Twisted Tongues (Part 1)
In a world where, for many, instant gratification is too long to wait, there has been an arms race in unrealistic language-learning expectations.
In the 1980s, it was Spanish in 3 months, a popular beginner’s course consisting of a book and three cassettes. As the pace of living heated up, the promises became more outrageous: Italian in a week, One day Portuguese, Half-hour Urdu, Five minute French. Spanish reached ‘Lightspeed’ several years ago, ironically taught by a Brit who severely mangles English — and by his Spanish better half, who speaks much better English and even manages to make a South Shields accent sound sexy.
What next? Fluent Swahili in a nano-second? Or perhaps, Finnish before you start?
Anyone who ever enrolled in a foreign language evening class would have noticed that the first class, full of enthusiastic new learners, was dramatically diminished by the third session, with only a hardcore making it through to the end of term.
English speakers are often dismayed to find that in languages with Latin roots, e.g., French, Spanish, Italian, etc., all nouns have a gender that seems, and often is, entirely arbitrary. A chair is feminine, an armchair is masculine. Liberty is feminine, power masculine. Knowledge masculine, wisdom feminine. The truth is feminine, while a lie is masculine.
Furthermore, all adjectives must agree with nouns in gender and quantity. Thus, as boats are masculine and cars feminine, we must say “un bateau blanc, deux bateaux blancs, une voiture blanche, deux voitures blanches.” The fun doesn’t stop with plain vanilla adjectives; possessives like ‘my’ become “mon, ma or mes”; ‘your’ “ton, ta or tes” depending on the gender and number involved. This book is “ce livre” but this letter is “cette lettre.” All the boys “tous les garçons” all the girls “toutes les filles.”
Verbally Challenged
Each English verb has 5 forms to remember; e.g., ‘to write’; write, writes, writing, wrote and written. Sure, it’s wrote and not ‘writed’ and there is that superfluous silent letter.
On the other hand, the learner of French must instantly select the correct one of the 37 forms of each and every French verb when speaking and understand several more when reading.
I do snort, with mock indignation, when Spaniards complain about how many irregular verbs there are in English! Actually, the indignation is real, only the ‘mock’ is mock. Even ignoring the rarely used future subjunctive, each Spanish verb still has a whopping 55 different forms, and many of the most common verbs are ridiculously irregular.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the vast majority of learners give up long before getting to grips with the dreaded subjunctive mood in any of the ‘Romance’ languages.
Not All Beer and Skittles
Despite English’s relative simplicity it is far from a walk in the park for learners. Making one’s way through the minefield of pronunciation and spelling is not for the feint faint-hearted.
Take just one example; ‘ough’
Ough in plough rhymes with now, as you know.
It’s very hard for learners to know how to say plough; it requires thorough thought. It’s still tough enough, though, for a native to know.
Though rhymes with the bow used for arrows, though not with the bow or prow of a boat. It rhymes with no and know, but not now.
Cough and trough sound like the off a learner becomes thoroughly cheesed.
Rough isn’t like cough; it rhymes with enough, which makes it tough for learners to pronounce off the cuff.
Through sounds like threw; it rhymes with you and U2, too (as no doubt you knew).
In bought, brought, and thought, ough sounds like ore or oar or… or. (Sometimes, the rules you’ve been taught mean naught).
BTW, when visiting my hometown of Loughborough, don’t get stressed that the first ‘ough’ rhymes with ‘stuff,’ while the second, being unstressed, is pronounced as an ‘uh.’
Say Luff-bruh. ‘Nough said?