Back to Languages

Last night's Italian class was so great, I decided to pull up my socks and go back to proper language study. This morning I made my coffee and studied Italian for half and hour and then Polish for half an hour. I then wrote a note to my writing students and included it in the cardboard envelope of marking.  I was going to do 20 minutes on the exercise bike, but the laundry needed hanging out.

Then I went to work.

Benedict Ambrose told me some years ago that if I had stuck to Italian and Italian alone, I would have been fluent in it already. This is very likely true. One of the positive benefits of not studying Polish for two months is that when I speak to my Italian tutor, Polish no longer intrudes. However, I am determined to become trilingual (at very least), so what can I do?

At this point I would be willing to study Polish in a different room from the one I speak Italian in, wear different clothes, learn entirely different sets of words (winter words for Poland, summer words for Italy; ecclesiastical political terminology in Italian, secular political terminology in Polish, etc.). Anything to stop Polish from getting in the way of Italian, and Italian from getting in the way of Polish.

Meanwhile, I feel energised by my two month break from Polish and extra Italian study, and I think I will even work on my Italian accent.

Gardening News: My Burgeon and Ball Folding Pruning Saw arrived today. To the best of my knowledge, it was made in Sheffield. I am now going outside to saw some dead apple branches.

Joy of Summer

I used to wonder why June 21, the first day of summer,  was called "midsummer," but now that I live in the UK, I know.

Summer in the UK begins when the rain stops and the sun actually feels warm, and this year that was today. I had a very splendid day, too. I used to love autumn best, but now that I live in the UK, my allegiances have switched to early summer, i.e. May. 

This morning I did an hour of Polish study, and then I dragged myself outdoors to the back garden and did two hours of weeding between the paving stones in the lovely sun. Then I hung out a load of laundry, and had some rosół (Polish chicken soup) left over from the dinner party we had last night. It turned out beautifully, so no more stock cubes for me ever. 

Then I did some more laundry and wrote three articles. It was launder, hang, write, fetch and fold, launder, hang, write, fetch and fold all day. Then B.A. made chicken croquettes, so I stopped working to eat. And then a Polish pal came with his mother to borrow a piano, and I rushed for the homemade black currant vodka, squeaking Czy macie ochotę na czarną porzaczkę? before our Polish pal had time to warn his mother about me and my linguistic obsession.

In my sitting room, where twice a week I harangue my Polish tutor po polsku, I am rather better at Polish than at church, so I did much better chatting with our Polish pal's bewildered mother than I usually do chatting with our Polish pal. So that was extremely awesome and rather put a crown on our first summer day. 

The denouement was sitting outside with B.A. screened by beech hedges as we pondered my handiwork, the telephone wires and the currently naked trellis against the shed and drank white wine. By the way, the apple blossoms have mostly blown away, but the roses (pink and white) have begun to bloom.

Tomorrow I will do an anti-dandelion search-and-destroy mission before I go to Barre class.  Yes, I do love summer.

Methods of Healing Sorrow 1

Italian class. Discovering again how beautiful the language is.  Noting that I usually remember the "irregular" stresses without having to think about it. Bouncing my sorrows off my Italian tutor, since he asks how I am. Telling nothing but the direct truth because it's easiest. Remembering being 18 and confronting the passato remoto for the first time.

Upping my gra

I have been terribly lazy about improving my Polish skills since the end of July. Maybe reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader in Polish does not strike you as lazy, but reading is my strongest language skill. My absolute weakest--even weaker than speaking--is listening. Essentially I've been treading linguistic water instead of practising my crawl.

So this morning while preparing an apple crumble for tonight, I listened to Lesson One from Real Polish, and it is at a perfect level for someone who has studied Polish grammar for some time but has slacked off on the listening and speaking. The lesson consisted of the teacher reading a simple story from a third-person perspective, and then from a first-person perspective, and finally asking questions about the story. Believe it or not, I still could not get all the words because I have not yet read the transcript.

Along with "Save half of everything you ever make", "Don't wreck your listening skills by zoning out in class" is among my top tips for children.

It came as a relief that I could understand most of the first ten minutes of Piotr's September 1 update without reading the transcript. One of the worst things about the first few years of night school Polish class was feeling like my ears were plugged. There was one beautiful evening when I returned to class after a trip to Poland and for the first time ever my teacher sounded as clear as a chime tinkling in the breeze. Sadly, that wore off as the weeks wore on.

In the end I had to quit night school because I am on duty until 7 or 8 at night. Eventually I got a tutor, and she was a great help until Mr Mortgage demanded our disposable income. Until June my primary goal was to be able to speak Polish to guests at Polish Pretend Son's wedding. (I did not actually do this very much, as most of the people I met at PPS's wedding were fluent in English: instead I spoke Polish to ticket sellers, shopkeepers, cab drivers, servers, and hotel staff.)

I also have a goal--more of an attainable dream, really--of speaking Polish so well I can interview a Polish bishop without difficulty. Perhaps I should sit down with Polish Pretend Son and come up with a workable plan. Although not a professional linguist, PPS is finishing an English-language PhD in  Philosophy and I'd like to know how he developed the specialist terminology to do that.

What language-learning tips do you have?

Mantra against Misfortune

I have a new technique against useless retrospection. Every time I begin a thought with "Oh, if only..." or "I wish I had...", I say, "What can I do today to make tomorrow better?" 

