language interference

The language intensive has begun. So the befuddlement of my brain begins; I have always had a very odd hitch in my foreign language skills, which I think might be the consequences of my days as an ESL student. Those days themselves were pretty hilarious in retrospect; I arrived in the US speaking no English, and I got placed in the ESL classroom with a bunch of Spanish speaking kids. It was confusing, to say the least. My Mandarin was more or less dormant in jr high and high school, when I took 5 years of Francais.

Nowadays, when searching for the right words, I often think in combinations of languages. So I have a mix of Mandarin-French floating in my head when I’m trying to think in a foreign language creating such spoken jumbles as : “mes parents zai4 la Chine, et wo4 suis zhong1guo4 ren2.”

Mandarin and French are very polite to each other inside my head, stepping in for each other where one is found wanting. What little Spanish Mr. P has taught me occasionally makes an appearance, although the quarters of Latin from college never surface (perhaps because Latin is never really spoken? My prof, at least, wasn’t so interested in teaching us to speak Latin). I am still subconsciously traumatized by the ridiculous conjugational (sp?) madness of Latin.

I love Chinese grammar, which is delightfully straightforward: “I go store. Tomorrow I go store.” No worries about plurals, tense, articles…at least, not to the same degree as English. Prepositions are also pretty easy. My mother, who learned English as an adult, constantly bemoans the complexity of English grammar; I wonder how she’d fare with Latin.

The intensive is going well. I really like the professor and particularly like the TA, who has an astonishing energy level. And I dreaded drill in college, but it’s rather fun now. I feel old and fogeyish as (I think) only grad student in the room aside from the TA, but no matter. I love the excitement of beginning language study…it’s so fun. The giddiness of learning another language is quite pleasurable.

I hope that French will fade a bit so that Mandarin can take center stage in my cerebral cortex. My mother has already decided that she will only speak to me in Chinese, so that will probably help, although I can understand perhaps 30% of what she says. Calling and visiting home will be an immersion experience of sorts.

I am very scattered today.

Xian4zai4 wo3men xue2xi4!

p.s. it’s been awhile since I’ve taken any language courses, so suggestions on how to approach it are welcome…flashcards?