On learning languages (Part 1)
The ‘Falcon Crest’ factor, 'Gabo' and losing my way in Japan
An after-dinner sleep, dreaming on both
The realisation that I was well on my way to “cracking” Spanish came about half a day into a Wagner opera (‘Tristan und Isolde’, of course), on live relay from the Met. I was living in Tenerife, listening to the broadcast via Spanish radio. An intermission came; the Met’s continuity announcer had handed over to local stations and international partners. As I dozed in my Romantic reverie, I hadn’t noticed the handover. I was still following the talk, but the radio announcer had been talking in Spanish for several minutes. And I hadn’t realised.
I thought - this is it, I’ve cracked it! I’ve learned Spanish! Almost in my sleep!
I’d been in the country a bit under a year. Linguistically, I’d encountered some challenges, of course. For example, I never mastered the trilled “rr” sound in Spanish. I can manage the back of the throat sound in French, but my success at the front-of-the-mouth trill depended a lot on which word or word cluster the sound came in.
I adopted avoidance strategies. I went to extremes. “Ferro carril” (railway) seemed impossible, so I bought a car (before I realised that there are no trains on the island ...). “Perro” (dog) was really tricky, so I never got one (no, not even a hot one). I still don’t have a dog.
From incomprehensible plot to ‘comprehensible input’
But I was proud of my successes. I had virtuously obsessed over verb grammar and especially the subjunctive, which is essential to get right if you are to use Spanish well. And as a language teacher myself, I knew about the idea of “comprehensible input”, that is, the value of reading or listening to the language as often as possible. So I perused magazines. And, especially, I watched Spanish TV. In this way, I hit upon the perfect language-learning method.
my advice to anyone wanting to learn a foreign language - adopting the high inductive style of any true essayist - is to watch ‘Falcon Crest’ dubbed into that language on a regular basis.
In my early days in the Canaries, I used to eat lunch at my girlfriend's parents' flat. In a post-lunch torpor that sometimes became a full-fledged siesta (I was working mornings and evenings with a long break between), I would settle down and watch the CBS TV drama ‘Falcon Crest’ dubbed into Spanish. Yes, really.
And it worked.
If you are not familiar with the programme, here’s the theme tune to get you started:
Theme Song | Falcon Crest | Warner Archive
Great, right?
I’d never watched it before I went to Spain (or since). I have never actually heard the actors’ own voices. Not even that of Lorenzo Lamas, one of its stars (though I am glad to read that he has recently found happiness. I am sure any die-hard fans out there will update me if there’s more to say).
But anyway, this sublimely inane drama hit some post-prandial sweet spot in my brain and I got all of the comprehensible input I needed. The language began to flow through me. The banality of the plot didn’t seem to interfere with this. Perhaps it even helped.
So, my advice to anyone wanting to learn a foreign language - adopting the high inductive style of any true essayist - is to watch ‘Falcon Crest’ dubbed into that language on a regular basis. If it’s not available, it’s just possible that TV has produced similarly bland programmes since then which might work in the same way. I don’t know.
Finding a reason to learn
Why had I gone to Spain? I went there to live and work, to be closer to my girlfriend at that time. She was training to be an English teacher and had no desire, understandably, to lose the chance to practise English with me. So we never spoke in Spanish.
In any case, true to my Quixotic habit of being led in life by literature, my main goal in learning Spanish was to be able to read Gabriel García Márquez’s “Cien Años de Soledad”. I’d read it in Gregory Rabassa’s majestic English translation1 at university and it had simply blown me away. The rhythm of the writing, the scope of the novel, the creation of a rich, uncanny but somehow completely relatable world, all this left me astonished. I thought: I have to read it in Spanish. I want to live in the sound world of that book.
So I set out to learn the language. I should add that I never took any lessons, never had a Spanish teacher. And I reached a good level. And I went on to pass professional exams in the language, including a translation qualification. Gently ignoring my rather average results with French at school (I know: the lies we tell ourselves, the truths we elide...), I thought: “I’m good at language learning”. All this without a single lesson. In fact, I must be some kind of a linguistic genius, right?
Well, the rest of my language learning life - and it’s extensive - has been a slow, steady exercise in proving that to be completely, utterly wrong.
All languages are hard to learn
Now here is where some would say - well, Spanish is an easy language. Of course you succeeded at it and yet found others more difficult, because they're harder. Duh.
Well, I’m not fond of the notion of “easy” languages. They’re all hard to learn as an adult! Of course, depending on what you already know and the context and even the method of learning, some will be harder than others. And maybe there are particular points of difficulty for adult learners (e.g. tones in Chinese) but the hard versus easy language dichotomy is a bit facile in my view. For example, I have known plenty of non-native speakers of Spanish who never really cracked its codes. If it was so easy, couldn’t everyone do it?
I must be some kind of a linguistic genius, right?
