I learned to speak foreign languages

S p e a k i n g    t h e     s a m e   

L a n g u a g e

I studied Spanish for almost 3 years in high school, learning conjugations and phrasing, but never really learning the language. Whether due to a lack of interest, or practice, I never gained fluency in Spanish, and stopped taking it as an elective in the middle of my junior year. I hardly gave it another thought, having taken it only as a "college-prep" requirement; once that was met, I moved on to other subjects. I still retain some of it, and can generally understand simple phrases when called upon. For some reason, I had tried to learn Arabic the summer after that last Spanish class, but gave up, when I had no way of determining the correct pronunciation and usage.

I selected Latin as an elective at the beginning of my senior year, despite my mother's dire warnings that I would hate it and have trouble with learning it. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. I never took my book home, only studying for the weekly vocabulary test and finishing the daily homework in the 10 or 15 minutes before class started. Since it was my first class of the day, I had that time available to me, quiet time to use studying or writing phrases and conjugations while others in the class were milling in the halls. It worked well for me, as it turned out; I routinely scored well on the quizzes and was able to amply contribute to class discussion as we explored the vagaries of verbs and their tenses.

I continued this practice at the mid-term exam, studying the 15 minutes before class began, applying what I had just read to the test. I wasn't sure how well I had done on the exam, but I had a good feeling about my effort and wasn't too worried. When class began the Monday following the mid-term, the teacher, an elderly woman named Mrs Shapiro, stood at the front of the class and said, "I have taught Latin for 28 years, and in all that time, I have never given an A+ on an exam. However, this time, I have to give an A+, because someone scored more than 100 points." She had included two extra credit questions worth five points each, to help those studentswho needed the points. We all looked around the room, an undercurrent of questions running through everyone's mind: Who could it be? Who was the "smart" one, who had ruined the curve for the rest of us? She walked through the seats as Linda Gilliam, who sat in front of me, and I exchanged glances and shrugs. Mrs. Shapiro came to a halt beside me, dropped my exam on the desktop and then walked to another student to deposit their exam. I looked down, thinking it was merely coincidence that my exam had ended up on top, because I had been the first to finish and turn in my test. My brain wasn't comprehending the big red numbers and letters I saw, until I looked up to see Linda gaping at me in astonishment. I looked back down and read, "105, A+, Congratulations!" in Mrs. Shapiro's bright red cursive, the "A+" with a big circle around it. I looked around as my friends and classmates stared back, eyes as big as saucers, smiling and making jokes about how I had just blown the curve for everyone else.

I would hear similar comments all the rest of the day, and again when the semester final came around. By then, of course, I was used to it, but I still enjoyed the attention and studying Latin; I still use what I learned about Latin prefixes, suffixes, and root words . The basic structure of Latin permeates English, whether directly from Latin roots, or through words borrowed from one of the Romance Languages, themselves variants of Latin.

When I went into the Army, after high school, I wanted to be an interpreter, and kept pressing the recruiter for an assignment to the Army Language School at Monterey CA. He brushed off my request several times, asking me if I didn't want to enlist for four years instead of three. I said, no, I wasn't sure how much I would like the military, and didn't want to commit myself to the extra year. Little did I know the recruiter was asking a coded question, to gauge my commitment to the service. Later I found out had I agreed to the four year term, I might well have gotten what I requested, because the training session at the Language School lasted well over a year; add the time I would spend in Basic Training, and the guaranteed leave time I would accrue, and there would not have been much of my three year term left after completing the school. Instead, he urged me to sign up for "communications specialist", saying that I could later get a transfer if I wanted. Of course, that is NOT the way the military works, as I found out after finishing Basic Training when I was sent to Ft Gordon GA for Advanced Individual Training, or AIT. I immediately tried to put in for a transfer when I arrived there, but was told I would have to complete AIT and be assigned to a permanent unit before I could request a transfer.

At the beginning of my military career, when I reported to the Oakland Induction Center, along with hundreds of other young men my age, for physical and mental testing, I was pushed, poked, tested, prodded, and subjected to other indignities for two days. At the end of our first day, we were sent to back to our hotel and told to get plenty of rest, because we would go through batteries of tests the following day that would be used to determine the training and MOS we would be receive after Basic. The bug-bear used was "If you don't do well, you'll end up Eleven Bravo (infantryman) and the place where they use Eleven Bravo's is VietNam", the implied warning therein that if you didn't want to go to VietNam, you'd better do well on the tests to get a better classification or MOS. Not that the Army didn't have 'Nam on our itinerary, anyway, but who knew, in August, 1966, just how bad it would get?

Of course, we listened to these warnings and did exactly what 17, 18 and 19 year olds will always do in that situation...we stayed up all night, carousing and partying like maniacs, at one point calling out the windows to the streetwalkers below, urging them to come up and join our celebration. We had no money, not more than a few dollars among the lot of us, and we were all to young to buy beer, so they weren't the least interested, but we had fun calling out to them, and they enjoyed teasing us with ribald remarks and good-natured insults. The night passed in this manner, until nearly 5:00, when the hardiest of us finally ran out of steam and fell into our beds.

