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Crossed wires
It can be tough enough studying just one language, but once you start studying more than one, your head begins to feel a bit full. When the languages are similar, they bleed into each other at times. But even when they're drastically different languages, a Slavic language and a Romance language for example, crossed wires can occur. My freshman year of college, I signed up for a French culture class taught entirely in French. I had enough French under my belt to get by in this class, and thought I'd enjoy the subject. The tricky part is that after my four years of French study in high school, I spent a year in Latvia, speaking almost exclusively in Latvian. A few days into our class, I was made aware that this might become a bit of a problem. We were having a class discussion, and I began to espouse confidently in French, discussing the underlying theme of a film we'd just seen, or an article we'd just read. Halfway through one of my thoughts, however, my professor started to look perplexed. And then I listened to myself: I was speaking in Latvian. "Pardonez-moi," I said, blushing. "Je parlais en letton." (I'm sorry, I was speaking in Latvian.) "Mais je ne parle pas letton, je parle français," my professor frowned. (But I don't speak Latvian, I speak French.) I was quiet for the rest of the class. I thought this bad habit was behind me, until this past Halloween night. I was taking part in a scavenger hunt that required us to ask strangers to sign a petition. We had stopped a couple on the street in Brooklyn, and, noticing their English was minimal, I asked what language they spoke. "Russian," said the guy. And so I said to him: "Вы хотете parakstīt mūsu petīciju?" Which is just a mutt of a sentence meaning do you want to sign our petition? -- half Russian, half Latvian. Needless to say, he looked at me like I was speaking gibberish and wandered away. I guess you just have to get used to the occasional crossed wire. - Suzanne, New York Tags: French, Latvian, learning more than one language, newsletter, Russian
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