(My country is the Portuguese language. Fernando Pessoa)

The idea of feeling an affinity with a language is not foreign to me given that I speak seven languages and have studied ten. In fact, my likes and dislikes for the sounds of languages have repelled me from certain languages and attracted me to others. But as my daily life crosses between several languages, I don’t feel particularly at home in just one language. Actually, my homeland is the multi-dimensionality of my linguistic world. If I could speak one sentence in one language and then a sentence or word in another and switch back and forth all day from language to language, I’d be at my best. But then few would understand me.

Finding home in one particular language

Recently, I’ve become curious about how someone can find their home in just one language. The idea first came to my attention when I was reviewing the movie “The Last Sephardi” (El ultimo sefardí) for my CNN interviews in Miami in January about the Ladino language of the Sephardic Jews that has stayed alive for over 500 years outside of Spain. In the film, there’s a conversation with Ladino speakers in Istanbul about their community and the old Judeo-Spanish language. One of them said, “It doesn’t matter where the Sephardic person lives, in Sophia [Bulgaria], in the Adriatic or in Istanbul, his homeland is the Judeo-Spanish language”. Seeing a diaspora community finding a feeling of home speaking in their ancestral language makes sense to me because it’s their language than brings them together given that they are spread out in various countries.

Here’s the clip to which I am referring. They are speaking in Ladino with Spanish subtitles.

Besides a dispersed people, who else finds a home in a language?

A month after seeing this documentary, I re-read the book Sostiene Pereira by the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi. The book is originally in Italian and he talks of many famous writers and thinkers, including Portugal’s cherished, Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Portugal, but grew up in England. This line from the book stood out to me:

“Fernando Pessoa, era di cultura inglese, ma avevo deciso di scrivere in portoghese perche sosteneva che la sua patria era la lingua portoghese.”

“Pessoa, was of British upbringing, but decided to write in Portuguese because the Portuguese language was his homeland.”

Pessoa had a choice between English and Portuguese and he chose his mother tongue. Antonio Tabucchi, enamored with Portugal, wrote his book about Lisbon during the rise of Salazar’s dictatorship, in Italian.

I wonder what Pessoa found in Portuguese that he didn’t experience in English. Was it the frequent “sh” sounds and nasal vowels he liked? Was it the subjunctive case denoting doubt that the English tongue barely has?

Why one language over the other?

Each language has its depth and its limitations. Nuances of meaning come through better in some languages than others. For example, in Russian, to say that you ate something, you have one verb form to say you completed the action of eating your item (я сиел/а) and another verb form to just say you ate (я сиел/а), while in English to specify that you finished off your meal, you would have to say “I ate the whole thing” or “I finished it” but the verb form doesn’t communicate the entire thought like in Russian. The ability to be so detailed in speech may attract someone to a certain language.

So what gives one the sense of home in a language besides an ancestral pull towards it?

I wonder if authors choose a language because of their ability to express themselves better in that specific language or if it’s for commercial reasons that they choose the language of the country in which they are living.

Joseph Conrad wrote in English although his native language was Polish. When I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, I could not believe that his dense English sentences were not penned by a native speaker. I often had to re-read the sentences to understand them, not because the English was poor, but because it was so rich and complex that it took me extra time to understand his thoughts. From what I’ve read about his spoken English, it appears that it was heavily accented.

The Czech writer Milan Kundera writes in French sometimes.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Russian author, Vladimir Nabokov, spoke Russian, English and French from an early age and learned to read and write in English before he did in Russian. (I learned Russian writing and reading before English.) His first literary works were in Russian and then he switched to English. He even translated his own books originally written in English, to Russian.

How about you? Do you find your sense of home or self when speaking in one specific tongue?

Photo credits:
Pessoa’s nameplate

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov by Laura González:

(Photo is of Lisbon, Portugal.)

Feeling like I am in Portugal without leaving the United States

I ventured into the Little Portugal area of San Jose, California, where the local immigrant population from the Azores islands convene around a church, a couple cafes and restaurants and a store. Oddly, I hadn’t been there for over 10 years. I say this is odd because I learned most of my Portuguese via KSQQ, the Portuguese immigrant radio station but I hadn’t been to a Portuguese community event since a fado music dinner in 2000.

