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How did we end up with a POTUS who speaks not a lick of a foreign language?

Facilis descensus Averno;
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
-- Virgil, The Aeneid


Is the fact of Trump's monolingualism a huge disservice to the American people? No. It's a small one, a very small one, but a small disservice is yet a disservice. For as much as I despise Donald Trump, for as much as I find him boorish and banal, I wouldn't fire him for being monolingual. I absolutely will ridicule him for it because, among other things, given his "to the manor born" background, it's shameful that he is, particularly in light of Trump's having asserted that he was a good student. Minimally, the American people deserve to have a very well educated POTUS.


Frankly, that expectation applied to kids of Trump's day (and social segment) and mine. My grandfather, father, I, two of my sons, my male first cousins, and my uncles were/are St. Grottlesexers. Trump attended NYMA, which is similar but with military school discipline added. We all share having so-called fancy educations. Whereas in my time (I graduated in the late '70s) and before, a modern language and Latin or Greek was required, my alma mater altered the explicit requirement for learning a classical language, making it a requirement to learn either a classical or a modern language.

I looked for NYMA's current curriculum requirements; no luck finding them. Here're the graduation requirements at Groton, St. Paul's, St. Marks, and Middlesex:
Trump had the fancy education, and shows no evidence of having had a good non-fancy education. When he's extemporizing, he doesn't even speak in complete sentences.

If going to a school like NYMA, a St. Grottlesex school, etc., the expectation of one's coming out "educated" be inapt, particularly in the '60s, then it is is/was an unfitting expectation of students attending any school. Astoundingly, Trump went only to "fancy" schools -- NYMA, Fordham, and U. Penn -- managed to graduate and, by all indications, has disabused himself of his learnings there. One'd think "intellectual osmosis" alone would have allowed him to retain at least a partial mastery of whatever language he studied at NYMA. (Hell, for as many lawsuits as he's been in, one'd think he has some smattering of Latin he could claim as a second language.)

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I'm not going to argue the point about Trump's demonstrable lack of education since I agree with you completely. He may know something about business, or at least charlatanism, but strikes me as intellectually incurious, completely ignorant of history and, as you point out, probably speaks English at about a 6th grade level, if that much.

When I was speaking about Latin and Greek not being useful I was speaking more from a practical aspect of the day to day work that a President does. As a practical matter a modern president would be better off know Russian or Chinese. Herbert Hoover and his wife both spoke Chinese, he spent years there and was a student of the culture. They apparently spoke Chinese to each other in the Whitehouse when they didn't want others to know what they were speaking about.

As far as school language learning is concerned I went to high school in the late 70s and college in the early 80s. I took three years of French in high school but had no language requirement in college, I graduated from Fordham. Language has become something of a hobby and I've been self teaching myself several, Latin among them, in recent years. My experience self teaching, which has included spending hours reading about various methods to learn languages, is that modern classroom instruction, at least that which I was exposed to, is completely useless. After three years of drilling French grammar and vocabulary I couldn't speak or read anything in the language outside of prepared textbook material.
 
Yep, for the most part. His novelty and niggardly attitude toward intellectualism and nuance too is highly disconcerting.

...And what do people do about a reprobate? They promote him/her into a position of honor; they ostracize the cur, and rightly so. That is clearly not what has happened with Trump.

As much as I despise Trump, his name'd neither cross my lips nor his being enter my thoughts but for his being POTUS. That man was on television for however long, and not once did he earn my notice. I'd just as soon he remained so, but instead I am daily besieged by his boorishness and banality.


I am indeed living with it. That doesn't mean I like it. The fact that I don't like it, the fact that I detest Trump -- not Conservatives, not Republicans, Trump -- is, without question part of why I have chided him for his monolingualism.

I personally dislike the man, never voted for him and never would. My dislike is deeply rooted in his obnoxious persona. I also didn't like the choice the Democrats gave us in 2016 either. In my mind, neither one belonged within a million miles of the Oval Office. Like 8 million other Americans, I voted third party refusing to pick my own and perhaps America's own poison.

