Mutterings and Musings

Bring Back Latin...?!

PROMPT: Write about language - What languages do you wish you could speak? What’s the most pleasant sounding accent? What’s the funniest word in the English language (or your native language)?

I'll be honest. I only speak English. I learnt French at school, but it stuck like lathered soap. I've been trying to learn Spanish on Duolingo for a couple of years, and I'm pleased at how my reading/writing is getting along, but woe-bide any Spanish-speaker who thinks they can hold a conversation with me! I'm utterly tone-deaf and I'm sure that counts against me in language learning.

I did try to learn a little Mandarin at uni since several of my friends were from Beijing, but (see above) Mandarin is a tonal language and my (albeit limited) ability to learn reading and writing was somewhat hampered by the fact Chinese characters baffle the hell out of me. Yeah, so that didn't work. I said xie xie (thank you) to someone in a Beijing supermarket once and they immediately launched into a full conversation that had my Chinese friend creased with laughter as she tried to explain I didn't speak Mandarin, and that Hello, Thank You, and Yes/No were pretty much my limit.

Several of my friends are polyglots and I am extremely jealous, and those of my friends who are raising bilingual children just make me want to scream with envy. My step-mother and -brother are Polish (in fact Kasia speaks English as her third or fourth language) and it's infuriating (as in, enviable) the way they jump in and out of English/Polish, cracking jokes in both languages and explaining in rapid-fire Polish to the other if one doesn't understand something in English.

Many schools in the UK teach only French and/or German, and that - unless you so aptitude - pretty badly. Spanish was offered at mine, only in year 10 (approx 14-15yrs) and above. Latin used to be widely taught (and yes, I know most people who learnt it hated it) and that is an amazing basis for the Romanic Languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), as well as being very helpful for the sciences. I'd probably be lynched for saying this, but I do wish Latin was widely taught again.