From movie set in Lisbon to San Jose, California

Having recently re-read the book, Sostiene Pereira (Afirma Pereira in Portuguese and Pereira Declares in English), by Antonio Tabucchi in the original Italian, set in Lisbon in 1938 when the António de Oliveira Salazar dictatorship was setting nationalist policies and censuring the press, I had a strong desire to be in a Portuguese environment and experience a bit of the café culture described in the novel. (I’ve also seen the movie, starring Marcello Mastroanni, many years ago and am getting a group of my friends together to watch it in Italian.) A journalist/translator, Pereira, thinks he can live his life without being bothered by the censorship and politics of Salazar. By meeting some idealistic young Portuguese rebelling against the fascism of the Iberian peninsula, he realizes the power he has as a translator and journalist to show the Portuguese people another way of being and thinking outside of the nationalism of the dictatorship. It’s ironic that by reading in Italian, I longed to be in a Portuguese environment. But it wasn’t the language of the book that had the effect but the description of the cafes and bars of Lisbon and the food that drew me in.

I went to Cafe DoCanto and I felt like I was back in Portugal. I had been to Lisbon in the late 1990s on a short family holiday. The café menu was on two framed sheets of paper on the wall. No chalk boards or big signs like in normal cafes in the US. Just paper. Little Portuguese doces portugueses (sweet Portuguese pastries) were on display. Eating my inexpensive cheese sandwich made with toasted Portuguese bread, butter and cheese, I I reminisced about my wonderful sandwiches in Portuguese cafés. The refrigerator had some Brazilian sodas as well as other non-American drinks. I could imagine local Portuguese people drinking their coffee in little cups at the counter. However, the cafe was getting ready for a private party and I seemed to be one of the few customers. Two flat screen TVs showed Brazilian soap operas and Portuguese news on RTP – Rádio e Televisão de Portugal but with no sound.

Being and not doing

Did I utter one word of Portuguese in the cafe?

No.

I even thought to myself how strange it was that I, who motivates people to learn Portuguese and other languages, was not speaking in Portuguese.

I didn’t go there to rattle off words in Portuguese or even make conversation. I didn’t go there to learn Portuguese. I went to the cafe to feel Portuguese culture, to re-imagine what cafes in Portugal are like and to connect to the book I had just relished. I have plenty of opportunities to speak the language, but this time was not for me the language learner, it was for me, the lover of culture. I wanted to feel like I was in Portugal.

Sometimes I refrain from speaking when I am in a place that I simply want to experience because I know that when I speak in the language, I will have to answer questions about myself. I am in a Brazilian hiking group and whenever a new Brazilian joins the group and hears my Portuguese, I get the same questions about my mixed mid-Atlantic European-Brazilian Portuguese accent. I explain that I began learning the language with Portuguese immigrant radio and continued with Brazilian music, movies and friends and trips to Brazil so my accent has both European and Brazilian influences. I had no desire to explain my accent again and preferred to just absorb the environment around me.

It’s good to be at a point in one’s language learning to feel comfortable just being and not doing. If you feel like you just want to be in a language environment and soak in the language and culture without attracting attention to yourself, just do it. It’s like being a traveler in another country and admiring the language and culture for what it is without you as a foreigner interrupting the normal flow of life. Part of language acquisition and learning any language is listening. To be honest, I wasn’t listening with a keen ear to pick up on the inflections of voices and to learn new words. I was just being me.

Two days after my Portuguese culture evening, I spent five hours hiking and having lunch with my mostly Brazilian hiking group where I spoke in both English and Portuguese. Therefore you can’t accuse me of not using my language. It’s a choice of when you want to speak and when you want to just “be”.

Photo Credits:
Sostiene Pereira: Amazon

Doces portugueses: Winam

Lisbon: by Federico

Learning languages with music, preserving the Ladino languages with songs, CALA CNN, February 10, 2012

On Friday February 10, 2012, the CALA show on CNN interviewed Montserrat Franco and I in Spanish about how to learn foreign languages using music, why it’s important to be multilingual, how the ancient Ladino language of the Spanish Jews saved a boy’s life in the Holocaust and how Sephardic Jews maintained their language, Ladino, outside of Spain for over 500 years. I introduced my book, El idioma es música, and Montserrat delighted us by singing a Ladino song and speaking a bit in Ladino. Both Montserrat and I speak seven languages each and we believe firmly in the power of music to teach us foreign languages.

