to raise brilliant kids. In my three English boarding schools I got, as we all did, six years of French and of Latin. As a precocious child, and then a scholar, I also chose to enroll in two years of German, and one each of Russian and Ancient Greek.
Across that same period, from age eight to eighteen, I lived in six countries. One was a year of blizzards and alienation, when my father in Buffalo demanded “a kid”, or he’d stop paying the alimony and child support he owed. But the other five were sunnier, in every sense: all over the south of England (London, Bristol, Brighton, Kentish towns and Cornish fishing villages), Scotland (Dumfries), France (Brittany and Perpignan), Italy (Florence, the most beautiful city I’ve lived in) and Portugal (the Algarve). It’s all a long and picaresque tale, which I shall regale you with some other night, across an oaken table with pints of ale. Bottom line is, Mom was crazy in the best possible way.
After two husbands, eight children, and years of living in suburban Cleveland Heights, Mom felt bored and trapped. She also suffered at the hands of my father, as we all did. So Mom divorced him, and moved with us three youngest (my elder siblings were all in college, or beyond), to Florence. We discovered many fresh joys—rather like leaving black and white Kansas behind, and getting dropped into technicolor Oz. All those red rooftops, Michelangelos in the piazzas, the smell of baking bread permeating the morning streets, and the best ice-cream of my young life.
“I speak Latin to God, Italian to my mistresses, French to my courtiers, and German to my horse.” ― Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
One European joy was, traveling on trains. In those days, the windows had a notice, in four languages, reflecting how those countries appealed to their citizens to keep their heads and hands inside the window of a fast-moving train. The French note said, Do Not Lean Out of Window; the English added Please; the German barked that leaning was Verboten, or Forbidden; the Italian, knowing all of the above would be blithely ignored by Italians (at least their children and menfolk), said that leaning out was Pericoloso, or Dangerous.
I believe learning languages expanded my mind, and added new hues to the world as I perceive it. That just feels like common sense to me. The more boldly we live, the more new skills we endeavor, the larger we become as individuals. It’s hard for me to discern which ingredients each particular tongue added to the stew that is my mind. Latin struck me as unlike the others: so regular and logical, like an elegantly designed machine. English is the opposite of that, a sprawling metropolis, all random with rough edges, devouring words from every other language in the world.
When I was a child, then a teenager, I had so much life around me to drink. I was a sponge, swimming in a sea swarming with nutrients, soaking it all up. I received an extraordinary education—but half my education was not in those fine schools, it was from all the places I lived in and changes I went through. That roller-coaster ride stretched me in every direction and, being so young and flexible, I had no sense of my boundaries, so I just embraced all the stretching. Allow me to illustrate with just one word, and how its meaning changed for me, across three years of childhood.
What is Milk?
When I was 7, in Cleveland Heights, Milk came in a nearly cube-shaped plastic gallon, homogenized to taste and look evenly smooth and white every time. Milk usually appeared magically in our refrigerator. But occasionally Mom would take me shopping with her, to a vast warehouse of a grocery, brightly lit, with long patterned aisles stuffed with fully stocked shelves.
When I was 8, in Florence, Milk was bought at the corner store, and came in a tetrahedron of wax-papery stuff. A liter, a half-liter? I can’t recall. You had to cut off the pyramid’s top corner extremely carefully, before you could pour the milk. Because Italian milk is born full of mischief, and wants nothing more than to thwart you, and spill everywhere but into your glass.
When I was 9, in north London, Milk came from a grocery store again—but English groceries, in the ’70s, were far smaller, dimmer, more crowded and less shiny and regular than the megastores I’d known in Ohio.
When I was 10, in Tunbridge Wells, Milk came in glass pint bottles, not homogenized but fresh. The cream sat in a thick layer on top of the skim, sealed under aluminium foil. This was delivered, bright and early, onto our doorstep. If we were tardy in rising, the birds would get there first. They’d peck through the foil, and drink all the cream off the top.
Milk was but one word, one atom of meaning in my ever-changing world. Hundreds of concepts evolved or skittered sideways like that, from year to year. Now I had outgrown Oz, I was tumbling through Wonderland. It’s a wonder I didn’t go mad (or did I?). I was unusually extrovert, and mostly enjoyed the wild ride of those years. I was so lucky, too, to be in boarding school all the while. My holidays were a continual kaleidoscope, but boarding schools are made of chiseled stone. They are as solid and regular as life comes. Between our family adventures, I kept returning to that settled routine, and my same friends from years before. Mom’s bright-burning love saved me too, and my brother and sister, tumbling beside me through Wonderland.
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If you’re feeling slightly blue now, because you only know English, here are a few curious morsels for you, from other languages: Books Go Boom! — 40 Words You Don't Yet Know
What languages have you studied, or picked up while traveling? What other countries have you lived in? Did this experience expand your world—and how?
We have no Bookchat lined up for next Wednesday, September 13th. So it’s yours for the taking! Who would like to write and host a Bookchat for next week?