Why not bilingualism?

This is a bit beyond the current scope of There Is No Spoon, but I'm so excited about it, we're going to pretend that's not an issue: Blogging on Bilingualism is a fantastic resource, and one of my new favorite blogs. A resource for who? Strictly speaking, for anyone raising, trying to raise or thinking about raising a bilingual child...but really, it's an excellent resource for anyone interested in bilingualism - and multilingualism - on any level, at any age.

I would love to raise my future children bilingual, because the array of extra doors a second (or third, or fourth, or...) language can open is both fascinating and useful. But the idea is a little daunting, since although I have some friends who were essentially raised bilingual - and in some cases trilingual - it was more accidental or environmental than intentional, at least as far as I know. Blogging on Bilingualism offers a forum for discussion and the sharing of an infinite variety of practical information for parents of children growing up bilingual - and an additional source of fascination and information for language geeks like me.

In some of the ways the blog's author, Eve Bodeux, describes how she teaches her children or watches them learn, and some of the comments from other readers about their children, I recognize some of the same tricks I used when I was living in France, although I was 20 at the time. I wanted to read more than newspapers in French without having to reach for a dictionary every five seconds, so I picked up the French translation of Harry Potter. I knew the basic idea of the story since I'd seen the films, so I could follow along even if I wasn't catching every word, and knowing the general context helped me learn new vocabulary. (Of course, when I read the seventh book in English, because I couldn't wait until the French translation was released, I was completely confused. What in the world is Disapparating? It's en transplanant that you get from one place to another, not by using this Disapparition nonsense!) Eve talks about having her children watch familiar films, like Disney's, dubbed in the target language - the second language you want them to learn - and it's the same idea: kids know the story and can follow along, but they're learning new vocabulary while they do.

One of the most interesting points made by Eve and some of her readers is that it doesn't really matter if one parent's use of the target language is less than perfect. As long as children hear a variety of native speakers - whether on TV, in films, or in real life - the slight mispronunciations and small grammatical errors a non-native speaker might make won't affect them. It's hearing the target language consistently, its vocabulary, its syntax and some of the cultural background that go with them, that matters. And I think that applies to anyone learning a second language, no matter their age. There were some grammatical errors that made the rounds of my study abroad program, since we were all American students speaking French and tended to parrot each others' phrases - and inevitably, mistakes - but they gradually worked their way out of our collective system as we interacted more and more with native French-speaking professors, merchants and host families.

You probably know that the U.S. system for teaching foreign language is far from ideal. We introduce a foreign language in middle school or high school, while kids in most other countries are introduced to English or another foreign language at about the same time they start formal schooling. The science behind this is that your jaw solidifies when you're fairly young - I've heard anything from six to twelve on that one - and after it does, it's much more difficult to learn the correct pronunciation of languages that use different parts of the face and throat than your own. (French, for example, uses the mouth a lot more than English does - the sounds are fuller - and of course, there's the hacking, gagging 'r' sound. I tell my students to pretend they're gargling with water.)

We also just don't put the same kind of importance on learning a foreign language as other societies do, and I think it's our loss. Young people from other countries often come to study or work in the U.S. for a time and feel comfortable doing so, because they've studied English since elementary school. In comparison, very few Americans venture beyond our borders for any appreciable period of time, I think in large part because it's so completely outside our comfort zone. We're raised with the implicit (and sometimes explicit) idea that American is the best thing in the world to be and America is the best place to be it - everyone and everywhere else are second best. It's great for our collective patriotism, but as a result, our worldview is severely limited and we miss out on some of the best parts of our global society: the people.

It's a fascination with people as much as with the technical aspects of language that keeps me studying and teaching it. After all, the more languages you're able to express yourself in, the more people you can talk to, even if it's only in a rudimentary fashion. Language - and bilingualism (hopefully multilingualism, eventually) - is something of a hobby for me. Other people scrapbook; I speak, read, translate, teach French. Other people talk about taking pottery classes in their spare time; when I have some spare time, I'll take classes in a third language.

The more languages we can understand, the more people and ideas we can access where they live, so to speak. (I'd love to read The Alchemist in the original Portuguese - as incredibly beautiful as it is in English, I can only imagine how gorgeous it is as Paulo Coelho wrote it.) Because it's people and their ideas that make the world go round. They're constantly reaching out to one another, working together to push the world - and us with it - forward, and the more people any of us can connect with, the more of an impact any single idea can have. So why not bilingualism, as a hobby, or a way of life?

What language est-ce que I parle?

If I haven't mentioned it already, translation is one of my passions. It's kind of a geeky thing to get excited about, I know, but I can't help it - it really is an absolutely fascinating process, and one that I love diving into because it gets my brain working. It's both creative and analytical, similar to music (or at least its composition), which is probably a big part of the reason it appeals to me.

In the most literal - and boring - sense, translation is just the substitution of one word for another that means the same thing in a different language. That's what I thought I was getting myself into when I found out I had to take English to French Translation the second semester of my year abroad, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Yes, you're taking words from one language and putting them into another, but finding the right ones and the right way to put them together is about a lot more than just individual words: idiomatic expressions, sector-specific phrases ("valeur" means "value," but in a business sense there are several other possible meanings as well) and most importantly, the author's voice. Someone reading a translation shouldn't know it is one, and often doesn't, if the translator has done a good job, unless they happen to glance at the title page and see that little "Translated By." Just as everyone has their own unique voice when they talk - distinguished by things like phrasing, emphasis and often-used expressions - authors have one when they write, and it's a translator's job to figure out how to bring that voice to life in the target language (that's translator/interpreter-speak for the language they're translating/interpreting into).

But I'm digressing from what I actually wanted to talk about (how unusual!)...

I'm in the middle of my first big freelance translation project, and between reading in French while typing in English and thinking back and forth between the two, my brain keeps slipping up and forgetting there's a difference when I'm not in translation mode. I'll be sitting in a meeting at work, talking about First Amendment rights, and all of a sudden I can't think of any word for "rights" except "droits," which is the French. Of course I know what the word means in both languages, concept-wise, but I just can't find the English word in my head. It's a little disconcerting!

My first experience with this internal mélange of words was during my year abroad, although it started more with an internal vocabulary black hole. About halfway through my first semester in France, my friends and I would be talking (in French - it was an immersive program and we'd all signed a contract agreeing to speak French 100% of our time there), and one of us would come to a stuttering halt mid-sentence. It was what I started calling "l'espace vide" - the empty space, the void - between English and French. And it's frustrating - you know exactly what you mean, and can define the word you're looking for in both languages, but the actual word for it in either one has momentarily vanished from your head.

A couple of weeks after the beginning of second semester, I was walking back to my host family's apartment from the Saturday market, and suddenly realized I had no idea which language I was thinking in. When I focused - cautiously! after all, who knew what was going on in there? - I thought it seemed like a sort of mental double-speak: both languages running through my mind simultaneously, or in very quick echoes of each other, and the conscious part of my brain not entirely sure which was louder. After that is when the mental word substitution started - I'd be talking, thinking or writing as usual, and all of a sudden there'd be a word in my head in the wrong language, acting as a mental roadblock for a minute.

It usually happens when I'm talking about a concept in the language I didn't learn it in. Anything involving wine almost always comes to my head in French first, because the first wine-tasting class I took was in France, so I learned to talk about it in French. Certain words also seem to me to sound more like what they mean, as far as connotations go, in one language or the other. "Awkward," for instance, works so much better in English, because the word itself is awkward, by sound as well as definition. "Maladroit" or "gênant" ...technically they mean the same thing, but they don't feel like the definition the way the English does. "Soulagement" is one I've been having issues finding the English for lately, because to me, the French embodies the full concept - of relief, ease, solace, comfort - better than any one English word does.

It's a peculiar problem to have, but since it makes me think I don't really mind. I do sometimes wish I spoke a third language fluently - the mental gymnastics would probably be exhausting, but I'm curious as to what it sounds like inside a trilingual person's head!

So if you're talking to me and I stop mid-sentence and get a confused and/or frustrated look on my face, bear with me or ask me for the definition so you can tell me what word has escaped me. And if you're curious, ask me what it is in French!