any suggestions for foreign language?

mathmom
Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:34:50 +0000

It is ridiculous, ridiculous, to talk of “not liking” a language. Languages don’t have inherent moral or aesthetic qualities.



It should be ridiculous, but it doesn’t really explain why the first day I sat in German class I felt like I had come home, whereas French always seemed like a jacket that was too tight in the shoulders. Some rational explainations for why this might be… American speakers have lazy muscles and some of the sounds required by one language may be harder for us to learn to produce. Grammars really are different - perhaps one with more rules and fewer exceptions may please a person’s inner aethetic sense. (As I recall Swahili has different plural endings depending on the number of legs an object has.) Countries do have certain national characters - you might enjoy watching Truffaut films over Eisenstein, reading Proust over Thomas Mann.

Another vote here for looking for good teachers (makes all the difference!) and immersion (ditto).