The Linguist Can't Help It!

Fiorella, who is obsessed by languages, thought she detected a faint German accent in the speech of the hospital employee who was guiding her to Husband's new room so she tried "Sprechen sie Deutsch?" under her breath, just in care she was wrong.

"Ya!" the woman replied, but before she could rattle off a conversation Fio couldn't handle, Fiorella explained that she had had just ein semester auf Deutsch in college, but that her mother, who's own mother spoke German, had taught her a few words and phrases. 

What Fio didn't tell die gute frau was that the whole time she was trying out her meager German, the rooskii yazik in her kept trying to steal the show. Hmmm...maybe all it will take for Fiorella to revive her languages is to be forced to use them

Language Crossovers

Apparently Fioralla's brain categorizes langiages as either English or Other, judging by the way her study of el espanol has reactivated her Russian, German, and even Telugu. Yesterday she caught herself using pahtuhmyshto instead of porque when trying to put together a sentence in Spanish.

Speaking of Spanish, Fio is quite pleased with her recent progress. Her verbos are coming along, she's attempting simple frases, and she's understanding enough of her new telenovela, Mi Marido Tiene Familia, that she can follow the plot. It really helps to have a backgorund in linguistics, but it helps even more to have friends who are kind enough to help her. (Okay, Fio will admit it--Translater on Google helps too.)
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But Fio looks back on her Russian studies with sorrow. If only Russian-language television had been avilable back then. If only the instructional program had involved more verbal communication and less translation of long-dead authors, althoug Fio can still recite the beginning of  Yevgeny Onyegin:. "Moy dyadya sahmic chesnic pravil, kahgdah nyev shootku zahnimog.....". Pahnimayitzi menya?

Rooskee Yazeek

Fio will admit that she screamed "Dummkopf!" at Stephen Colbert last night when he mispronounced the Russian word for "Thank you." She loves her languages, especially Russian with its wonderful "zh's" and "kv's" and "rrrrr's." She hasn't retained very much of it, and she could never have carried on a conversation in it, even in her third year, because translation of a written text was the teaching emphasis back then. Maybe a fourth year would have helped, but the Linguistics Department at UT required two semesters of a non-Indo-European language, which meant Fio had to drop Russian and take up Telegu. Fio grew to love Telegu too, especially because, like with the rooskyy yazeek, she had to learn a new and different script. But again, she has lost most of the language. If you don't use it, you lose it.

And, by the way, "dummkopf" is German (Deutsch), which Fiorella had one glorious semester of.

To Spanish or Not to Spanish

Husband is tucked away upstairs for the night so Fio has parked herself on the couch to watch La Doble Vida de Estela Carrillo--but there's some dumb awards show on instead. GRRRR!
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Fiorella can translate written Spanish better now, but she hasn't made much progress with the spoken language. It's a matter of not having anyone to practice with.
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Strangely enough, trying to learn Spanish has triggered Fio's long-forgotten Russian again. She keeps saying things like myedlenuh, puhzhaulsta (slower, please) or deliberately combining the languages, like gdyeh estan mis pildoras (where are my pills?), which makes her laugh. But then as Husband has always said, Fio is easily amused.
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Fio is looking at the awards show screen now. Good grief. The "dress" that Mexican cantante is almost wearing looks like a single layer of some ultra-shear semi-fabric. Fio knows that's show biz, but she'd like to see more taste and less skin, more elegance and less "I've gone about as far as I can go." Has it ever dawned on anyone that the end of extreme has been breached and the only outfit that would be different enough now to draw everyone's attention is a something simple and in good taste?
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Fiorella has learned a lot about the Mexican-American music industry from La Doble Vida. And about being undocumented. And about drug lords and crooked politicians. Yep, it's cup runneth over.

Lucia, Marcelo, and Sex

Thank goodness last night was a week night and El Color de la Pasion was on TV. After the stress of the day, Fiorella needed to lose herself in a gripping telenovela. The last she saw on Friday evening, Lucia, the heroine, was about to have sex with Roman, and Marcelo, the hero, was about to have sex with Daniela (who apparently is not his half-sister after all).

Were Lucia and Marco going to realize they are with the wrong partners and back off at the last moment? Or would someone burst into room on one or the other of them? Or would a phone ring or a fire alarm go off?

As it turned out, little puffy memory clouds vaporizing above their heads, which the show has begun using lately, caused both of them to beg off with the wrong partners and find each other again. Regarding further action, Nora got threatened by Ricardo and Daniela caught her father in bed with Rebeca.

Golly, if Gaspozha Skarjinskaya had directed her class to a Russian-language telenovela, Fio would have learned and retained russkee yazeek much better.

