LJ Idol, Season 9 - Week 24
Title: Mr Golden Bear
Topic: the Cupertino Effect
I have never had much of a facility for languages. When Oskar and I first started planning to emigrate to America, I applied myself diligently to studying English, so that I might be reasonably confident in my abilities when we finally arrived. I was as fluent as could be expected from a man who had very little formal education in the language, which is to say not particularly fluent at all, but a year of living in Milwaukee taught me more than all the years of trying to teach myself, and now I am very confidently bilingual.
My professional life is conducted in English, my home life in German. (Although not entirely - the first time I said something was "groovy", a word I learned from my students, Oskar gave me such a look of bafflement that I laughed.) I slip up from time to time and use German in public because I cannot immediately call to mind the appropriate English word, and there are still American idioms that make no sense to me and German idioms that do not translate, but aside from my accent, which I cannot quite lose and do not entirely want to, I would like to believe that people assume I have lived here longer than I have.
And so perhaps I feel that I need a challenge. Isabel, one of my fellow art teachers, is teaching me Spanish, and asked me to help her with her German in exchange. She tells me proudly that her father fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and after Franco's victory her family fled to Mexico, where she was born. She met her husband, who is American, when the engineering firm for which he worked sent him to Mexico City for a project. She tells me these things in Spanish and I tell her abbreviated stories of my life in German, and we talk about art, and this way we each attempt to learn another language.
Spanish is a lovely language, especially as Isabel speaks it, but for some reason I cannot wrap my tongue around it as I could English. My accent is embarrassing and I am continually confusing words. Fortunately Isabel is very patient. She teases me that I should call her Señora Carmody, as a student would if she were teaching a language class, and in exchange she refers to me as Herr Maurer. We have gotten some odd looks in the teachers' lounge, and several times we have been gently interrupted so that Amador, one of the Spanish teachers, might correct my verb tenses or sentence structure.
I am learning, if slowly, but still I have trouble with the vocabulary. The one mistake I make the most often is confusing "oro", which means "gold", and "oso", which is "bear". I have expressed my admiration for the bears that Gustav Klimt uses to great effect in his work. It has become a joke between myself and Isabel, and even Amador has given up trying to correct me. Isabel once called me "Mr Golden Bear" in front of an introductory art class, and when two of her students appeared in my drawing and painting class, that is what they called me. I shared this with Oskar and he was embarrassed on my account at how disrespectful some of the students are, but I reassured him that informality is allowed in art class, so long as it is still respectful. But it is a source of amusement to him that I am having this trouble with Spanish, for new languages come easier to him than they do to me.
I do not mind. It is a way to keep my mind fit, the same as physical exercise to keep my body in shape. I wish to have a good long life with Oskar, and I plan to remain mentally sharp into my old age. I appreciate a good challenge, and this is one I enjoy, this addition of a new language to the bank of my knowledge. I will never be anything close to trilingual, and if I should ever travel to Mexico or Spain or South America, I will have to rely on the English or German speakers in the countries I visit. But it is a pleasure to speak to Isabel in her native tongue, as clumsy as my efforts are, and if nothing else, it affords me an excuse to draw tiny bears as a signature any time I must write her a note.
Topic: the Cupertino Effect
I have never had much of a facility for languages. When Oskar and I first started planning to emigrate to America, I applied myself diligently to studying English, so that I might be reasonably confident in my abilities when we finally arrived. I was as fluent as could be expected from a man who had very little formal education in the language, which is to say not particularly fluent at all, but a year of living in Milwaukee taught me more than all the years of trying to teach myself, and now I am very confidently bilingual.
My professional life is conducted in English, my home life in German. (Although not entirely - the first time I said something was "groovy", a word I learned from my students, Oskar gave me such a look of bafflement that I laughed.) I slip up from time to time and use German in public because I cannot immediately call to mind the appropriate English word, and there are still American idioms that make no sense to me and German idioms that do not translate, but aside from my accent, which I cannot quite lose and do not entirely want to, I would like to believe that people assume I have lived here longer than I have.
And so perhaps I feel that I need a challenge. Isabel, one of my fellow art teachers, is teaching me Spanish, and asked me to help her with her German in exchange. She tells me proudly that her father fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and after Franco's victory her family fled to Mexico, where she was born. She met her husband, who is American, when the engineering firm for which he worked sent him to Mexico City for a project. She tells me these things in Spanish and I tell her abbreviated stories of my life in German, and we talk about art, and this way we each attempt to learn another language.
Spanish is a lovely language, especially as Isabel speaks it, but for some reason I cannot wrap my tongue around it as I could English. My accent is embarrassing and I am continually confusing words. Fortunately Isabel is very patient. She teases me that I should call her Señora Carmody, as a student would if she were teaching a language class, and in exchange she refers to me as Herr Maurer. We have gotten some odd looks in the teachers' lounge, and several times we have been gently interrupted so that Amador, one of the Spanish teachers, might correct my verb tenses or sentence structure.
I am learning, if slowly, but still I have trouble with the vocabulary. The one mistake I make the most often is confusing "oro", which means "gold", and "oso", which is "bear". I have expressed my admiration for the bears that Gustav Klimt uses to great effect in his work. It has become a joke between myself and Isabel, and even Amador has given up trying to correct me. Isabel once called me "Mr Golden Bear" in front of an introductory art class, and when two of her students appeared in my drawing and painting class, that is what they called me. I shared this with Oskar and he was embarrassed on my account at how disrespectful some of the students are, but I reassured him that informality is allowed in art class, so long as it is still respectful. But it is a source of amusement to him that I am having this trouble with Spanish, for new languages come easier to him than they do to me.
I do not mind. It is a way to keep my mind fit, the same as physical exercise to keep my body in shape. I wish to have a good long life with Oskar, and I plan to remain mentally sharp into my old age. I appreciate a good challenge, and this is one I enjoy, this addition of a new language to the bank of my knowledge. I will never be anything close to trilingual, and if I should ever travel to Mexico or Spain or South America, I will have to rely on the English or German speakers in the countries I visit. But it is a pleasure to speak to Isabel in her native tongue, as clumsy as my efforts are, and if nothing else, it affords me an excuse to draw tiny bears as a signature any time I must write her a note.