Native tongue

Next up NH. Then VT. Then RI. At the moment, I don't have any plans to travel anywhere that requires a flight, let alone speaking another language. For now, I'm staying local, with a few out-of-state forays. When I do head overseas again, my first trip is likely to be to Ireland, where my native tongue will suit me just fine. In my many trips there, I've run into plenty of folks who speak Irish (either natively or learned in school). But I've never run into anyone who didn't speak English. 

At one point, I attempted to learn a bit-een of the ol' Irish. 

Although I (usually) have a good ear for languages, I found Irish impenetrable. Even when I was in a pub in the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking part of Ireland), and locals were gabbing away in Irish, if I had just been plunked down there without knowing where I was, it wasn't clear to me that I'd have known that they were speaking Irish, and not some other unfathomable tongue. It should go without saying that Irish speakers found my attempts pretty impenetrable, too, so we were pretty much even. 

I was okay with please and thankful, but in Connemara, my attempt to order a piece of apple pie was met with this response: "I know you're trying to order something, darlin', but I don't know what it is."

In truth, I didn't really want apple pie. It was just that it was one of the few things that stuck with me from the tapes I had attempted to learn from. 

My one smattering-of-Irish "success" came later in the trip, in a cab in Dublin.

The driver was going on about how he hadn't learned Irish in school - it hadn't been taught back in his day - but that he'd recently decided to acquire his native tongue. There were so many wonderful Irish expressions, he told us. His favorite: Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin. Ah, I told him: There's no fireplace like your own fireplace.

How do you know that, he asked me.

Turns out, he had acquired his native tongue from the same tapes I was using in my pathetic attempts to go native.

Nevertheless, I persist. Whenever I travel to a foreign-language clime, I bring along a phrase book and manage to limp along with please-thankyou-good morning-good night-where-when-how much.

I can do a bit better than that in Spanish (2 years in junior high; one year in college), French (3 years high school), German (a few words acquired via osmosis from my native speaking mother, and a few more words picked up via the free language "learning" app DuoLingo). 

But the best I can do is present tense, kindergarten level vocabulary.

I can generally make myself understood, but I fall down completely when it comes to understanding. Unless I'm speaking with a non-native Spanish, French, or German speaker whose skills are as limited as mine.

But the thing is, there are an awful lot of places (c.f., much of Europe and, increasingly, the rest of the world) where you really don't have to know any language other than English. Where Esperanto failed, English - thanks to entertainment and commerce - has succeeded. 

So, like most Americans, I enjoy the fruits of English hegemony.

Looks like the Brits are doing the same. 

Aston university in Birmingham is closing the department that teaches languages and translation. The University of Sheffield stands accused of sending its language students on dumbed-down courses to save money. Fewer pupils at British schools are taking foreign-language exams (a drop in French, the most popular choice, accounts for most of the decline). A hasty analysis might see this trend as a nationalist, populist, post-Brexit mindset at work. But it has been gathering for a long time, not just in Britain but in America, and not just in the Brexit and Trump eras, but well before them...The most recent research in America by the Modern Language Association found a drop of 9.2% in enrolment in university-level foreign-languages courses between 2013 and 2016. (Source: The Economist)

It's not that non-native-English-speaking Europeans and others who've become fluent in English are morally or intellectually superior to us sluggards. They've needed to pick up English to get around. If you're Hungarian or Dutch or Finnish or whatever, it would be futile and foolish to expect to find your language spoken when you stepped toe out of your native land. 

Still, as The Economist argues, there are reasons for us English speakers to learn another language, even if we're never going to attain flawless fluency. Even if we're just going to stay at the "half-knowledge" level where you develop a vocabulary and some knowledge of grammar, where you can communicate with those at your minimal level, but really couldn't hold a deep conversation or easily read anything more complicated and meaningful than a menu. (This is the highest level I've ever achieved.)

But there are reasons to get smart in another language.

If you're ever going to move abroad, it would be helpful to be able to be able to make small talk with the baker or watch some TV. Even if you're just traveling someplace, people do tend to appreciate it when you make your (however feeble) attempts to speak their native tongue, rather than assume everyone speaks English. And these attempts are fun. I've always enjoyed doing it, anyway.

And learning a foreign language can just plain be its own reward. (Or so I told myself after taking 4 years of high school Latin.) Plus:

Researchers have even found that people make more rational decisions when speaking another language.

Does this mean that, if I'd been ordering in Romanian, I might not have purchased the pricey rowing machine I bought last October, and which still remains unused. The other day, I did move it into the place where I will be using it. Once I start using it. Maybe I should pick up a language course and listen to it while rowing...

At my age, it's about 99.9999% likely that I will never be fluent in any language other than my native tongue. 

But I do have a few trips left in me, so I'll be acquiring teensy-tiny bits of, say, Icelandic. Or Portuguese. Maybe even Japanese.

I may even brush up on my Irish. Dia dhuit. And, oh yeah, Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin.