Three months ago, I decided to learn Spanish. This desire didn’t feel like a passing fancy, so I invested in the pricey but acclaimed Pimsleur audio series and started doing thirty minutes of listening and speaking every day. (You can get it at a lot of libraries, or find it used online for a deal, which I did.)
I know that it is usually more difficult for an adult to learn a second language than it is for a child. But with the excellent Pimsleur system and my strong commitment, I figured I could beat the odds. Unfortunately, I encountered an obstacle I hadn’t anticipated. In accessing my brain’s foreign language center, I awakened a cranky troll who had been slumbering there for thirty years. I call this troll Pierre, because he speaks French. Specifically, he speaks the French that I thought I hadn’t learned in high school.
To say that I was less than diligent during my four years of high school French would be an understatement akin to saying that our greyhound is less than brilliant. I was in class with a gaggle of my girlfriends, a posse of gigglers who’d been chummy since Brownies. The sweet young teacher, Miss Kauth, was no match for our silliness. “Je suis furieuse!” she would say, her voice shaking, when we forgot our books, didn’t do our homework, whispered through lessons. Sometimes she would put her head down on her desk as she summoned courage to go on. She seemed completely ineffectual. Little did we know she was implanting Francophone trolls in our brains.
Now that Pierre is awake, he is determined to bedevil my Spanish project. Every time the fellow on the Pimsleur audio asks me for a Spanish phrase, Pierre elbows his way in first. On the table? “Sur la table,” whispers Pierre while I fumble for en la mesa. I’m hungry? “J’ai faim,” says the troll before I can grasp at Tengo hambre. That’s too bad? Pierre laughs as I’m rendered mute in the face of his “Quelle dommage!”
To complicate matters, I also hear occasionally from Pierre’s German friend, Hans, who throws in a phrase now and then from my one year of college German. Fortunately, Hans sleeps most of the time. Pierre is the real problem. Trying to come up with the Spanish phrase before Pierre throws me the French one is more than challenging—it’s downright stressful. I’ve never played football, but I imagine I feel a little like a quarterback who is trying to throw an accurate pass in the split second before he’s tackled.
I am sure this mental effort is good for me, though. I read just yesterday that signs of cognitive decline occur an average of four years later in bilingual elderly people, compared to monolinguals. So, I’m sticking with this project. I will prevail over Pierre—but gently. Now that I know he’s in there, I want him to help me out when Mark and I finally take that trip to France I’ve always dreamed of. By then, though, Pierre will probably have competition from Juan, who will wake up and whisper, “Ah, Paris—es muy romántico!”
As always, thanks for reading Our Town!
Your publishers,
Sandy Bailey Lipten and Mark Lipten