Language Learning Loser

I have had a strong lifetime interest in languages and trying to learn them, but have failed miserably. If I had another chance in life, I would choose linguistics as my profession. My earliest interest occurred around age 10-11, around the time that the innate gift of natural language learning by children has already passed.

I had a Berlitz French phrase book and tried to learn some French, without ever having actually heard the language spoken.

Par lay voo frawn say?

When our family moved from Arizona back up to the extreme Northern California coast, about halfway through my 8th grade year, I got my first chance to take an actual French class in school! My eagerness and excitement burst into humiliation and embarrassment as I spoke my Berlitz phrase book French in front of my new classmates who had already had 3 months of classes.

In high school I wanted to take language courses, but because of a math and science class emphasis, I only got to take one year of French.


However, my interest in electronics and ham radio allowed me an opportunity to hear all sorts of languages on my short wave radio. And I soon discovered alternative opportunities for learning languages. Radio Nederland had a “Dutch by Radio” course. Radio Sweden had a Swedish course. Radio Japan had “Let’s Learn Japanese”.

And they didn’t cost anything!

And ultimately I didn’t learn anything!

During my military service I had a number of chances to learn languages. While stationed in a small town in Spain I met a girl that shared the same age and birth date as me. I can attest to the language learning acceleration factor that occurs when romance enters the picture.

In Iceland I tried once again to learn the local language, but eventually abandoned it and really that marked the end of my language learning enthusiasm for about 5 years.

In college I found myself in the same situation as high school. I had to take all science classes for my degree in Computer Science. My General Study classes, as chosen by the Computer Science department and not me, did not include language courses.

However, I rekindled my interest in French and started listening to Radio France, and the Radio Canada french broadcasts, and started checking out books from the library and translating them.

I actually decided to extend my college days by an extra semester just so that I could take a course in German. A huge decision since I basically lived in poverty during my college years

German ended up as the only language that I managed to develop a modicum of fluency in. Jane and I lived there for a couple of years, and I have made numerous business trips there. I think german beer helped me finally get over the remnants of my 8th grade French class embarrassment.

But 10 years have passed since living in Germany and I have not gone back since then. I have about 100 video tapes of german TV that I recorded while there that I have started converting from the European PAL TV format into computer .mpg format. But as I do that, I realize I have forgotten most of what I had learned.

A few years ago Mushtaq managed to rekindle my interests in languages, initially with Arabic. Sufi mystics employ Arabic as their technical language in ways that english can’t support.

More recently Mushtaq steered me towards areas of language study that go way beyond mere translation from one language to another. Semantics, Semiotics, Sumer… and some other really interesting stuff…..