Second Language Autobiography

I don’t have a second language. I’ve often joked that once I master English, I’ll start working on another language. I took five semesters of Italian in high school and three semesters of Spanish in college, but, ten years later with no practice, it would be difficult for me to understand or be understood in those languages. The classes involved little writing, focusing instead on conversational fluency. What little writing I do remember made me understand the difficulty others may face when learning a new language. Idioms and contextualized expressions can’t be found in a dictionary, a fact I discovered while writing a brief scene for my Spanish class in which a customer orders string beans at a restaurant. When two other classmates performed the scene with me, the teacher laughed when I mentioned string beans. Apparently, what I had said translated literally as “rope balls.”

I was recently in Paris for four days and found the experience alienating and exciting. Everyone spoke a code language that I knew nothing about. A college professor once told us that English is nothing more than German vocabulary spoken with a French accent, but that didn’t help me navigate my way through café menus and museum ticket booths. My accent, an obnoxious Philly mumble, didn’t carry when I tried my damndest to sound like a Parisian. I picked up a few words, spoke slowly, and apologized with body language to everyone who spoke at a normal pace. Conversations became a game to me. The goal was to understand and be understood; the challenge was using a limited vocabulary to accomplish often complex communicative acts. We then went to London, where I felt like I had been given back my tongue.