A Little Love for Lifelong Language Learners

There's always more to learn.

Jean Béraud

Recently, at a Family Dollar in the Mojave, I overheard a couple speaking German. Immediately, my mind sprang into action, composing sentences that might come in handy should the Cowboyliebende Touristen ask me for directions. I quickly realized, however, that, after forty-six Fraktur-filled years of reading the language of Goethe, Schiller, and Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, I lacked two or three of the words I would need to help the two Truckstop fans locate the giant cactus they had traveled so far to see. And so, in my shame, I hid behind a large display of “unnecessary plastic objects” (hat tip to Nanci Griffith) until my not quite interlocutors left the store.

Later that day, for the sake of my other Substack, I worked my way through several French texts on the subject of Edwardian ironmongery. Once again, my amour propre dipped, like a Muppet in a ballroom dancing skit, each time I looked up a word that, fifty-eight years after learning the lyrics to Frère Jacques, I felt I should have known.

After several visits to the dictionary, I realized that, thanks to my innocence of forges and presses and such, I was as baffled by the English equivalents as I was by the French originals. This insight led me to another. Had I been able to give directions in German it would have done no one any good, because I had no idea where the giant cactus in question could be found. Finally, I reminded myself that, for much of my childhood, I had replaced “sonne le matine” with “somelematime,” which I imagined as a breakfast food akin to cream of wheat.

So, with these tales in mind, I offer the following observation.

A language is a big thing. The bigger it is, moreover, the more, and faster, it grows. Thus, when you decide to learn a new language, or, for that matter, to improve your command of your mother tongue, you commit yourself to a journey without end. To put things another way, there will always be texts that resist easy reading, songs you cannot grok, and useful phrases that fail to come to mind.