Why study foreign languages? Trysts

Listening to a Spanish-language CD in the car one day, I smiled when I heard the narrator say “es decir.” I loved that phrase. It means “that’s to say.” I was threading my way through morning traffic on Atlanta’s downtown Connector, and looking ahead. In a few weeks, I would be heading to Mexico, and I fantasized about using those words as I chatted with locals.

“Es decir que trabajo como periodista…..” 

Everyone has hobbies – one of mine is conjuring up some silly conversation I might have with someone in a foreign language, in this case explaining what I did for a living. “That’s to say, I work as a journalist….”

I was ferrying Leo to daycare, and inventing fictitious conversations distracted me from the bumper-to-bumper crush of cars while also doubling as vacation-prep.

Then all of a sudden, a stabbing pain in my chest caught me up short.

I was cheating!

But I wasn’t cheating on someone but rather on something. 

I was cheating on Italian – the language.

Since having a baby two years before, I’d studied Spanish very little, and I had forgotten that some part of my brain considered the language a rival suitor. 

The one I speak when I’m cheating on Italian.

I majored in Italian in college, and lived in Florence for a few years after graduation. Surrounded by Florentines, I breathed in the language of Dante so thoroughly that even after returning to the U.S. to become a journalist, I never stopped reading Italian or thinking about it. It became like a person in my life, and my house is packed with Italian dictionaries, Sicilian crime novels and one very large poster with the entire text of the Divine Comedy, which hangs in the living room.

I also now work in part as a literary translator (IT-EN) so to be fair, delighting in Spanish phrases really was tantamount to betraying Italian. It was as if Italian were my husband, and Spanish my backdoor man.

Of course, that’s not even the whole story because as you know, my first language is English. So where does it factor into all of this? For some reason, it doesn’t. It's almost like English is the skin over my bones or the air I breathe: nothing will change its primacy. And Italian will always be my primary foreign language.

But I still feel a little flutter of subversion when I think about speaking Spanish. 

Sitting in the car, I caught my breath. By studying Spanish, I'd convinced myself that I was betraying my first love, Italian. I laughed aloud that my brain had somehow conjured up this crazy little scenario. I also heaved a sigh of relief.

My life had turned upside down since becoming a mother. Soon after Leo was born, I fretted I would cease to be me, and either I would no longer love languages and literature or I’d lack the time to cultivate such passions.

But instead I found the time, and reading Italian novels or listening to Cuban music continued to provide an invaluable escape.

Speaking a foreign language causes a certain fission in my head. I feel the same rush of endorphins when I speak Italian or Spanish as I do exercising. And Spanish has an added oomph because, well, it’s my other foreign language. I feel no compunction to speak it well (I sometimes estimate I know to say only 50 to 100 words of Spanish in conversation -- in other words, not many).

When we arrived in Mexico a few weeks later, I quickly identified details that told me I was indeed finally abroad again. Mexican children sipped juices from plastic bags punctured with straws. Parents balanced babies and shopping bags on rickety motor scooters.

The world is shrinking, and as it does, English is becoming the lingua franca for communication, commerce and even education. Many universities around the world are increasingly teaching courses in English with subject matters ranging from accounting to computer science to business. There are pros and cons to that, and various languages have spread around the globe throughout history. At one time, French was the second language of most intellectuals.

But still, it would be a mistake if Americans skipped learning a second language, or a third. Studying foreign languages has supplied me with an alter ego, and a rich interior life that beckons wherever I am. A few pages into an Italian book, or a few minutes listening to Mexican rock, and I’m worlds away from traffic, work demands or the heat of a summer day.

Learning a language isn’t always about performing some useful act – learning X for when you do Y. It’s about discovering how other human beings are going about the business of living. 

I have thought fleetingly of learning Irish one day, and it won’t be for some useful purpose. I’ll head over to the cemetery in Donegal, near Mt. Errigal, where my ancestors lay. And I’ll read the gravestone covered in Irish that my relations showed me during my Study Abroad year. And I’ll know a little bit more about my history, and about the world. Which, come to think of it, is pretty useful.

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