Do I regret that choice knowing what I do now. Not one bit, if the 2016 election was held today between Trump and Clinton, I still would vote third party. So too would most others who voted third party back in 2016. 2016 was my first presidential election where I was totally disgusted with both major party candidates. I cast my first presidential vote back in 1968, you had to be 21 back then.

Matter of fact, these two major party candidates were the first two major party candidates that I actually detested. Not a single presidential candidate during my lifetime from either party earned my disdain as these two did. I thought regardless of which candidate won, either one would be good for America and take care of the nation. 2016 was the first election in which I came to the conclusions that regardless of who won, the winner would leave this country in far worst shape than when the winner first entered.

As they say, there is a first time for everything.
 
I don't know whether you're equivocating on the distinction between mastering a language in school -- getting A's in the class -- or mastering a language in the abstract sense, such as having as strong a command of it as, say Bill Buckley, Bill Safire, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou.

As a matter of fact, yes. Hell, yes. All four of my kids did. I did. Momma did. Dad did. My siblings did. Most of their and my classmates did. It's probably worth noting that at schools like NYMA where/when Trump went, almost everybody earns As of some sort, graded on the seven-point scale (all As fall between 93 and 100). (Don't ask me why, but for some reason, my "contrarian" son's school used a "wonky" 11-point scale that had pluses for all grades but A, which had either A or A-. My daughter's school was even more bizarre, but somehow colleges figure out what the number grades actually mean in "the real world." )

By one's fourth semester studying the language, the entire class was conducted in the language -- French, Spanish, Latin, etc. Language classes were like English class, except it was French or Spanish or whatever. Students are assigned literature to read, they read it, they discuss it in class, they write papers about it. The same kinds of conversations happen in, say, French class as any other class.
  • French: Maybe the current week's literature is Les Misérables. In discussing it, someone might also connect something from the story to something they saw or did in Paris, for instance, recounting being at a patisserie on St. Denis, or describing a section of another city they visited that reminded them of a setting Hugo described. That might lead into a sidebar discussion about the political, social, economic, etc. life at the time and how it's similar to or different from the present day. That whole conversation happens in French.

    Every word we uttered in English was a half point reduction in our grade on the next writing assignment and a one point reduction in the classroom participation grade. Even during a fire drill, the teacher's instruction to leave our belongings behind and exit into the hallway were in French.
A thing to understand about learning a language in a scholastic setting is that the only ways one is taught to speak and write are the grammatically and illocutionarianally correct ways to do so; consequently, upon traveling to a place where the language is spoken, one has to learn the local colloquialisms, idioms, and so on, but lacking those elements is a matter of a degree of fluency/mastery, not a matter of how close to being fluent one is. It's no different with English or anything else that's measured not discretely, but on a continuum. For instance:
  • Languages: One need not have a high degree of fluency to be rightly said to have mastered, be fluent in a language.
    • Beginner --> Intermediate speaker --> Fluent speaker --> Speaker with a high degree of fluency --> Beautiful/eloquent speaker of the language
  • Sports: One need not be a hall of famer to rightly claim having mastered the sport.
    • Intramural --> Junior varsity --> Varsity --> Collegiate athlete --> Olympian --> Bronze medal winner --> Silver medal winner --> Gold medal winners, or maybe
    • Intramural --> Junior varsity --> Varsity --> Collegiate athlete --> Pro --> Hall of Famer
So, yes, plenty of folks/kids master a foreign language in school. I'm sure plenty don't too. But again, Trump went to an elite boarding school where the bar is just higher. It was then just as it is now, and at the least, graduating from NYMA, he should have retained enough to say that he has at least partial mastery of a, any one, foreign language.

Now how many of those people that got As in four semesters in a foreign language class were still speaking that language 50 years after they graduated?
 
Uttering the occasional foreign phrase like a trained monkey is pretty phony. He is an American Prez representing the average American. It is the least I am worried about, him not speaking several languages. Some people do, some people don't. I am pretty sure that is not why his supporters elected him.
As for his wives, not sure why he prefers foreign women. I am somewhat curious about that.

I don't find it to be a trained monkey or even phony.