Fiorella Loves Languages

Fio is feeling prognosticative. The two languages she wanted most to study during her undergrad years were Russian and Mandarin. Who would have guessed they'd be the two languages of most importance to world relations right now? (Fio confesses that the only reason she was drawn to them back then was that they were exotic and different.)
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Unfortunately, Fio never had the chance to learn Mandarin. Despite being Phi Beta Kappa material, she couldn't get a scholarship because she was a woman, a married woman at that, and "would probably get pregnant and drop out," which meant that she had to work full-time her last two undergrad years, which meant she couldn't attend the intensive Mandarin class the required five days a week.
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Fiorella's Spanish program has slowed down during the holidays, although she did throw out gracias a few times to the tech in her eye doctor's office yesterday. When the tech replied with de nada, Fio asked her if she spoke Spanish, and they exchanged a few phrases, which FIO ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD! Feliz Navidad!

Language Addiction

Kifallah! 

That's how you say "hello" in Egyptian Arabic, which adds yet another greeting to Fiorella's ever-growing repertoire.  She learned it from the golden-haired  clerk who checked her out in H-E-B a couple of days ago, then solidified it in her brain by repeating it to the woman yesterday when Fio realized she'd wound up in the same register line.

Where did Fio's fascination with languages come from? Maybe from the early exposure Fio has previously described--her great aunts and uncles teaching her a "soft Russian" phrase ("God, give health") to use when she sneezed, maybe from a Louisiana-born neighbor teaching her to say "I love you" in French, another neighbor teaching her hose to count to ten in Spanish, her mother teaching her how to count and recite the alphabet in German. Maybe from moving from Ohio to Texas and having to learn a whole new version of English. Maybe from her desire to communicate with everyone she meets, or from her own weird brain, which seems to be attracted to unraveling intricacies.

Whatever, Fiorella is hooked. The next time she goes through Goldie's line, she'll ask her how to  say "thank you."

Co-mingling

Bon jour, mia bella! Como esta usted sevodna? Neenu teluguloo maaTlaaDagalaru. Koennen Sie diese Sprache sprechen? Zdai chen!

Ave atque vale,
Fio, who's messing with you

Languages,Languages, Languages

Has Fio told you she's trying to learn Spanish by semi-immersion? She started by watching Univision, a Spanish-language station, every night to absorb the 's sounds and rhythm of the language, and now, with the help of Google Translator, she is trying to get everything in the house labeled so wherever she looks, she'll see the Spanish word for it. She's planning to post a color chart too.  And she's trying to build the habit of substituting Spanish words for English words when she can.

Of course, most of the words she's learning now are basic nouns, but she's pretty sure she can learn prepositions from context. And she already has a head start on pronouns because she lives in Texas. The verbs will be more problematical, but Fio will handle them in time if she keeps at it. That's what immersion is all about.

And just think--if Fio can master Spanish, she can bring her Russian back up to speed.  And her Latin.  And then there's Italian--and German--and Telugu--and Mandarin--and every other language Fio has ever wanted to speak. (You'll notice Fio left off French.  She could read it quite well at one time, but has no interest in learning how to mispronounce it at this point in her life.)



 

Opportunity

Fiorella has long lamented her lack of opportunity to practice her fast-fading language skills, but today she struck oil. Bangaladesh called.

It rolled right off her tongue, the Russian she'd learned lo these many years ago.  Nothing complicated--"Speak in Russian, please;  I don't understand you; I don't speak English.  Do you speak Russian?"  But before she could start reciting Pushkin, her caller hung up.

Fio hopes she wasn't marked off the list.  She still has bits and pieces of about ten other languages to go.  Immo vero in senatum venit!

Leaking Languages

Fiorella awoke with words and phrases popping out of her mouth--words and phrases from languages she studied many years ago, languages she thought had totally fled her brain.  She's been doing that a lot lately, spouting Russian, German, Telugu, Latin, even French, Spanish, and Italian, which she had somehow managed to maneuver through on her own, plus her bits and pieces of Mandarin and an exclamation in Hindi.

It figures.  Remember the four cornerstones of Fio's personal world are music, art, literature, and . . . . languages.

Now to check around Georgetown and see if anyone is running a Russian review class.  Yeah, fat chance.

Multi-Lingual Greetings

Keefik! Hola! Ciao! Chao! Guten Morgen! Preevyet! Ave! Comesta! Nee hau! NuhmuhskaaruhmuhnDee! Nuhmustey. Bon jour! 

Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, Latin, Fillipino, Mandarin, Telugu, Hindi, and French.

As Fiorella has often said, she knows just enough in far too many languages to get her in trouble anywhere she goes. Sigh--if only she knew more.

Where Are You?

Gdyeh moy roosskee druzyah ooshlee?

Where have Fio's Russian friends gone? Ever since Fiorella began this blog in 2008, the old Soviet bloc has been her major audience. Whether it was because of her own Eastern European roots, because she'd studied the roosskee yazik in college, or because Putin thought her posts were so ridiculous that they must be encrypted messages to American spies lurking about in the Kremlin, Fio doesn't know.  All she knows is that they're gone.

