Learning a New Language Is a Heart-Opening Experience
Emphasis on the learning part
Every so often when I talk to a friend who has a similar upbringing to me, we get on the subject of race, ethnicity, and/or nationality, which leads us to agree on how lucky we were to go to a school or live in a society that was very harmoniously integrated. Having such a background made our intellectual and spiritual lives rich beyond imagination, and this gives us an advantage in interacting with other people.
Oh, your worldview is different from mine? OK, cool. Let’s move on.
Coming from a first-gen Caribbean-in-America background, I did and do have my own unique set of biases, but I can logic my way around them because all throughout my school years, I was used to talking to people who didn’t look like me. And not just talking, but also listening.
It puzzles me that people tend to lose their cool over someone else having a different demographic profile than themselves. A person can’t control where they were born, who their parents were, and where their grandparents decided to live. It’s the height of silliness to feel resentment toward someone for an act they had absolutely no part in.
Something that I like about language learners is that we are interested in other people. Different people! Their mystery is tempting! And the only way to decode this new culture is through their language!
And like any other form of mastering a new skill, breakthroughs usually come from unexpected sources. When was the last time you gasped, your eyes opening in a delightful realization?
How an English writer taught me how to speak Spanish better
If you haven’t read The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth, I suggest you pick it up. It’s a delightful read on the rhetorical devices used in notable pieces of the English language, from Shakespeare to Snoop Dogg.
In the chapter on assonance, he explains why repeating vowel sounds doesn’t quite work in our language.
Half the vowels in English aren’t what you thought they were. They’re schwas. A proper vowel is formed in a particular part of the mouth. So E is near the front, I is at the top, and Ooo is at the back. A schwa is formed in the middle. It sounds a bit like all the vowels, and is really none of them. It’s a lazy compromise between all the proper vowels, and we use it all the time. The word another may be spelt An-Oth-Er but you pronounce it uh-nuh-thuh…
(Of course, a posh mid-Atlantic American accent would sound the r at the end — uh-nuh-thur, whereas our Southern belle counterpart would take it off, and make that middle syllable as viscid as a drop of molasses on a balmy July morning.)
I had a think about this, and realized that one of the reasons why it was easier to physically speak French in comparison to Spanish was that some of its 1,393 vowel sounds were comfortable to my English-speaking face. Meanwhile, in Spanish, I felt self-conscious about sounding like a damn gringa.
Aaaaah! That cliched lightbulb moment hit me: I need to move my Spanish vowels to the front or back of my mouth. No more UHs!
If you need this help, too, check out my new phonology series on YouTube, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Don’t worry, you won’t be hearing my American accent leading these practices.
How a Mexican writer taught me the joys of rhetoric in English
So, since I read The Elements of Eloquence, that might lead you to assume I’ve gained an interest in learning how to write a little bit better.
On Domestika, I signed up for a class about creative writing that had original audio in Spanish, taught by Karen Villeda. English subtitles were available, but I decided to use this as a double-edged learning tool. Why not try my hand at creative writing in Spanish?
One of the resources she linked was the essay A Piece of Chalk by GK Chesterton. It’s possible every child in England read this essay at a young age, but this was an obscure reference for me. Nevertheless, a revelation.
One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen.
Beautiful. Just in this short excerpt, how many rhetorical devices could you pick out? Chiasmus? Isocolon? Litotes?
Perhaps it’s all Greek to you. But tackling that language will be for another Medium writer.
