The first time somebody punched me was perhaps my first or second day at Primary school. I´d uttered the word “girl” and it was followed by a blow to the head with other children egging on my hateful attacker. He did n´t like the way I´d pronounced girl, in Scottish English, with two syllable “gi-rel”. I think this must have been the first time I became aware of langauge differences.
My dad´s Scottish and I grew up in England but in a household of Scots, save my mom, who´s from Birmingham, England, so I surely picked up the Scottish accent and dialect living amongst them. A bit later on, when we were perhaps seven or eight, me and my brother would have a right laugh listening to my nanny (my grandmother) and my great grandmother who was completely unintelligible. We delighted in imitating my nan and one memorable phrase was her “Dreeeew thwai yll wek the weein”. She screamed it out every time my uncle Drew came in from the pub, a bit the worse for wear, at the weekends. It always woke us up and we´d look at each other and chuckle and imitate my nan´s peculiar way of speaking. We eventually worked out what she was saying was “Drew, be quite, you´ll wake up the children”. It just goes to show that we learn language through repetition and listening and context.
We used to go on holiday to Cornwall which is on the South West coast of England. I remember lying in my sleeping baglistening to the radio which was picking up French programmes. Then one day I said to my mom “Listen mom, I can speak French….jeeerrr oooh haaaa eeee haaaa yy aaar” and I was honestly convinced, and impresed with myself, that i could speak French. I think my mom replied “Don´t be silly son, that isn´t French, it takes years of hard work to learn a language”. Little did she know. In fact I learnt Spanish more or less that way, listening and then trying to repeat what I´d heard. Ok, it took some time, perhaps I´d have been better off sitting down and studying but for me at least, sitting down and studying has always been hard, mainly because I´m always on the go, so I learnt a lot through listening, radio and TV whilst I was doing other things.
At school everyone did French and after my early start you would have imagined I would have excelled at French but that was not the case, in fact they put me in the remedial group for French with kids who could n´t even read and write in English, which was probably a mistake, some teacher probably messed up the marking on Friday afternoon after his or her weekly pub lunch. I remained in that group for three years never passing the exams because, as I say, I can´t study, but in the final exam after the third year there was a speaking exam and the teacher was like ZUT ALORRS!!! I´d failed the written exam but had got 10 out of ten in the speaking test, a school all time record. I´d picked it all up through listening.
I got better at exams when I reached fifteen, maybe because I had a twin brother and my mom and dad´s motivation tool was buying us presents if we passed our exams. I really started getting into English at this stage, in fact my intention had been to study English Literature at university but as it turned out I completely cocked up the final exam, once again through my inability to sit still for more than ten minutes – the two hour English Literature paper was a nightmare. I finished it and sat there bored and fidgity for half an hour waiting to leave the exam hall. I didn´t do what the teachers always remind you to do “Read the question paper carefully and answer all the questions”. I´d mistakedly not answered a question and condemned myself to a change of university and subject: Instead of English Literature in the green valleys of Wales I did economics at rainy Salford, a sort of English Mostoles or Badalona.
At university I became very aware of my Birmingham accent. The students were either posh kids from London or posh kids from Manchester pretending to be working class and speaking that nasally Manc twang like Noel Gallagher from Oasis. Everybody took the mickey out of my accent because in England the Birmingham accent, as is the Liverpool one, is the preserve of comedians. However serious you try to be, if you say it in either of these accents people laugh at you. I had to drop my Brum accent and I did and exchanged it for a Northern Ireland accent to confuse everybody. I was going out with a girl from there and in the 1980´s and 90´s anybody with a Northern Ireland accent was immediately a terrorist suspect.
I eventually dropped the Northern Irish brogue and went for an amalgam Irish (I was listening to a lot of folk music from there) and posh -ish Manchester. It stuck and even today when I speak to other English people they can ´t work out where I´m from, some think London, others Scotland or Ireland, but nobody suspects I´m from Brum!
I finally made it here to Spain and my initial attempts at learning Spanish by listening to Tex Mex Hispanic music by the likes of Flaco Jimenez didn´t help, neither did listening to flamenco and noting down words like camelar and fragua and canastera. It was fun though, using that method where when you learn a new word and you have to insert it into conversation as quickly as possible so I´d be meeting people and having conversations like:
YO: ¿Compadre, a qué se dedica tu padre?
OTRO: ¿Es funcionario, y el tuyo?
YO : Mi padre no es funcionario y no trabaja en la fragua, pero si, trabajó de minero
or
Mi madre no es canastera sino camarera
or
GIRL: ¿Como te llamas?
ME: Graham, y creo tu me camelas, verdad?
Anyway, over to you folks. What are your first memories and experiences of other languages?
Postscript:
Just remembered the first couple of times I spoke foreign languages for real. The first and only time I spoke German was to some German kids on a campsite holiday on the Costa Brava. I think I was about eleven and they were a bit younger. My dad said “Go and make friends with those kids” so I walked up to them and at the same time as raising my left arm straight out at 45 degrees and stomping my foot on the floor I cried “Heil Hitler”. The kids were bemused and my dad was horrified. I grew up with war films and absolutely the only thing I knew about Germany was all Germans were Nazis and we´d beat them in the war.
The first time I tried to speak Spanish was in that most Spanish of institutions, MacDonalds. I stood there nervously behind a couple of other customers rehearsing the language in my head and studying what was on offer: Menu 1, Menu 2, Menu 3, Menu 4. I went over it a few times “Buenas tardes, yo quiero el menu numero tres por favor” I finally got to the counter and said:
“errr, Buenos..as tardes, hola…. Err…. yo quiero…. errr…..el menu numero err tres (signalling with my fingers at the same time) por favor…”
The Mac Donalds was in Torremolinos, Costa del Sol. The chap serving looked at me for a few moments then replied, in perfect English
“I´m sorry mate, I can´t speak Spanish, can you tell me in English?”
I sort of felt proud that I could speak better Spanish than someone actually living and working in Spain.
RingRingEnglish 