On the other hand, her Chinese following is picking up.  Nee hao!

Telugu, Russian, and Mandarin

Are you ready for the remnants of Fiorella's linguistic erudition?  Native writers, look away, look away, because Fio has probably butchered the scripts.  Translation:  her handwriting used to be more regular and less labored in both Telugu and Russian.

She did have to consult sources to be sure she was correct, which made her wilt, but she quickly revived when she realized the more she worked with the languages, the more she was remembering about them.  In heaven, she will speak in tongues.

In case you're wondering, the Telugu word is the standard greeting and is pronounced nuh-muh-ska-ruh-muh-n-Di.  The "anDi" is a politeness form, and the upper-case D means it is hard.

The Russian entry translates as "Do you speak Russian?" or, as Mrs. Scarjinsky would have said  , "Whether or not do you speak Russian?"  (The operative clue is "li".)

The Mandarin is as it is, but Lord only knows what it would be in combinations.

Um, it took us three hours and a call to Minnesota to get this page on the blog so please get out your magnifying glass to look it over.

Scripts

Fiorella loves learning how to write in languages that use a non-roman script.  Russian was her first experience.  The Cyrillic alphabet is quite similar to the Roman, which English uses, but just different enough to be tricky.  For instance, "c" always has an "s" sound, and "p" is the spelling of the English "r."

The next script she learned--and she used to be pretty good at both reading and writing it--was for Telugu, a Dravidian language.  Like most Indian scripts, its a syllabary, which means each "letter" is a combination of a consonant and a vowel.  Thus, "Fiorella" would be spelled with just four major "letters:"  fi-yo-re-la.

Let's skip the Sanskrit script, a syllabary called devanagari, which Fio has totally forgotten, and move quickly on to Mandarin, a logosyllabic script, of which Fio actually knows about five "characters."  If you want someone to identify "person," "big," "little," "center" or "mouth," she's your girl.

Fio will give you examples tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

The Life of Leisure

Fio's at it again.  She's hopping in the car at 10:30 today to drop by Beleza at 11:00 and drop off some of her promotional bookmarks, then meet with Friend Paula at Dan's at 11:30, then with Friend Cheryl at Starbucks at 12:45.  After that, she'll run by the post office.  Once home, she'll write, write, write till about midnight, then sleep till eight tomorrow morning and start all over again.

She forgot to say that she'll also work in lifting five-pound weights ten times in German, will do ten plies in Russian, slip in a bit of piano practice, and oil her fingernails.

Eating and breathing are optional.

Guten Morgen. Preevyet!

The languages are leaking out of Fiorella night and day--bits and pieces of tongues she has studied through the years, but mainly das Deutsch und/ee rooskee yazeek.  And the wonderful thing is that, when she uses simple phrases, other words and phrases pop into her head.

Verstehen sie?  Pahnimahyitzee lee vwee? 

A bientot!

Здравствуйте, Друзья!

Fiorella is bemused by the fact that so much of her audience is in the old USSR.  Do her readers sense her Slavic bloodlines? Or are they themselves bemused by this weird American woman who writes about driveway rocks, her overgrown dog, her would-be writing career, her own psyche, and anything else that comes down the pike?  Maybe they're just practicing their English, getting all the idioms down.  Or maybe they're analyzing crazy Fio for a psychology class.

Whatever. Говорите со мной. Я могу прочитать русский язык.

Uno, zwei, tri, muuDu, quinque, cinq, sei

Hello, one and all, and especially you physical therapists that told Fiorella not to blog about you. What a challenge to hurl at her.

No, this isn't a scandalous tell-all.  Fiorella liked the therapists who worked with her, and she benefited from the treatments--in fact, now that her sessions are over, she's actually doing some of the exercises at home. But Fio does have one suggestion. It would make better use of your clients' time if you turned off the television and suggested they learn to count their reps in various foreign languages. Fiorella herself reviewed Spanish, German, Russian, Telugu, Latin, and French (sort of--not too good at pronouncing French) during her time on the table.  And the PT big dog, Nicole, kindly added Italian to her repertoire.

If those seven languages aren't enough, there's always Mandarin. Fio's already learned 1,2, 3--ee (high), aar (low and rising up), ssun(high to low), although she needs to read up on Mandarin phonemes before she can give you the exact pronunciation of that last one.

Numerals

SPANISH: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez

GERMAN: eins, zwei, drei, fier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn

RUSSIAN: один, два, три, четыре,  пять, шесть, семь, восемь, девять, десять

TELUGU:  ఒకటి, రెన్ఢు, మూఢు, నాలుగు, ఐడు, ఆరు, ఏఢు, ఎనిమిడి, టొమ్మిడి, పడి

LATIN:  unus (-a, -um), duo, tres, quattuor, quinque, sex, octo, septem, novem, decem

FRENCH: un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix (which Fio will never learn to pronounce correctly) 

MANDARIN?