I’ve moved on to the next level of Russian language classes at work. We again were given a textbook, but now we have to return it at the end of the three-month course. This means I can’t write in it! For a language class where I make a habit out of writing notes in the margins, this is frustrating. But as I gazed at the cover, I realized the book looked VERY familiar. I did some digging around last night and within 5 minutes, I found a huge stack of materials from the Russian classes I took at both NASA and Georgia Tech back in 1998 and 1999 — including the same textbook we’re using now. Hooray! (I’ve gotten rid of a bunch of my textbooks, but I had a feeling I’d kept the Russian stuff. It’s never a bad idea to have language reference books.)
I took 4 years of French in high school. I had a wonderful French teacher my freshman year, but he got very ill and had to stop teaching. My sophomore year was filled with a succession of temporary teachers as they searched for a replacement. That replacement, who taught my junior and senior years, was decent but lazy. We watched a lot of movies dubbed from English into French on days when I guess she didn’t feel like teaching. (You know how crazy the genie is in Disney’s Aladdin? Try listening to Robin Williams translated into French. Yeah.) In retrospect, those four years of high school French were probably equivalent to 2-3 years anywhere else, and the fact that I managed to get an average score on the IB exam is kind of amazing. Fifteen years later, I still remember a lot of the vocabulary, even if my speaking skills have taken a nose dive.
I had some rudimentary Spanish in elementary school and took a lunchtime class at UHCL many years ago, but my Spanish is surprisingly good for that small amount of formal education. Living in Houston certainly means that I see Spanish around town on billboards and signs, so I guess I’ve just picked it up here and there. I don’t know anything about grammar or conjugation, but I can usually get the gist of simple sentences just from the vocabulary and context.
And Russian, of course — I had forgotten a lot over the past 10 years, but as I sit in class it’s surprising to see what pops into my head that I’d forgotten but now remember.
I’ve always thought of myself as a mediocre language student, but as I flipped through the decade-old Russian notebooks I decided that perhaps I’m not so bad after all. There were tons of things in there I’d written that I can’t even translate now, and I impressed myself to look back and see how far I’d gotten. It dawned on me that maybe I’m not actually that bad at languages. Maybe it’s just that I don’t have anywhere to USE them on a regular basis. If I’m not speaking the language at least a little every day, of course I’ll forget it! It seems that People learning English have a definite advantage in finding reading material and people to practice speaking with, since English is so widely spoken and American pop culture is so pervasive.
But maybe, just maybe…I’ve got some skills after all!
leet skillz!