{"id":32559,"date":"2015-09-13T01:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-09-13T05:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32559"},"modified":"2015-08-29T10:14:43","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T14:14:43","slug":"qotd-the-fine-art-of-speaking-foreign-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/09\/13\/qotd-the-fine-art-of-speaking-foreign-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The fine art of speaking foreign languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

We slept that night at Barr, a pleasant little town on the way to St. Ottilienberg, an interesting old convent among the mountains, where you are waited upon by real nuns, and your bill made out by a priest. At Barr, just before supper a tourist entered. He looked English, but spoke a language the like of which I have never heard before. Yet it was an elegant and fine-sounding language. The landlord stared at him blankly; the landlady shook her head. He sighed, and tried another, which somehow recalled to me forgotten memories, though, at the time, I could not fix it. But again nobody understood him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is damnable,\u201d he said aloud to himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, you are English!\u201d exclaimed the landlord, brightening up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Monsieur looks tired,\u201d added the bright little landlady. \u201cMonsieur will have supper.\u201d<\/p>\n

They both spoke English excellently, nearly as well as they spoke French and German; and they bustled about and made him comfortable. At supper he sat next to me, and I talked to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me,\u201d I said \u2014 I was curious on the subject \u2014 \u201cwhat language was it you spoke when you first came in?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGerman,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d I replied, \u201cI beg your pardon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou did not understand it?\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must have been my fault,\u201d I answered; \u201cmy knowledge is extremely limited. One picks up a little here and there as one goes about, but of course that is a different thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they did not understand it,\u201d he replied, \u201cthe landlord and his wife; and it is their own language.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not think so,\u201d I said. \u201cThe children hereabout speak German, it is true, and our landlord and landlady know German to a certain point. But throughout Alsace and Lorraine the old people still talk French.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I spoke to them in French also,\u201d he added, \u201cand they understood that no better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is certainly very curious,\u201d I agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is more than curious,\u201d he replied; \u201cin my case it is incomprehensible. I possess a diploma for modern languages. I won my scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German. The correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation, was considered at my college to be quite remarkable. Yet, when I come abroad hardly anybody understands a word I say. Can you explain it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I can,\u201d I replied. \u201cYour pronunciation is too faultless. You remember what the Scotsman said when for the first time in his life he tasted real whisky: \u2018It may be puir, but I canna drink it\u2019; so it is with your German. It strikes one less as a language than as an exhibition. If I might offer advice, I should say: Mispronounce as much as possible, and throw in as many mistakes as you can think of.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the same everywhere. Each country keeps a special pronunciation exclusively for the use of foreigners \u2014 a pronunciation they never dream of using themselves, that they cannot understand when it is used. I once heard an English lady explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce the word Have.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will pronounce it,\u201d said the lady reproachfully, \u201cas if it were spelt H-a-v. It isn\u2019t. There is an \u2018e\u2019 at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I thought,\u201d said the pupil, \u201cthat you did not sound the \u2018e\u2019 at the end of h-a-v-e.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo more you do,\u201d explained his teacher. \u201cIt is what we call a mute \u2018e\u2019; but it exercises a modifying influence on the preceding vowel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before that, he used to say \u201chave\u201d quite intelligently. Afterwards, when he came to the word he would stop dead, collect his thoughts, and give expression to a sound that only the context could explain.<\/p>\n

Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I suppose, have gone through more than I myself went through in trying to I attain the correct pronunciation of the German word for church \u2014 \u201cKirche<\/em>\u201d. Long before I had done with it I had determined never to go to church in Germany, rather than be bothered with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no,\u201d my teacher would explain \u2014 he was a painstaking gentleman; \u201cyou say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e. There is no k. It is\u2014.\u201d And he would illustrate to me again, for the twentieth time that morning, how it should be pronounced; the sad thing being that I could never for the life of me detect any difference between the way he said it and the way I said it. So he would try a new method.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou say it from your throat,\u201d he would explain. He was quite right; I did. \u201cI want you to say it from down here,\u201d and with a fat forefinger he would indicate the region from where I was to start. After painful efforts, resulting in sounds suggestive of anything rather than a place of worship, I would excuse myself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really fear it is impossible,\u201d I would say. \u201cYou see, for years I have always talked with my mouth, as it were; I never knew a man could talk with his stomach. I doubt if it is not too late now for me to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

By spending hours in dark corners, and practising in silent streets, to the terror of chance passers-by, I came at last to pronounce this word correctly. My teacher was delighted with me, and until I came to Germany I was pleased with myself. In Germany I found that nobody understood what I meant by it. I never got near a church with it. I had to drop the correct pronunciation, and painstakingly go back to my first wrong pronunciation. Then they would brighten up, and tell me it was round the corner, or down the next street, as the case might be.<\/p>\n

I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction one receives:<\/p>\n

\u201cPress your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost\u2014but not quite \u2014 to touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis. Now, without opening your lips, say \u2018Garoo.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And when you have done it they are not satisfied.<\/p>\n

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel<\/em><\/a>, 1914.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We slept that night at Barr, a pleasant little town on the way to St. Ottilienberg, an interesting old convent among the mountains, where you are waited upon by real nuns, and your bill made out by a priest. At Barr, just before supper a tourist entered. He looked English, but spoke a language the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,79,62,57],"tags":[948,400],"class_list":["post-32559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-education","category-europe","category-humour","tag-jkjerome","tag-language"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8t9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32560,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32559\/revisions\/32560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}