This mantra popped into my head--very possibly at Mass---when B.A. and I were living in the New Town this summer. At a certain point after the Deluge drove us from our happy home in the Historical Flat, I began to say such mournful things as "What terrible decisions have I made in my life that have led up to this moment?" 

This was nonsense, of course, as neither of us made decisions that led to the sudden malfunction of the HH's fire extinguishing system. Neither of us was responsible, either, for poor B.A.'s brain tumour deciding to grow again. And neither of us was responsible for the delay in taking possession of our flat, which was caused by some shoddy map-making at some registry office, plus a crack in the concrete around the [redundant] chimney.

As a matter of fact, our life decisions had left us well-off, not only because we had kindly friends with a kindly tenant who allowed us to rent a room, but because we had been working and saving against the evil day we would have to leave the Historical House. So in reality we had made excellent decisions that led up to the joyful moment in August went B.A. took possession of our new home. 

This mantra "What can I do today to make tomorrow better?"is a good dispeller of gloomy thoughts, I have found, especially as making tomorrow better includes digging a few dandelions out of the lawn. It occurred to me this morning that I may never finish digging dandelions out of the lawn, as they keep coming back, but that does not mean I should give up. (Giving up would lead to a brutal dandelion occupation.) The victory is in digging up the dandelions as long as I have breath and strength---which is also true of the struggle against sin. 

Gardening is a very theological activity. 

After reading a simple but persuasive book called Eat, Move Sleep by a pop scientist named Tom Rath, I decided that another thing I could do to make tomorrow better was to start running for 30 minutes a day. Despite my athletic years (ages 25-36), this was a very radical decision--especially as this running will be outdoors instead of in a comfortable gym. 

However, for over a year I have been sitting down for over 8 hours a day,  I have gained a lot of weight, and I have arms that ache from too much typing. It seemed to me that I had better take up cardiovascular exercise NOW, or I will be very sorry SOON.

So this morning I got up at 6:50 AM and ran along the river and back for what turned out to be 24 minutes, and it didn't kill me. Eat, Move, Sleep promises (as have other books I've read) that cardiovascular activity improves learning, too. so that will be useful for my Polish. 

Who are you? Who are you really?

Much of the misery of peacetime life in the West can be attributed to people not knowing who they truly are.  We live in a state of ignorance or plain denial about ourselves and make arrangements based not on who we are and what we are likely to do but on who we wish we were and what we like to think we would do. A non-controversial example is featured in the home decoration book Mad about the House, which suggests you not set up your sitting-room as a place for conversation when  you really will use it to watch television while eating popcorn.

A priest once mentioned, with despair, that people do not confess their REAL sins. He lived in a religious community, so I wonder if his brothers went to confession to him and neglected to mention their obvious-to-him faults, like hogging all the granola or intentionally needling Father So-and-so into paroxysms of rage.  This was not, by the way, a model priest, but I thought that this was a very useful insight. It's why we need spiritual directors, or at very least honest friends and family who will give it to us straight.  

Thinking about who you really are should not take more than five to ten minutes of your day, ideally before bed when doing an examination of conscience. However the thought occurred to me while walking to the town library with a burlap shopping bag. It is very sunny today, and I was feeling cheerful and kind to humanity----unlike yesterday when it was dark and rainy, and I was feeling grouchy and misanthropic. It is pathetic to be so influenced by the weather. Am I really a happy person or am I a sourpuss? Am I really a rational soul independent of my environment, or am I a walking rock plant? 

A much more frequent thought should be "What do I really want?"--especially before buying or eating something. I am currently contemplating a trip to Rome--during which I will be working but B.A. will be free to look at churches--and roundtrip airfare for two is, at minimum, £250. Thus, I am thinking "What do I REALLY want?" and what it is, is for B.A. not to look so tired and ill and so occupied by trivialities.  

Thinking about What Else really is should take more than five to ten minutes of your day. Because I am now a reporter, I have to think about it for at least eight hours, five days a week, e.g. What did Raymond Arroyo REALLY say, and have I transcribed it correctly?" I wish I had thought more about What Else really is when I was a teenager contemplating how I was going to live my adult life, but that's too late now.  All I can do is determine reality NOW and to work at being more rooted in reality, minute by minute, day by day. 

At theology school, a professor of Christian ethics said that the question we should ask ourselves while making moral decisions is "Who am I becoming?" I think this is an excellent partner question for "Who am I REALLY?" because it underscores we have a choice in the matter. 

Who I am REALLY now, for example, is a woman who has studied Italian on and off since she was fourteen, and agreed to write a polite letter in Italian to a VIP. 

I am not fluent in Italian, and I haven't had a proper conversation in Italian since B.A.'s sick pay ran out and I said good-bye to my tutor (long story), but I know I can cobble together a letter in Italian,  as I have done so many times before, and so I will do it. At my very best, I will appear like a foreigner who first learned Italian in the 1980s--and that will do.

Who I am BECOMING is a woman with an excellent grasp of what it means to function in foreign languages, thanks to reading and almost-daily practise with a very complicated foreign language. Happily, this also means becoming a woman with authentic humility--self-knowlege that is rooted in reality: I am neither "good at" nor "bad at" languages because non-immersion language acquisition is usually based not in talent but in psychological training.