Gdye moi klootchiy?
I had a meeting with a representative of a a local business who had asked me to check some translations into English that he had done with the help of Google. Needless to say, although it was possible to understand what the text was trying to convey, there was a certain amount of revision needed.
When it came time for him to leave, we stood and shook hands. He looked around a little bemused and asked “Gdye moi klootchiy?” – “Where are my keys?”. I smiled to myself. It is a question that I often ask myself … but, more often than not, it’s a different version of the question that I ask myself: “gdye moi atchkiy?” – “where are my glasses?”
I smile because these are two of the first phrases that I ever learned in Russian.
I had just agreed to come out here for a year and thought I had better try to get, at least, a few basic words and phrases of “the local language” under my belt, so I bought an introductory “teach yourself” course with cassette tapes to listen to with ”repeat after me” exercises.
That was OK, but it was still hard going. The different alphabet was difficult to get used to, and then there seemed to be words and phrases that seemed so alien – well, of course they would … they were(!). Although it was a well structured course and I was enjoying myself, progress was slow, simply because there were so many other distractions that took my time and my attention away from sitting down and concentrating. I had no-one to share my language learning and I had no feedback on whether I pronouncing the words correctly as I dutifully listened and repeated them.
So, when I saw a “weekend” school organized by some Russian Club somewhere in Kent, I took the plunge and signed up. There I sat in a the “beginners class” and started learning the alphabet all over again. There were classes on how to write in Cyrillic script, which was good as some of the letters took some getting used to. At the time, however, I felt it was a bit haphazard. The teacher introduced us to odd words which seemed to have little or no connection. I was beginning to despair and then as we approached the end of the second day, she stopped and said: “Look, you are looking everyday phrases that you will use over and over again, such as: ‘Where are my keys?’, ‘Where are my glasses?’”
I wasn’t convinced, (at that time I didn’t wear glasses and my big bunch of keys hung on a hook from a belt loop on my trousers), but I could see the logic of what she was saying and what she was trying to teach us.
It was, however, a good and valuable experience, especially by virtue of being in a concentrated atmosphere where it was possible to share experiences and feelings with others. getting constant feedback about progress, (or lack of it!). I can’t say that we were “immersed” in the language as a lot of communication still took place in English, but it was so much, (so much!), better than sitting at home trying to cope with strange looking symbols and short exercises, not knowing if I was really making progress or just “kidding myself”.
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This wasn’t the first time I had tried learning a language. At school I studied French. Please note that I don’t say the I “learned” French. Like most Englishmen, I cannot claim to be fluent beyond the very basic level of “schoolboy French”. For example, I understand enough to get the gist of passages which I read, (such as in letters or newspaper articles), or to understand someone who speaks slowly and clearly, using simple vocabulary. On the other hand, I would never attempt to write in French and whenever I attempt to say anything in French, it comes out extremely garbled … a mix of English and Russian, dressed up in accent reminiscent of the TV comedy show, “‘Allo, ‘Allo”.
There was a notable occasion when I was accompanying a school trip to France when the French teacher in charge of the group could not control herself any more and burst into hysterics at my attempt to express myself. Apparently I ended almost every sentence I said with a question: “comprenez vous?”, “do you understand?”. When I asked what was so funny, if I had said something wrong, I was told that it wasn’t what I had said but, rather, the way that I had said it. Apparently, when asking a question the voice rises at the end of the sentence, but instead I tended to drop my voice … which turned it into a command. So, I wasn’t asking “Do you understand?”; I was commanding them, “You WILL understand!”
No wonder I used to get some funny looks.
I even spent six weeks struggling with New Testament Greek for my degree … but I struggled, having trouble with the alphabet, so I gave that up as soon as I felt I felt that I could recognize the words when they were quoted in a footnote of some learned article.
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As a result I have a high regard for people who seem to be fluent in a number of languages. I am often amazed at how European businessmen and consultants can converse with me in fluent English, only to switch to a conversation with the person standing next to me in German, or French, or Spanish … or Russian, or Kyrgyz.
I find myself lost in admiration and, (I admit it), envy.
That’s nothing, however, compared to the incredulity that I felt when I heard about Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, an Italian cardinal who is said to have been fluent in some 39 different languages, ranging from European languages such as French and English to Oriental languages such as Chinese, Hindustani and Gujerati and even Algonquin, (the language of native Americans of Quebec and Ontario), not to mention several languages of the classical world, (Greek, Latin and Hebrew, Coptic and Chaldean). One source suggests that with dialectic peculiarities, he may have been conversant with “some fifty or sixty languages of the most widely separated families … besides having a less perfect acquaintance with many others”(!)
Then there’s William James Siddis, an American child prodigy who, it is said, could read The New York Times when he was just 18 months old. By the time he was eight had taught himself eight different languages and when he died in 1944, is said to have known over 40 languages. It is said that he could learn a new language in just one week. How I envy him if it was true!
Harold Williams, a New Zealand journalist, who served as foreign editor of The Times, who is said to have known over 58 languages and other related dialects. This figure equals that claimed by Ziad Fazah of Lebanon, who as far as I am aware is still alive and currently lives in Brazil, and which was featured in the Guinness Book of Records, (at least up until 1998). There are, however, some questions about this figure as he apparently made some elementary errors in a TV programme. On the other hand, he does admit that it is difficult trying to keep up and stop becoming “rusty” in the languages that he already knows, which has in turn resulted in him slowing down when it comes to learning new ones.
The record, however, must go to Uku Masing, a Lithuanian philosopher, theologian, ethnologist, poet and linguist, who apparently knew some 65 different languages, and translated produced translations from twenty. Born in 1909, he lived through two world wars and died in 1985.
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I sometimes wish it was a skill that I shared. Still, my gift for languages being what it is, I’m just grateful for Google Chrome which at the click of a mouse button gives me an idea, (however imperfect), of what a web page says. All I need now is for them to add Kyrgyz to their list of featured languages.
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Bishkek