[etni] great article about the difficulties of learning a foreign language
- From: Laura Shashua <lasha205@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:53:59 +0200
It's back-to-school time at the Lindberg household, as a new semester of
Vietnamese lessons begins this week. Once again I'll climb the stairs to my
tutor's Chinatown walk-up, dog-eared vocab book in hand. Once again I'll
return to my well-worn boulder and confounding hill, to resume my lifelong,
Sisyphean attempt to learn a foreign language.
Professor Lap is an affable septuagenarian from Vinh Long province,
possessed of periwinkle hair and infinite patience. Over the 22 months that
I've studied Vietnamese with him, he has never lost his temper, no matter
how relentlessly I butcher his mother tongue. His stoicism is a lesson in
itself.
After retiring from a career in engineering, Lap took up teaching
Vietnamese out of his apartment. Alas, it seems no amount of engineering
could transform me into a capable Vietnamese speaker. My vocabulary still
ranks below that of a toddler, my pronunciation no better than a newborn's.
As with every second language I've endeavored to learn, some basic click
has gone unclicked.
The irony of this -- Hi, I'm Peter; I make a living traveling and using
words -- is not lost on me. I may be a chatty raconteur at home, but
overseas I've always been a conspicuously quiet American.
To read the rest of this article click:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/22/travel/speaking-the-language-tl/index.html?hpt=wo_t5
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- » [etni] great article about the difficulties of learning a foreign language - Laura Shashua