A Final Thought…
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Watch your language: Why being a language nerd can be really rewarding by JAMIE WRIGHT If I think back to my childhood, through the fuzzy sepia-tinted lens that is my imperfect recollection of that time, punctuated by bursts of Spandau Ballet and my mum’s friends sporting enormous gravity-defying perms, I think it was then that my love for language was kindled. I used to devour words; books on dinosaurs/poems/World records/classic motorcycles/encyclopaedias… even the backs of shampoo bottles when I was in the bath. If it was printed, I would read it. I used to make up games with similar sounding words and try them out in class with my teachers when discussing Meg and Mog…. "Miss? With which rich witch did she itch the itch?" Insufferable, I know, but I was laying the foundations of something that would bring me joy for the rest of my life. At secondary school I was suddenly presented with new avenues to explore where I was no longer bounded by my own language but was periodically given access to new and exotic tongues. I would fantasise about speaking French fluently (although I was really only able to hon-hi-hon-hi-hon at this point) and order food, discuss pop music or even the weather. When my friend and his parents bought a run-down Norman farmhouse at the tail-end of the 1980s and I was invited to spend the weekend there with them, I grabbed my shell suit and Walkman and made myself ready for the trip. Things that are cultural commonplaces now seemed rare and glamourous; freshly made bread still warm from the baker; rotisserie chickens slow roasting in rows outside the butchers. But what was the most intoxicating was the access to the secret code that was their language. The soupçon of French that I had already acquired (see what I did there) seemingly unlocked doors and gave me backstage access to an alternative way of doing things. I was hooked. One year later and I had started learning German. This was an altogether different beast but one that very much had its own charms. Far from fretting over the linguistic hoops that German word order made me jump through or contending with the fact that now I had
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another gender for describing things (so a girl is neuter but a drinking cup is feminine?), I was enthralled by German’s lego-like ability to construct words. Need to describe the item of clothing used to keep your hands warm but with no word for ‘glove’? No problemHandschuh (hand shoe) is the solution. The invention of motorised transport means you need a word for ‘vehicle’- Fahrzeug (driving thing) is the answer. As I learnt about the linguistic heritage of my own language and how in many ways it shows the imprint of both French and German, I began to take more and more interest in language. I became fascinated too with Latin and classical Greek (learning the latter after school) and could hear and see everywhere in the language I spoke the hallmarks of generations of people. Some things would come in handy in the odd pub quiz while others would give you an insight into the thoughts of sometimes ancient peoples (did you know, for instance, that the English word barbarian which comes from the Greek βάρβαρος (Barbaros) probably came from the fact the Greeks thought that was how non-Greeks spoke, i.e. bah-bah-rah and so came to mean wild or savage….the latinized version of this name became a popular girls’ name- no offence intended to any Barbaras out there. The reason I felt moved to write this piece was not so much because I thought the people of Orpington would very much enjoy a potted version of my life through the prism of language (which I am sure they don’t) but rather I would like to encourage everyone, when they can, to take pleasure in language. It can be your own language and taking the opportunity to read more in 2021 when lockdown means that you can’t meet up with friends as much as you would like and you have exhausted everything worth watching on Netflix. Or, and I have to declare an interest here given that I am a language teacher at a local school, making 2021 the year that you will learn a new language. It might seem to be counter-intuitive in this time of increased physical and ideological separation from Europe but rediscover the joy of using that special code when the borders re-open.
March 2021 Life in... Orpington 31