I slept the sleep of the just....for just over 30 minutes! The night manager came through the rooms, knocking on doors, opening them and calling out, turning on light switches, then shaking those to slow to wake up. I sat up in my bed, which I hadonly just got to sleep in, asked what time it was and gaped at the person who answered me with "5:30!" I asked why we had to get up so early, grousing that I hadn't had very much sleep, and when told we had to get up so we could get breakfast before reporting to the Induction Center, said I'd rather sleep than eat. I was told I had no choice and to move out, a set of commands I was to grow far more acquainted with in the following weeks than I ever wanted.

We stumbled down the stairs, out into the street and down to a restaurant where the meal chits we had been issued were to be used, joining a line that stretched out onto the sidewalk. The breakfast we were served consisted of runny powdered eggs, soggy toast and Tang or coffee. After tasting the Tang, I opted for the coffee, not that it was better, but it would help wake me up while blunting the taste of the eggs. After finishing our sumptuous repast, we were herded out of the restaurant, down the street and into the Induction Center, already bustling only little after 6:00 a.m.

There we were directed into different lines for tests, and more tests. I sat down in the first room and began a test called the Armed Forces Qualification Exam, a lengthy test that was supposed to represent our IQ's and potential skill level for the Army to determine the best way to utilize us. Of course, the Army never does anything that approaches relevance with regard to "best utilization" of manpower or resources and, even at this early point in my experience with the military, I sensed the truth in that statement. However, I picked up my pencil and made my best effort, fighting a hangover-type headache and the urge to lay my head down on the desk and catch 40 winks...or 80, if possible.

I would discover during interviews with counselors in Basic that I had scored 164 on this test. They encouraged me to apply for Officer Candidate School, or OCS, until they discovered I was only 17; I was told I could apply once as I was 18 as they moved on to other indoctrination topics. I also took a Spanish test at the Induction Center, scoring an 88, which I felt wasn't bad considering my exhaustion and how long it been since I had studied, and a strange little test that posited a mythical language, some rules and vocabulary, which I only managed a 57 on. When I heard these scores, my hopes of getting to the Monterey Language School pretty much evaporated, because I thought I hadn't done well enough to garner a posting there.

Almost three years later, when I was going through the round of separation interviews, designed to convince one to re-enlist in the Army, I learned the truth about those scores. I wasn't the least interested in continuing my association with what I considered, based on considerable experience, a gang of lunatics, maniacs, dimwits and losers. The SFC conducting one of these interviews surprised me by bringing up my oft-repeated request for assignment to the Language School, telling me he could get me in the program, if I signed on the dotted line, of course. I replied that I didn't think I did well enough to merit such an assignment, but he said, "Oh yes, you did." I asked what he meant, saying I had only scored an 88 on the Spanish Test, and far less than that on the other language test. He stunned me by saying that 57 was the highest score he had ever seen, that the usual score on the test was around 19. I sat there with my jaw flapping, thinking how different things might have been.

By that time, I had spent a year in Europe, learning French from the female civilian operators on our military switchboard, one of whom was my girlfriend, and another year in VietNam, where knowing French came in handy. I learned French from Genevieve Pinot, during our days at the switchboard, and our nights in restaurants, bars and her apartment, achieving a rudimentary fluency, much better than I ever mastered Spanish, in six short months. I still remember words, phrases and conjugations in French, some 38 years later, and can translate reasonably well, although I haven't used it much in the ensuing years. The language still holds some semblance of romance for me, memories of a skinny, shy 17 year old who felt pretty mature, being able to navigate on his own through Paris. I have always wanted to return to visit again the places I knew so well back then, to hear the patois of French spoken on the street, to enjoy pommes-frites, and climb le Tour Eiffel, or marvel at l'Arc de Triomphe and then walk down the Champs Elysee, to my room at the Hotel George Cinq. Perhaps one day, perhaps.

Through it all, I have thoroughly enjoyed the realm of languages, the way words ripple and shimmer in the hands of a skilled writer or an effective orator; an artfully turned phrase, whether spoken or written, has the power to motivate, to arouse, to thrill, to challenge, to change. Just as fascinating as our own are these "foreign" languages, with their unfamiliar cadences and sometimes awkward, for American ears, pronunciations and accents. I have collected phrases and words as I passed through, as a memento of my early interest in language studies, committing them to memory, saving them for use at an appropriate moment, possibly to ease a strangers tension in my "foreign" (to him) land, partly to help in communication and to help break down the barriers that prevent us from effective communication. In doing so, I have realized a greater appreciation for my own language, polyglot that it is, as I recognize words that have traveled into our vocabulary as surely as English has traveled into the vocabularies of languages all around the world. Languages are a living entity, at least those that are vibrant and meant to last; English is the best example of liveliness, borrowing shamelessly from any source, morphing and changing as new words and definitions are needed and old ones lose their value.