As I have been rather busy with work,
application writing and travel planning I am short on both time and content so
this will just be a quick and light little thing that I have been thinking of
jotting down for a while.
When you arrive in a new country where
you know you will be living for some time, that speaks a language other than
your own, you expect that you will have to learn at least a little of this new
language. This was obviously a thought that crossed my mind when I decided to
spent over a year in the amazing shoe shaped country of Italy. Slowly, word by
word and phrase by phrase the language becomes more familiar to you. You begin
to notice the same word over and over, you look up the meaning and you’ve learnt
a new part of the language.
I have found that language learning
seems to always be labelled as easy or hard. This seems extremely limiting as
an explanation for the incredible journey of learning a new language. For me, the
best word (or rather two words) are amazingly interesting. And this has all
come from how and what I learnt from the lyrical language of Italian.
It was pretty soon after arriving in Italy
that I learnt that direct translation is a complete and total waste of time.
That you will just become so confused that you will never want to try again. I
actually remember the exact moment I realised this. I had sat down with one of
the children’s books, Il Mio Cucciolo.
I decided to learn the language I would just look every word I didn’t know up
in the dictionary and slowly I would be able to say eloquent phrases in no time
at all. That was until I translated the title.
The My Puppy.
Yeah, that didn’t quite seem right. Nevertheless
I persevered to the first page.
Questo e il mio
cucciolo, Ha le zampe morbide. Gli piace rotolarsi, grattarsi, saltare, e
quando abbaia fa… Bau Bau!
Which I translated to;
This is
the my puppy. Has the paws soft. The like rolling, scratching, to jump and when
bark ago… Bau Bau!
That was where I stopped. I mean,
seriously. WHAT?? Reading it back now is actually rather comical, as I can
easily translate it into a more understandable;
This is my puppy. He
has soft paws. He likes rolling, scratching, jumping, and when he barks he goes…
Woof Woof!
From this one story I began to see
certain characteristics in the Italian language. Like there obsession with
shoving one of their 6 versions of our word “THE” absolutely E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E. I mean really, is it
necessary to but THE before my puppy? I
also began to see their weird placement of adjectives. Excepting quantities, adjectives
always come after the noun so no longer is it a black cat, but a cat black.
Though at first these differences
frustrated me to the ends of the earth, I have started to appreciate them. Every
time I see a difference between Italian and English I keep thinking how amazing
it is that people, all over the world can say something so completely abstract
to the way in which you say it, yet the meaning the exact same thing. Once you
decided to learn your given language from its own roots, not from your native
language, the process becomes so much easier and ten time more beautiful.
The last thing I want to mention,
which I have found the most entertaining and least expected, are the difference
in sounds in a different language. I don’t mean as in the pronunciation on
vowels or words, but the things that aren’t really words at all, but rather expressions
that you would never even think to have a translation for.
I am sure every English speaking
person has seen the YouTube video Charlie Bit My Finger. In here is a lovely example
of what an English child does when they are hurt.
OUCH!!!
However, if Charlie had bit the
finger of an Italian child you would instead be hearing;
IIIIIIII-AAAHHH!!!
Another fantastic sound that I now
cannot help but using ALL the time is the beautiful “BOH”. Which translation is
I don’t know? It’s like a shrug, but oh-so much more satisfactory!
Now, some of you may have noticed
that in my children’s story extract above I did not translate Bau Bau until my
last translation. That was because it did not appear in my dictionary or in
Google Translate at the time. Why? Because it is not a word! In English a dogs
goes Woof Woof, but in Italian, I later found out, it goes Bau Bau! Another
example is that while in English a rooster wakes you up with a Cock-a-doodle-doo
an Italian rooster starts the day with Key-key-ree-key.
So there you have it. For anyone who thought
language learning could be summarised into either easy or hard, I have just
given you 750 words why that is just simply not true!
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