When I was ten years old, my brother Jamie came home from a year abroad. He was 21 then, and had studied French in Strasbourg, traveled through Europe, and even spent six weeks in East Africa.
At the time—1972—no one in my family had traveled much. Even my parents had rarely left San Diego. My brother's homecoming was a triumphant event.
I remember that he brought souvenirs—a mask, a knife and a small antelope sculpture. We sat in the living room as he told stories of his adventures.
Most striking for me that evening was Jamie's demonstration of Kiswahili phrases he had learned traveling in Kenya and Tanzania. His souvenirs were not only objects, but also sounds from Africa. The words he spoke were mysterious and seemed to contain a powerful magic—as though hearing them could transport me halfway around the world.
Jamie had a great talent for languages and went on to a Master's Degree in linguistics. He married a woman from Geneva and settled down in California. French was the family language, so when I visited I was immersed in a foreign world. On shelves next to his desk were books in all the languages he had studied—Spanish, French, German, Russian. The words inside, written by far-away people, contained a whiff of the magic I had first experienced years before.
Unfortunately, I have less talent for languages than my brother. Despite his positive influences, in High School I nearly failed my required Spanish classes. I resisted memorizing anything—vocabulary lists, grammar rules, sentence structures... Studying in school nearly killed my interest in foreign languages.
Jamie has an organized mind and a powerful memory. He once told me that the biggest challenge to learning a foreign language was remembering words. "The first 500," he said, "are the hardest." He loves knowing unusual words and remembering the details of their grammatical usage.
I, though, had to find my own approach. I hate lists, but foreign words interest me in a different way. They seem like a window into the minds of people who live in a different world. Foreign words become real enough to keep my interest as soon as I get to knowpeople who use them. Much of my language learning has been done abroad.
I agree that the first 500 foreign words are a big challenge. Yet beyond this test there is another barrier—or mystery—to learning foreign words. Even the simplest words in a foreign language can be impossible to translate. They hint at a different way of experiencing the world. I was shocked to learn, when studying basic Japanese, that different objects were counted using words that depended on shape: ippon, nihon; issatsu, nissatsu; ichiwa, niwa. How exotic!
And I remember not quite understanding the word nakama for perhaps a year when one day, at a home party with students, I somehow "got" it. I needed more than a dictionary—I needed to become part of an intimate circle of friends; to live the experience of nakama.
As I continue my struggle to learn vocabulary, it seems to me that the magic I felt in my living room so long ago has, in the end, really worked. In ways I never could have imagined in 1972, words have transported me to other worlds. |
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