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Language nightmare....
Dec. 27th, 2007 07:47 pmI grew up in an environment where speaking another language was not extraordinary, but common. My parents were both born in the US, yet despite this, English was a second language for both of them. My grandparents all spoke a minimum of three different tongues. My paternal grandfather could scold me in no less than 6, if he so chose (and trust me, the Passover Seder where I decided to recite the "four questions" in French, he did. Big time.).
Unfortunately, none of those tongues were handed down to my siblings and I. The family was much in the process of assimilation. Mom and Pop used their Yiddish to speak with their parents, but with one another it was only when they had something they didn't want my sisters and I to know. My grandparents were of little help. There were then, my age now and still in the work force full time. "You have other things to learn at your age," Zaydeh said. Twenty years later, he lamented that none of his grandchildren understood Yiddish.
In some ways, my learning Spanish was coming full circle. My paternal grandmother was Sephardi, though no one in her family had spoken Ladino since they left Turkey for the Ukraine. She herself had learned Yiddish, as that was what the Jewish community spoke near Kiev. My learning Spanish has made me comprehend the true loss of culture, the culture of my community of origin, that's engendered by the loss of 'mama loshen' (or mother tongue, as Yiddish refers to itself).
I'm not certain if this was last night or the night before, but I awoke in the wee hours of the morning, terrified I had learned the wrong language. My office manager is originally from Bucharest and her presence here in the office has brought me a cadre of Romanian speakers as patients. She generally winds up translating for those who speak no English, though I have muddled through with my very rusty French a few times. For her parents generation, French had been the foreign language of choice to study. In my dream however, everyone, in my office were Romanian speakers, everyone that is, except me. I awoke in a somewhat cold sweat, relieved to realize it was just a dream.
As I tried to go back to sleep, I remembered just how lost I felt when I wandered out into Bucharest alone, the day before we left to come home. My entire time there, I had spent with at least one person who could translate. Romanian may be a romance language, but it's sound is harsher to my ear and unlike Italian or Portuguese which I find fairly easy to gist thanks to my Spanish, Romanian is much more daunting. The one time I went out on my own, I felt so horribly lost. I tried to use both my French and Spanish, without much success. I was met with blank stares from almost anyone I tried to communicate with. It was made worse by the communist era architecture. Everything looked the same, and I was truly frightened I would not be able to find my way back to her parents' home, where we were staying. It was an unnerving, but valuable experience.
Unfortunately, none of those tongues were handed down to my siblings and I. The family was much in the process of assimilation. Mom and Pop used their Yiddish to speak with their parents, but with one another it was only when they had something they didn't want my sisters and I to know. My grandparents were of little help. There were then, my age now and still in the work force full time. "You have other things to learn at your age," Zaydeh said. Twenty years later, he lamented that none of his grandchildren understood Yiddish.
In some ways, my learning Spanish was coming full circle. My paternal grandmother was Sephardi, though no one in her family had spoken Ladino since they left Turkey for the Ukraine. She herself had learned Yiddish, as that was what the Jewish community spoke near Kiev. My learning Spanish has made me comprehend the true loss of culture, the culture of my community of origin, that's engendered by the loss of 'mama loshen' (or mother tongue, as Yiddish refers to itself).
I'm not certain if this was last night or the night before, but I awoke in the wee hours of the morning, terrified I had learned the wrong language. My office manager is originally from Bucharest and her presence here in the office has brought me a cadre of Romanian speakers as patients. She generally winds up translating for those who speak no English, though I have muddled through with my very rusty French a few times. For her parents generation, French had been the foreign language of choice to study. In my dream however, everyone, in my office were Romanian speakers, everyone that is, except me. I awoke in a somewhat cold sweat, relieved to realize it was just a dream.
As I tried to go back to sleep, I remembered just how lost I felt when I wandered out into Bucharest alone, the day before we left to come home. My entire time there, I had spent with at least one person who could translate. Romanian may be a romance language, but it's sound is harsher to my ear and unlike Italian or Portuguese which I find fairly easy to gist thanks to my Spanish, Romanian is much more daunting. The one time I went out on my own, I felt so horribly lost. I tried to use both my French and Spanish, without much success. I was met with blank stares from almost anyone I tried to communicate with. It was made worse by the communist era architecture. Everything looked the same, and I was truly frightened I would not be able to find my way back to her parents' home, where we were staying. It was an unnerving, but valuable experience.