Despite the tragedy of the Bosnian War, people in Sarajevo held music concerts during the way to keep their spirits up. The human spirit is indeed stronger than politics. Music feeds the soul and also keeps us in touch with our roots and learning foreign languages.

Susanna Zaraysky, políglota y autora de “El idioma es música” explica cómo se puede estudiar lenguas con música y los medios de comunicación. Susanna cuenta su experiencia viviendo en Bosnia después de la guerra de Yugoslavia y como el idioma ladino salvó la vida de Moris Albahari, un joven bosnio judío en la segunda guerra mundial.

Montserrat Franco habla 7 idiomas y canta en ladino (idioma de los judíos sefardíes). Ellas muestran cómo la música ladina ayuda a conservar el idioma de los judíos de origen español.

Entrevista con Ismael Cala en el program CALA en CNN en Español, el 10 de febrero 2012.

Montserrat Franco y Susanna Zaraysky explican cómo la música ayuda a aprender idiomas y cómo la música ladina (judeo-española) está conservando el idioma ladino. Colombia al día con Enrique Cordoba, WLRN, Miami, el 15 de enero 2012.

Hay dos partes de la entrevista.

Why is the UK losing 11 to 26 billion dollars a year? Nick Chambers explains that there aren’t enough foreign language speakers to service export markets.
Susanna Zaraysky answers why English speakers are not good at foreign languages and how to motivate English speakers to learn new languages. BBC’s Newshour on 30 January 2012.

I wrote a guest blog post, Use Music to Learn a Foreign Language, on Aaron Myers’ Everyday Language Learner blog. He and I met in the fall of 2011 when I was reveling in the delight of Istanbul, Turkey. Over lunch, we discussed how to promote language learning. I like his title “Everyday Language Learner” because becoming multilingual requires a daily effort.

The blog post explains why music is essential to language learning with some background on the scientific and academic research on music, language and listening. I also give some tips on using songs and TV to learn languages.

Use Music to Learn a Foreign Language

Luciana Lage of Street Smart Brazil and I have a video series on how to learn Portuguese via Brazilian songs.

Here is the introductory video where we explain the connection between listening, music and learning a new language.

The next video is our first using the song Você Não me Ensinou a Te Esquecer by Fernando Mendes. We point out the grammatical and pronunciation differences between Portuguese and Spanish. We offer the Spanish version of the song, Tu no me enseñaste a olvidar by Marcus Maestro to show the differences between Portuguese and Spanish. I even sing a bit of this sensual song and wear a clown nose to show how to say “Não” and other nasal sounds correctly.

Another video on Você Não me Ensinou a Te Esquecer will be posted soon.

Susanna Zaraysky habla con Mercedes Soler en el program de NotiMujer en la CNN en Español sobre el idioma ladino (el antiguo español de los judíos explusados de España durante la Inquisición católica en 1492), de dónde viene, como se mantuvó y porque es importante para los sefardíes (judíos españoles) de no perder su lengua ancestral. Se ve a Liliana Benveniste cantando Yo me akodro d’akeya noche en ladino.

Susanna Zaraysky speaks with Mercedes Soler in CNN in Spanish about the Ladino language (ancient Spanish of the Jews expelled from Spain during the Inquisition). They discuss the origins of the language, how it was maintained and why it’s important for Sephardic Jews not to lose their ancestral language. Liliana Benveniste sings, Yo me akodro d’akeya noche.

Susanna Zaraysky, autora del libro, El Idioma es Música, habla con Fabiola Kramsky del idioma ladino (de los judíos sefardíes expulsados de España durante la Inquisición) y cómo se conserva hoy en día con la música. Kat Parra canta “En la Mar”, una canción ladina. Al Despertar, Telefutura 66, San Francisco CA.

Susanna Zaraysky speaks about the history of the Ladino language of the Spanish Jews expelled from Spain during the Inquisition and how it is being preserved today with music.

(English subtitles are available by pressing the “CC” button in the lower right side of the screen or the Interactive Transcript button to the right of the flag button below the screen.)