My son in law teaches French and Spanish in a large high school. He is very good at teaching languages and learning them.
When I talked to him this morning , he had just finished his German lesson. So every Sunday morning he has an hour of conversation in German. He is very fluent in German.
Then he told me that he had an hour learning Czech. This is a new one to me but I wasn't surprised. So I asked him a naive question. Does knowing German help in learning Czech? Oh no he said. Czech has nothing to do with German. Czech is an Indo European language
Then I started going through all the European languages to see the relationships. I had thought that all European languages were related. So there are Germanic languages such as Austria, Germany. There are a number if Indo European languages. There are the romance languages that come from Latin which would be France, Spain, Portugal, England. . There are Norse languages in northern Europe. I was surprised that Dutch is the closest language to English. And then I thought oh what about Hungarian. Hungarian is a northern language closer related to Northern languages. This one really surprised me.
What he told me makes perfect sense but I had just never bumped into the idea before.
I had to take French as a first year class. I tried to become fluent in French but I never got there. Today , I remember very little French.
So I wonder what he's going to teach me the next time I talk to him.
Well, whatever he teaches you, I hope you can understand the lesson!
ReplyDeleteI'll understand but forget it very quickly.
DeleteI took French all of the way through school, but I was never very good at it. This, of course, is a regret. I was going to make it a retirement project. I tried briefly, but my hearing is so poor that I have enough difficulty with my mother tongue.
ReplyDeleteGood hearing is mandatory if you're going to learn another language.
DeleteI read somewhere that we should endeavour to learn something new every day - so all I can say is 'keep it up'. As regards languages I was always very bad at French although I did it throughout High School. I now realise just how very badly it was taught. It was brought home to me the first time I went to Paris. I had left my watch in the hotel and was wandering about Montmatre and wondered if it was time I got back for lunch. I stopped a Frenchman and said, "Excuse moi, quelle heure est il, sil vous plait?" He looked blankly at me. An Englishman sitting on a nearby bench shouted, while pointing at his wristwatch, "Avez vous l'heure?" and the Frenchman smiled at me and held out the wrist with his watch on it! I firmly believe conversational teaching is the only way to go - writing it in exercise books for homework is a waste of time. This was certainly true of the Sikh children I taught in inner city school - straight in from the Punjab, little English - six months in the playground and they were speaking English like natives. I would be really interested to hear your son in law's views on the subject.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what his teaching strategy is but here it's oral.
DeleteI so admire someone with an affinity for languages. Amazing to me!
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't have an affinity for language. German was spoken in our home almost every day. If Dad had made an effort , we could have learned German.
DeleteFascinating to think about knowing so many languages and being fluent in them as well. I know some Spanish, but that's about it (other than English, of course).
ReplyDeletethe older I get, the more French I forget.
DeleteI learned Latin and French in high school and college. My oldest grandchild is learning German in high school and loves it!
ReplyDeleteI often wish I'd taken some Latin but in a one teacher high school that was not going to happen.
DeleteThat is so interesting about the relationship and history of languages. When I was in high school there were only two languages being taught, French and Spanish. I chose French and then took two years of it in college. All these years later I wish I had chosen Spanish. That's truly the second language here in California.
ReplyDeleteIn some areas of the US French is much more common.
DeleteInteresting. I was just glad that most European countries also taught English when we traveled there.
ReplyDeleteMost Europeans have some skill in English.
DeleteDutch closely related to English? In the Netherlands we think that German is closer to Dutch, it is much easier for us than English. English has a lot of French words. In the Netherlands we have to learn French, Englisch and German at school, because our neighbours do not speak Dutch haha.
ReplyDeleteWell, this is what my SIL told me. I thought that Dutch would be more related to German. We hear Dutch on the streets here.
DeleteI lived in Mexico for over 4 years but most of our friends and acquaintances there were American or Canadian;or Mexicans who spoke quite good English. Consequently my Spanish vocabulary was quite limited and is now confined to only a few words. We tried learning French at one point but gave it up after only a few classes. I remember saying that a sentence might have many characters but the French only pronounced a few of them!
ReplyDeleteI don't have the necessary hearing to learn another language.
DeleteFor what it's worth, I don't think English is a romance language, despite its Norman/French influences. I think it's classified as Germanic, from the Saxons. We don't have all the gendered articles that romance languages often use, for example.
ReplyDeleteI'm only repeating what I was told. English is a great mixture as it was conquered so many times by different people.
Delete(Then again, German has gendered articles, so maybe that has nothing to do with the classifications!)
ReplyDeletethat's above my head.
DeleteI had to take French when I was in high school. Never used the language. If you have to learn a new language, it should be one that you can use in your lifetime.
ReplyDeleteThe idea if taking some French is to learn about another culture.
DeleteI took three years of Latin in high school, mainly because the teacher was a good one:)
ReplyDeleteI wish I had been able to take Latin. However, it was not possible to take Latin in a one teacher high school.
DeleteI had an Italian teacher who explained European languages to me. I once told her I'd stopped and spoked in Italian to the men repairing the street (1961). She was horrified; they did not speak high Italian.
ReplyDeleteYour son in law is amazing! I minored in French then later studied Spanish. I can still keep English straight but the other two get muddled in my mind and I mix them up.
ReplyDeleteSo glad to hear it is all oral Red. Thank goodness times have changed in the seventy five years since i was at Grammar school.
ReplyDeleteI admire your son-in-law and many more like him who know different languages. I also learned something new today. This was very interesting, thanks Red!
ReplyDeletemy mother had a knack for languages too... when in her '50's she found a Russian who wanted to learn English... she wanted to learn Russian. They had French and German in common. By the time she was done she could read Tolstoy in Russian!! I didn't inherit the knack but my daughters did!
ReplyDeleteIf you pick up a second language it becomes easier to pick up more.
ReplyDeleteI took German in high school!
ReplyDelete