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How to become an accidental linguist, in three strange lessons

Learning the local language is essential. However, one expat tells of the frustrations of studying French in Bahrain, Spanish in Argentina and German in Switzerland

I studied French in Bahrain, Spanish in Argentina and German in Switzerland. Can I say I can speak all three languages? Well yes, but unfortunately all of them, at the same time, in the same sentence.

It was not until 20 years after high school that a real necessity to speak French arose. When the Gulf war broke out I was living in Bahrain with my husband. Having experienced numerous weeks of trembling earth as Patriot missiles were launched and the US military crashed into various objects in Bahrain, we decided it was perhaps time we had a bolt hole closer to home.

While spending a pleasant holiday with friends in France we ended up looking at houses and on the last day of our holiday we fell in love with an old stone cottage. We rapidly needed to acquire a good French vocabulary in bathroom and kitchen renovation and menu reading.

Luckily, back in Bahrain there was a well-established branch of L'Alliance Française, where French citizens who wished to avoid military service could still show the braveness of their heart by teaching French to English people. Our teacher was Monsieur Petit, teacher extraordinaire and master of the art of colour co-ordinated clothing.

My husband's work then took us to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Before departure we were required to attend an intensive Spanish course in Salamanca, Spain. To supposedly assist our rapid assimilation into the Spanish language we were to be placed with a Spanish family. We had dreams of a crisp, white, bougainvillea-draped villa, shimmering on a sun-drenched hillside. Unfortunately, the family lived above a bar on one of the noisiest streets in Spain.

When the noise finally died down at around 4.30am, the refuse collectors started and they had obviously decided that if they were going to be awake at that time then so was everyone else. Our host suggested earplugs so that we could sleep – the vocabulary floating up from the street below wasn't the kind that would be useful in negotiation contracts or arranging visas in Argentina.

Being a beautiful university city, Salamanca attracts young people from all over the world – most of them party animals. But they still seemed to have no problem in hoovering up the verbos irregulars and spitting them out in perfectly formed sentences without a bat of a drowsy eyelid.

What was their secret? Their party animal lifestyle became quite infectious and we 'mature students' were soon joining in. That's how I discovered their secret – they spent the whole night talking to the locals!

But when we got to Argentina we discovered that the Spanish there was not quite the same as the Spanish we had been taught. In English we would say "llama'" in Spain they would say "eeyama", but in Argentina they would say "shama"! Fortunately assistance was at hand; the company arranged lessons for us with a fantastic teacher Vero.

A year later we were back in Spain, this time in Barcelona the capital of Catalonia where Catalan is spoken! Ah yes, it was only after my first lesson in "Spanish" that I discovered there was more than one language in Spain. What we usually refer to as Spanish is the lisping Castilian Spanish, but there is also Catalan, Galician, Asturian and Basque, all languages in their own right.

But most of the people in Barcelona also spoke Castilian and there was even a Castilian language school. So back to school again – where they tried to knock "that Argentine accent" out of my Castilian. Then just as I was finally gaining confidence in Spanish, we were moved to Switzerland where German, French, Italian or Romansh are spoken. I then discovered that the Swiss don't actually speak German; they speak Swiss German, a specialised dialect, which the Germans claim they don't understand.

I was advised to learn High German as it was would be more useful worldwide than Swiss German. My first teacher was a very large lady of Swiss Italian origin who held conversations from the balcony window of the class room with members of her family in the street below, in very loud Italian. Meanwhile we, her class, set about untangling the mysteries of the German language through the exciting activity of filling in gaps in hundreds of meaningless sentences.

I was about to give up, when along came Dagmar, a native German speaker who knew how to make learning fun. Her humour was electric and infectious; everyone in the school adored her. I started to speak German. She too remains a good friend to this day.

One of the greatest pleasures of language learning is getting to meet and talk with people from all over the world. This was especially true in Switzerland where many well-educated asylum-seekers find refuge.

But I'm taking a rest from language schools – no matter how good the school, I can guarantee that a very noisy building site or road works will appear within a few feet upon my arrival. If not there is sure to be a busy road nearby where small furry creatures meet their maker with a great screeching of tyres, followed by verbal abuse and wailing sirens – all a little distracting.

I'm now opting for what is called "total immersion". I've become a member of the local village choir, my husband and I are members of an Argentine Tango dance association and I attend weekly Tai Chi classes – all solidly French. I watch the French news and I chat with my French neighbours. It's good fun and it's much cheaper! I've never before stayed anywhere long enough to get to this stage – so I think that, at last, I'm home.

Author: Glynnis Burrough
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Publication date: 12th June 2009
 

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