After Carolyn of My Sydney Paris Life had commented the other day on one of my Estonia posts that it was "impressive" that I could speak some Russian, I got to thinking about this and replied back to her. However, as I'm so bad at replying to comments, I imagine most folks will not have seen my response, so I decided to amplify it and make it a post. Here goes . . .
Actually, it shouldn't be impressive at all that I can speak a "little"
Russian. I minored in Russian in college -- and for all the hours that
I spent in classrooms and with my homework, its rather pathetic that I
can *only* speak a little Russian. In fact, it was my disappointment
with my ability to hang on to any of that language, nor to gain much
more than tourist Hungarian, that made me set a goal of becoming fluent
in a language and set my sights on France. I was pleased when I arrived
here in France and could converse and communicate in French -- I
achieved my goal of fluidity -- but the longer Im here, the more I
realize that, while in an American's eyes I would be considered fluent
in French, in reality, I am far from attaining that level. Im still
trying to improve, but I will never really be there. But I am still
thankful every day that I have the chance to try to live in another
language and read and communicate in it -- it opens up a new world.
But no, it was precisely because I had studied languages in high school
at a basic level -- Spanish, German -- then at university at an intense
level (Russian) and then lived in a country without becoming conversant
(Hungary) that I finally said to myself this is enough!
My next goal, and one I dont spend enough time on these days because of
my attempts to improve my French, is learning Italian. And that is
really important, because that is family and culture that will be part
of my life for a long time!
I guess the first "foreign" language I learned was Scottish. When I was young, we moved to Scotland for my dad's job. My folks sent me to the local Scottish school (rather than the American one), and being so young and impressionable, I picked up the accent very easily. So much so that the rumor is that my mom used to have to translate my speech for my dad when he would return every two weeks from his job site out on the Orkney Islands. And imagine moving back to small-town Oklahoma with an accent like that!! I couldn't understand why no one could understand me; I was being perfectly clear, I thought. I do believe that this somehow triggered my love of international things and gave me sympathy for people who were the "other." Even in my small-town existence where I grew up going to the same school from which my dad, aunt, and cousins had graduated, with my grandparents and cousins right there with me, I had felt a little bit of what it was to be an outsider.
Too bad, we never recorded me with this accent, and I couldn't imitate it now if I tried! In fact, I find the Scottish accent as impenetrable as any other American would.
In my school, foreign languages were only offered in the high school. I was so excited to finally make it there and be able to enroll in -- ah, how can I have forgotten her name!! She was the delicate wife of the wrestling coach, and she was our only foreign language teacher, giving classes in both Spanish and French. Anyway, finally 9th grade came, and I had the choice of enrolling in Spanish or French. I would have loved to have taken French, but it just seemed so exotic and like I would have problems with pronunciation, so I signed up for Spanish. The other sad part was that our school only offered two years of instruction in each language, so after my sophomore year, I had taken all that was available. I loved the class and realize now that studying Spanish as my first language was probably a good idea -- your first time learning a language, you're not only learning the language itself, but learning also how to learn a language. And since Spanish is simple and related to so many of the other languages that are of interest to us that it makes a good start.
It's funny, but I was pleased that when I went to work for a couple of months in Madrid at our Embassy, somehow that little Spanish that had been buried in there all those years ago was still there to be found, and I could at least do what I needed to do -- tourist-level Spanish, I call it, but certainly better than having nothing! These days, though, the place where Spanish used to reside has been completely replaced by the (little) Italian I know -- when I was in Madrid last May I couldn't find a single Spanish word, it seemed, and one restaurant worker asked me if I was Italian (you know with my fair skin and blue eyes, I look VERY Italian!).
Now, here was an interesting case, the tale of my taking German in the last two years of high school. Recognizing that foreign-language opportunities were limited for students in small schools, some people in education in Oklahoma started thinking innovatively to try to redress this.
So in 1985, the Oklahoma State Department of Education and Oklahoma State University partnered to begin offering German (and Russian) by Satellite (German was by far the bigger program).
In this program, our schools were linked by satellite to OSU, where a German professor, Dr. Harry Wohlert, designed the course. We would be hooked up "live" twice a week to watch the professor in the studio teaching the school that had gone to Stillwater to participate in the class for that session. The other three days a week, we worked from the textbooks and worked on exercises on the computer (this is the first time, to my memory, that we used computers in school, and I am pretty sure that we were the only students other than the computer science students who were using them).
The director of the class in our own school was a science teacher-- the thought was that the teacher need not be a German or language teacher, just that he needed to be there to 'proctor' the class. Well, Mr. Jobes wanted us to do well, so he seemed to give us lots of extra help in the forms of answers and coaching. I can't remember exactly what he did, but I remember that three of us from our little class were chosen as among the top 15 students of the hundreds in the program. I don't think it was on our smarts alone!
I missed our first trip to OSU, as it fell during the time when I was in New Mexico for my grandmother's funeral. But our second year, I was able to go along, and it was so fascinating to meet with Dr. Wohlert and hear his story of escaping from Germany.
Pedagogically, this effort was a big failure, I'd say. We learned little to no German over the two years, which is a shame. But I have to salute those who conceived this effort and made it happen, because I think it was one of the first attempts to give the kids in small-town schools access to some of the courses that those in Tulsa or Oklahoma City could expect. And just the fact of having access to a real-live German German professor was eye-opening for us.