Well, the rest of my language learning life - and it’s extensive - has been a slow, steady exercise in proving that to be completely, utterly wrong.
My fall from linguistic grace
In my experience, there’s nothing like a period of functional illiteracy to bring you down to earth and that's what happened to me.
So... A few years later I found myself in Japan. Of course, I didn’t just wake up one day to find myself blinking at the penetrating sunlight of summer in Kyoto. This is not a Kafkaesque story of transformation. I’d been offered a job there.
Anyway, the great language-learning genius (yes, that’s me) was eager to repeat his success in learning Spanish with Japanese. Ok, so the script is different, the grammar unlike English, French or Spanish. But how hard could it be? Surely I could do the same as I had in Spanish with Japanese in Kyoto?
Right? But...
First of all, I guess I hadn’t reckoned on the sheer visceral shock of being functionally illiterate, because that’s what I was in Kyoto. Nothing had prepared me for that. I was coming in completely cold, at short notice with no language preparation at all. I had a family and a demanding job. I was advised that I didn't “need” to know much Japanese (this was in a trivial sense right, but more broadly, totally wrong).
I got nowhere with the language. Literally (see below).
I quickly found myself reeling at the shock of it: this would take a lot of work. I’d underestimated the effort I’d put into Spanish, perhaps. But the time wasn’t there any more. The energy wasn’t there. And there was no Gabriel García Márquez and “Cien Años de Soledad”. Years later I would engage with some of the wonders of Japanese literature, but that’s for another time.
In those pre-Google Lens or Translate days, you’d found yourself dependent on the kindness of strangers and the indulgence of colleagues and friends. I felt like a child.
I bought a car. But how to deal with the road signs? Western alphabet was used on road signs in Kyoto, but not universally out in the countryside. So I would painstakingly memorise the characters for the name of the city or town I was trying to get to and the one I was then hoping to get back to, in case I got lost. But with my survival mindset, the elegant characters, so freighted with meaning, were just squiggles. I am by nature an “environmental learner”, yet there I was blundering around with my eyes closed (not, of course, while driving).
The eye-watering fare and the long walk home were tangible indicators of my failure.
How the hell do I say “turn left?”
The experience of catching a taxi home in those early days brought home my limitations (while not quite taking me home).
I had taught myself the somewhat crude formula of “Sugi migi desu” (‘it’s the next right’ - “migi” means ‘right’) so that I could guide the driver to take the correct turn from the main road to within easy walking distance of where I lived. That worked fine a couple of times.
But then, one evening, the driver took a different route and came from the opposite direction. Seeing my turn coming up, I was stumped. Finding the whole language learning process so painfully slow, and with a woeful lack of foresight, I had neglected to find a place in my overloaded brain for the word for “left” - “hidari”.
How could I get him to turn off at the right place?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t think. How could I be so stupid? In a cold fury with myself, I did what any grown-up man would do and started reciting as many swearwords as I could muster under my breath2. With this demonstration of my maturity and ability to keep calm in a crisis, I let the oblivious driver carry on for a couple of miles before I came to my senses and asked him to stop at a random crossing, uttering my feeble and chastened “koko desu” (“it’s here”), hoping he wouldn’t notice, as he drove away, that I was staring around me, visibly lost, miles from where I lived. The eye-watering fare and the long walk home were tangible indicators of my failure. I was embarrassed.
A year or so later, I would leave Japan linguistically chastened, humiliated even. At the worst moments, I thought, wow, I’m really crap at learning languages after all. Which hurt. At better times, I thought, what can I learn from this? What can I do better next time?
But would there be a next time?
Ok, I’ve gone on long enough. I’ll come back to what happened next in a later post. Thanks for staying with me this far!
I’d like to end with a big shout out to all those people who have written comments of support and encouragement since I started posting a couple of weeks ago. Thank you! Your kind words have meant a lot to me.
PS I read “Cien Años de Soledad” in Spanish after about 8 months in Spain. I was not disappointed - it was just wonderful. And that was just the beginning of my reading of his work, and that of other writers from the so-called “boom” of Latin American writing.
‘Gabo’ himself was said to have admired it
In partial mitigation of my linguistic ineptitude, I did some of this in Spanish. It’s a great language to swear in
Another great post Jeff. It made me reflect on some of my language learning successes and failures - plenty of both. Methods (or lack of), motivation, time (often a cop out I think), relative difficulties, teachers ( or not), and then there’s also age perhaps. Oh and long term retention - how’s your Spanish today. I look forward to part 2.
Looking forward to Part 2. I flew to Shanghai as an emergency to see my daughter who was pregnant and in a Chinese hospital. She had completely gone off Chinese food so, only hours after arriving from the UK, I went in search of a supermarket selling Western fare. Armed with only the address of the hospital on a piece of paper, the taxi dropped me off I know not where late in the evening. I had to ask 12 people before I found someone who spoke English and could direct me to the supermarket.