Heard in the street:
"French sounds erotic, German pornographic."
Heard in the street:
"French sounds erotic, German pornographic."
When I was learning Finnish I was really wondering what were the contents of the conversations I heard in the street, whether they would be somehow more philosophical given what you always hear that Finland always scores highly in different international rankings, be they about corruption, education or technology development.
Imagine my surprise when I started to learn the language and realised that most of the street talk is at the same level as anywhere else: swearwords and gossip are the order of the day. Different language but human nature is still the same.
Looking for some related information I found this news article about the drive by the Mexico City government of teaching Náhuatl, the Aztec language, at local schools. In principle, I would think it actually is a good idea. At least in theory there should be no problem with the ability of pupils to learn another language besides English and Spanish (I mean, in some countries of Europe it is common to learn three or more languages in high school). In my case specifically, I find it rather sad that I can now more or less babble in up to eight languages, but I know only a few words of the languages my ancestors used.
However, as an engineer would say, the problem is implementation. We all know that in general Mexican education is not of the highest quality at the moment, and the addition of another subject would further complicate things. Furthermore, I'm rather suspicious of the political motivations behind this move, as it would seem to pander to that part of the population that would rather look inward than ride the wave of globalisation. Whereas I am absolutely for the preservation of indigenous languages, I don't think that precludes the mastering of other languages such as English or Spanish. Multilingualism is not a bad thing! I truly think that the more, the merrier.
To understand this joke, the following information may be necessary:
Uno de esos pequeños detalles que detesto es cuando alguien (generalmente españoles o del Cono Sur) escribe México con jota: Méjico, dada que tal es su pronunciación.
Aunque hasta hace poco la Real Academia de la Lengua Española aceptaba ambas grafías, en el 2005 por fin decidieron recomendar que se empezara a disminuir el uso de las grafías con jota (digo, ya era hora si el 25% de los hispanoparlantes en el mundo son mexicanos, con equis).
Lo que sí es impresentable es que hablando en español lo pronuncien como /ks/ o hablen de "Mexico City" cuando es la Ciudad de México.
Todo esto, porque en un evento de la Unión Europea se los comenté en un programa que tenían y por poco y ponen el grito en el cielo.
I guess some of my four readers (Catón dixit) may have heard that people in Spain tend to have very poor skills in languages other than English (and in the west of the country maybe French). Although I have some Spanish friends who do have a good command of the language, I guess this story shows that the reality is even more extreme than I thought:
So remember, learn some basic Spanish before you venture there.
Via Gwyn's Blog.
You may have heard before that for people of Asian origin it is very difficult to pronounce the letter "r", as they don't have that sound in their languages. This is not only an issue with Asian languages, as any student of French, Spanish or English will tell you, with the problems with nasal vowels, rolled r's or long o's.
One of the funniest examples I have found is with that beloved language of mine: Finnish. Letters such as c, d, b, f, g or z cause problems to Finnish speakers, as they don't come naturally in their language (which uses the stronger sounds of k,t, p, v, k, or s instead), even though they have other frontal vowel sounds written with the letters ä, ö, y and å that might easily perplex foreign students.
This is shown when a Finn is learning Spanish, for example. Even though the pronunciation of both languages in general is very similar, a Finn might end up singing "Pésame mucho" instead of "Bésame mucho" (roughly translated to "it weighs a lot" or "I'm so, so sorry" instead of "kiss me repeatedly"). Hilarity might ensue.
“Suomen puhuminen on vaikeaa, kun olet nähnyt maailmaa.”
-Kulta
I was chatting over messenger with a good Mexican friend of mine who is now living in the UK. She told me a couple of stories that dovetail nicely with my own that I’ve also posted in this blog.
She’s rather fair-skinned, with blue eyes and blond hair, so I asked her if people believed her when she said where was she from. She answered that usually they don’t, but the worst part was with her doctor, who for half an hour analysed her facial features until declaring that “I thought that all Mexicans were short, dark Native Americans”. The funniest part was that he was Pakistani himself.
In another instance, after arriving in Barcelona for spending the holidays she was asked to answer a survey. The interviewer started going through the survey in English and as she stutterd with a word my friend ask her to switch to Spanish. The interviewer then seemed rather taken aback, as she didn’t expect my friend to be a native Spanish speaker.
So, the lesson is that in Europe people think she’s from an English-speaking country, whereas in my case people think I’m Morrocan, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian, or even half-Thai half-Finn, but we’re both Mexican.
I think it’s time we all get rid of our stereotypes. They might be reference points, but they’re not very valid.
Los cuatro lectores (Catón dixit) de este blog desde el principio saben que soy un adicto a los idiomas. Sin embargo, últimamente me he sentido bastante falto de entusiasmo en mis clases y aprendizaje de francés (idioma en el cual leo bien, escribo a un nivel básico y hablo de manera fatal, aunque medio se me entiende). Después de un concienzudo análisis, me dí cuenta de que lo que no me gusta de mis clases de francés es la maestra.
Vayamos por partes (como diría Jack el destripador). Esta no es ni la primera ni la segunda ni la tercera vez que estoy estudiando una lengua que no es la materna, ni la primera vez que estoy estudiando dos idiomas al mismo tiempo (en orden cronológico he pasado por clases de inglés, alemán, italiano, finés, portugués y ahora francés y neerlandés, además de mi amado español mexicano chilango), y a lo largo de este tiempo me han tocado maestros malos, maestros buenos, maestros buena onda, maestros estrictos y maestros barcos entre otros, pero nunca me había tocado un maestro (maestra, en este caso) sarcástico.
Después de hacer el examen de colocación, me dijeron que me podía saltar el primer nivel (que dura un año) a lo que podríamos llamar Loditos II. Empecé con una maestra pero por cuestión de la maestría tuve que cambiar horario, con lo que me tocó la actual. Con ésta tal parece que no me congracié mucho dado que cuando nos preguntó en la clase cuál era nuestra experiencia con la lengua de Voltaire yo simplemente contesté “Ninguna, pero estoy leyendo De la guerra (von Clausewitz) en francés”, lo cual parece que no le cayó muy en gracia. De tal manera que cuando me toca leer algún texto o hablar sobre algún tema, no sólo me corrige (que a eso va uno, a que le enseñen y lo corrijan), sino que lo hace de una manera, digamos, poco profesional como (al haber cambiado el sexo de un sustantivo por error) “¿Qué? ¿Ya lo volviste transsexual?” o (en un examen oral, donde expliqué que estoy comprometido) “La única manera en la que vas a mejorar es consiguiéndote una novia francófona” (y uno nada más pensando “¿Y qué ______ te acabo de explicar?”).
Lo peor del caso es que creo que fuera de ese detallote es una maestra bastante buena y estoy seguro que he aprendido bastante, pero no la soporto, y la verdad es que ni ganas me dan de practicar mi francés fuera de clase, con lo cual no avanzo como quisiera. En realidad estoy muy desmotivado al respecto.
Lo bueno es que no hay mal que por bien no venga. Por razones de calendarización de la maestría, voy a tener que cambiar a otra clase otra vez, así que espero que me vaya mejor (si me pudieran mandar con la primera maestra que tenía sería excelente).