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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5543 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 1 of 6
04 January 2014 at 11:48pm | IP Logged 
OK at James29's suggestion, I'm going to start a log. I'm not sure how often I'll end up updating it or if
anyone else will actually read it (though I hope James might occasionally).

Quick bit of housekeeping: the template made me pick "a" language and so I chose German as it is my
main focus currently. Actually, though, this log will be about any and all languages that I study. At the
timeof writing these are:

German. The main focus of my studies for about 15 months now. I estimate myself at a low B1.
Spanish. I think I reached a low B2 by the time I dumped it for German. God knows where I am now
though.
Greek/Portuguese/Yiddish. I play at these languages. I don't really have any skills to show for it (apart
from maybe some reading skills in Portuguese), but I just find them interesting.
Mandarin. My nemesis. I just can't seem to get going with it...it's just too intimidating.

The log will document my activities, any progress that may occur, my thoughts about these languages and
about methods, plus any other random nerdy things that excite me that are language related (like
comparing the German and Yiddish case systems).

OK, so here goes...
3 persons have voted this message useful



dbag
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4782 days ago

605 posts - 1046 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 2 of 6
05 January 2014 at 12:30am | IP Logged 
I will definitely be following along! I have been hoping you would start one for a long time. Judging from usefulness of your other very helpful posts, I think you perhaps have underestimated how many people might be interested in reading your log.

Anyway, best of luck for 2014! (In all aspects, not just language learning)
2 persons have voted this message useful



Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5543 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 3 of 6
05 January 2014 at 1:02am | IP Logged 
So, yeah, what prompted me to suddenly take up James' suggestion from a couple of weeks ago?
Something that happened at work.

I was (as always) bored out of my mind at work when I suddenly thought of Benny (the Irish polyglot). One
of the waitresses had moved to Brazil as a small child and so was essentially a native speaker (or near
native) of Portuguese. I had never tried to talk to her in my pitiful Portuguese as, well, it's pitiful. Anyway,
I'm there washing dishes, desperately willing the clock to move faster when, as I said, I thought of Benny.
I'm stuck here doing this job that is pretty demanding physically but demands only a miniscule fraction of
my brain usage, and I won't try and converse in Portuguese because my Portuguese is crap...I can just
imagine the look of pity on his face regarding that kind of thinking. So, I thought, screw it...what do I have
to lose? It all went really well at first. She was surprised, complimented me on my pronunciation (thanks to
Pimsleur and a certain UK public library, my pronunciation in the only part of my Portuguese which doesn't
suck), taught me a few new words and generally made an effort to converse. The reaction to this halting
conversation from my coworkers (both chefs and waiting staff) was positive. Not speaking any
themselves,
they clearly overestimated my Portuguese and so were quite impressed. This would be a happy story if I'd
left it there. :-(

So this continued for an hour or so, every time she cleared some plates to the pot-wash sink we
exchanged a couple of sentences, me in my halting Portuguese saying something I probably spent the last
10 minutes thinking how to express in Portuguese ha ha. The trouble came when I tried to say something
in Portuguese (I forget what, but it was something about why I hate washing pots so much and how over
the years it starts to really get you down) and failed. I should have either left it or said it in English, but
instead (and I still don't really understand why) I said it in Spanish (she is fluent in Spanish).

The conversation changed very quickly into a real conversation! I was elated to find that (for all I'm sure I
was making mistakes), real, meaningful conversation is possible for me in Spanish, even after neglecting it
for over a year. I was able to explain why I hate pot-washing so much, she told me what she hated about
waiting on tables and I was able to respond appropriately with humorous suggestions. And yet the
atmosphere around also changed. Where my halting, pathetic attempts at Portuguese had somehow
impressed them, this new fluent conversation actually annoyed my co-workers! The chefs started giving
me more and more extra jobs to do even though I was already very busy (I even pointed this out to her as
part of our Spanish conversation and we discussed this treatment). Bear in mind that at no point did I
actually stop working during this conversation. Eventually I had so many extra jobs that I actually did stop
talking for fear of any more (as I was by now working flat out trying to keep up and any more jobs would
have
seen me physically unable to cope).

Anyway, I found out that they got rid of her after that. The official reason was that they decided not to take
her on at the end of her trial period (in the UK your first 3 months or so constitute a de facto trial period
and until this period ends, employers do not need a reason to dismiss you); but I've been told that the real
reason is that her having that conversation in Spanish with me had been "the last straw".

Go figure.

Actually, I've noticed this reaction before. In 2010 (I think) I worked in a restaurant and discovered that
one of the waiters was Venezuelan, so I started conversing with him in Spanish. A few days later I was
moved to their other site. When I lived in Spain in 2008, I started to come to work half an hour early to
practice my Spanish with the bar person (also Venezuelan), at that time of day he had nothing demanding
to do and just used to polish glasses etc. That also proved unpopular and the chefs used to start giving
me jobs even though I hadn't technically started yet! Seeing my attempts to practice my Spanish turning
into half an hour a day of unpaid labour, I soon stopped.

I don't really understand this reaction. It doesn't really affect my pot-washing so where's the harm? I know
that waiters and bar persons have more complicated jobs and so for a while I was thinking that chefs and
managers
didn't like it because it was distracting the waiter/waitress/bar person; but then I'm allowed to chat with
them in English: how on earth can it
be more distracting for them to chat in their native language!!!!

So yeah, what should I make of that?

I think with Spanish maybe life is trying to tell me something. In all the years learning Spanish I never once
had anyone to talk to in the language for any length of time. Is it really just bad luck? I once arranged to
talk to the wife of a chef
who was Spanish, I offered to pay a modest sum for the privilege and they both seemed keen as she
wasn't working and was extremely bored...he promptly got himself
sacked for drinking at work before a time could be arranged. One day I turned up for work and he was
gone.

Maybe I'm not supposed to speak Spanish.it does seem that way. And yet I'm loathe to throw away all that
effort,
though and there have been times of real pleasure: watching El Chavo del 8, or Aquí no hay quien
viva, the first two series of La que se avecina, the early series of Aída, Capulina and Viruta, Mortadelo and
Filemón, Cantinflas...bit of a pattern here...hours and hours of laughter.

F*** it...confused.com



Edited by Random review on 05 January 2014 at 1:23am

2 persons have voted this message useful



Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5543 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 4 of 6
05 January 2014 at 1:06am | IP Logged 
dbag wrote:
I will definitely be following along! I have been hoping you would start one for a long time.
Judging from usefulness of your other very helpful posts, I think you perhaps have underestimated how
many people might be interested in reading your log.

Anyway, best of luck for 2014! (In all aspects, not just language learning)


Yey! Thanks, mate. I know how you feel, btw. I had to work a ton of hours in December (due to the season
rather than choice) and it made me ill too.
1 person has voted this message useful



James29
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5135 days ago

1265 posts - 2113 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 5 of 6
05 January 2014 at 1:53am | IP Logged 
YES! I will definitely be here reading your log. Interesting stories.
2 persons have voted this message useful



James29
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5135 days ago

1265 posts - 2113 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 6 of 6
09 March 2014 at 1:35am | IP Logged 
What's going on?


1 person has voted this message useful



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