Funny, I found this link to a synopsis of a journal article that Dr. Wohlert wrote in 1991 on the program. In fact, it seems that a lot of people included this experiment in their discussions of distance learning.
Luckily, most of my travel in the German-speaking world has been in the company of my fabulous friend Kathryn, who has a master's in German and who long taught German at the university level. So, aside from a few trips to Vienna, I've usually had my personal translator/speaker-on-behalf of me accompanying me! (Of course that leads to terrible laziness on my part.)
Next up: Russian, Hungarian, French, Italian.
Stupid Customer Comments
This weekend's SCCs happened within the same five-minute span on Sunday afternoon. I don't know what was in the air at that moment!
At the central island on the main floor of the store, we have two cash registers next to each other. Sometimes people form one line and then go to whichever register is first available, and sometimes people line up in two queues, one behind each register. It's just one of those things that kind of changes depending on who's in the line.
So yesterday, I was checking out a customer (in the cash register since, not in the looking-over sense), and there was a man behind this customer. My colleague to my right also was helping a customer and had a lady behind that customer. This definitely seemed a time when there were two separate and equal register lines.
But my colleague finished with her transaction first, meaning she was available first, at which point the man LEAPT out of my line, snarling at the lady who was next in that line and moving forward to the desk that HE had been there first. She responded, gently, that she was next in that line, and he said, yes, but he'd been there before her, and he was the next in the overall line, and besides, there were no signs posted as to what the line rules were, and this place was disorganized that it was a disgrace, etc. etc.
The lady stepped back and let him have the space, figuring, apparently, that two minutes extra in line was not worth having a heart attack over from getting so het up arguing about who was "next."
I can't abide such nasty behavior, so in response to the fellow's complaints that we needed a better organizational system, I piped over, Well, sir most people don't have such a problem with it. Of course he snarled some more talking about how much better organized things were in England (I couldn't help responding, Oh yes, everything's soooo much better in England), then he came back with, well, this IS an English company, and I said yes, but the parent company back in the UK is barely even a bookstore any more, more of a stationery store, and he told me I didn't know what I was talking about and that he was going to send a letter to the general manager, and so forth and so on.
Whatever. Sometimes I feel that rather than laying there like a meek victim, I want to give a spirited response (of course that's exactly what all these Stupid Customer Comments posts are all about, my own amusement at my own wit!).
Immediately after, then, I had an older American couple at my cash register, who were buying a couple of newspapers, a children's pop-up book, and a couple of other items. We got to the part where I ask if they would like a bag and that if so, a bag is 5 centimes. This gentleman also starts snarling, saying what a scam it is that we're charging for bags and it's all for profit. I explain, for the one-millionth time, that any profit from the bags is donated to a charitable organization, whose logo is right there on the notice, and he literally tells me that I'm lying. Then he says, well, I believe you believe it, that that's what they told you, but I don't believe that's what the management is actually doing. That's all b*lls*t, he tells me, and tells me how he'd said once we started charging for bags (SEVEN MONTHS AGO now, mind you) that he was no longer going to patronize our establishment.
Meanwhile his wife is mumbling that they have this problem every weekend. So I am dying laughing. These people are *so* upset that about the bag deal that they threaten to take their coin elsewhere, to which I say, fine, do. But then they return EVERY SINGLE WEEK!!!!
Again, if the idea of paying five cents for a bag gives you such heartache, I'd suggest you follow the lead of hundreds of our other customers (not to mention myself in my own shopping), and bring along a nylon or canvas bag that you can pull out and use for your purchases. It's certainly not like it's a surprise that we're not going to give you a bag! And if you are going to continue coming and complaining, don't tell us EVERY SINGLE WEEK that you're never coming back!!! Go buy your newspapers somewhere else! Order your books off the internet! Go to another English-language shop! Oh wait, we're the only one open on Sundays, and we carry many more of the anglo world newspapers than most people - we are providing a service they CAN'T GET ELSEWHERE. (But let's face it, they could probably go to an international press kiosk on the Champs Elysées if they hate us so much because of our bags.)
It was funny though because the wife did turn to him once more and ask him (again) if he wanted a bag. He said, "Are we going to have to carry these in our ARMS?!"
Then, when we were finishing up the transaction, I took a deep breath and said that I would appreciate it in the future if when they came he would refrain from using profanity, that it was simply uncalled for, and that we don't deserve that.
The man literally turned to his wife and yelled in her ear, Is she speaking English????? (I have no idea what he thought I was speaking.) And the wife blanched and said yes, dear, she's upset at your language. He still didn't get it.
Actually I'm not so delicate that to hear the word "b.s." is going to scar me forever, but really, it's uncalled for. Basic manners say that you don't treat people like that, even if they're minions in a shop and you are old and rich and they are young-ish and earning less than 10 euros an hour to listen to your diatribes. It's just not necessary.
As they left the cash register, the lady seemed to stop and take a moment to explain to her husband what had just happened. I don't know if she was being sincere or not when she told me she was sorry (she could have been mocking me for being so 'delicate', but the look on her face certainly made me think she was mortified.
I will continue to campaign for good manners. Sorry that the two exhibiting such poor ones this weekend were a British and an American man. pffffffft to them I say!!!
Posted at 02:31 PM in Stupid Customer Comments | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)