Not other people, but a Prez learning a phrase or 2 to show off when entertaining foreign dignitaries. Sorry I wasn't more clear.
Doveryai, no proveryai
-- Ronald Reagan


Surely, you jest.




The relevance of tossing off a simple sentence in an identity group's language can go a long way to establishing rapport and camaraderie, while driving home a host of tacit points. It shows that even though one is not one of them, one has made some sort of effort to understand them, or if nothing else a bit of humility. Truly one of the strongest ties any people have is their language.
"I'm a Berliner," would have rung every bit as hollow as Trump's attestations about [insert superlative or platitudinous verisimilitude he's asserted but not "backed up"]. There was only so much Kennedy could do to form a connection with Berliners, Germans; he was the American POTUS, not a German pol or celebrity. The courtesy of using German, however, hit the mark square, alluding simultaneously to notions of American inclusiveness, the NATO relationship, our unrelenting support for West Germany/Berlin, and more.

Yes, it's just a gesture, so to speak, but as with any gesture, one didn't have to make it, but it is that one did which humble people appreciate.


It's the the thought that counts.
-- Henry van Dyke​
 
When I was speaking about Latin and Greek not being useful I was speaking more from a practical aspect of the day to day work that a President does. As a practical matter a modern president would be better off know Russian or Chinese.
Okay, and agree by and large. I'm sure you know there're elements of philosophy, governance, humanity one obtains from reading the classics. Momma calls it the "color" to one's understanding and perspective one daily uses, particularly a POTUS. Be that as it may, that's not the same as speaking the language, but it's something that comes from learning Latin and that Trump should have but clearly does not.

I graduated from Fordham.
Curiosity + An anecdote:
Had the Jesuits there by then dropped their Latin requirement?

One of my childhood pals went to a Jesuit high school in the D.C. area and was required to take Latin, but by the time his younger brother got there, the Latin requirement had been dropped.


My folks would have bridge parties with a couple Jesuit clerics from Georgetown. God forfend one of Br. Jon's finesses didn't work..."Bovus stercus!" Qualem blennum! was sure to be heard the instant Fr. Bradley discovered Br. Jon had made a poor bid. We kids knew what they were saying, but we all knew better than to repeat it because our parents also knew Latin. LOL Momma never cursed, except in French when playing bridge.

So it is among the adults in my family. We all use foul language, but not foul English.


The trick to being a good bridge player is the same as the trick to everything else: thinking about the right thing at the right time.
-- Momma​

As far as school language learning is concerned I went to high school in the late 70s and college in the early 80s. I took three years of French in high school but had no language requirement in college, I graduated from Fordham. ...After three years of drilling French grammar and vocabulary I couldn't speak or read anything in the language outside of prepared textbook material.
Though it seems we are about the same age, your foreign language instruction experience seems to have differed from that of everyone whom I know from that period in my life.

Was yours a "fancy" prep school like Trump attended? I'm asking because that can make a huge difference because the curricula and expectations are different. For example, this was the grading scale I faced: As --> 93-100; Bs --> 86-92; Cs -->78-85; Ds --> 70-77. Because that was the grading scale and because one had to earn a C to get credit for the class, C students necessarily had to master more of the material than did C students faced with less challenging grading scales. Where I went, one was on the verge of academic expulsion if one was earning low to mid 70-somethings. The higher expectations seem, based on what I'm reading from you and what I know as my own experience, to have fomented, in the main, higher performance, which likely explains why from the end of 10th grade we were "blabbering" in the foreign language about anything and everything.

So when someone describes what they experienced at their school, unless it was scholastically like NYMA, "St. Grottlesex," Exeter, and other elite boarding schools, the experience isn't comparable.

FWIW, one thing that makes boarding school different is that one is in a very isolated environment. Everyone in one's daily life is at the school, 24/7. One result of that is that one may as well study because, after dinner (7 pm to around 10:30-11 p.m. or so), that's what one's friends are doing. One might have some time (~15-30 minutes) after studying and before "lights out" to mess around a bit, but mostly one just does what everyone else does, study. Of course, one doesn't have to. There're lounges for watching TV and playing games and maybe somebody's there. To be sure, folks have their favorite TV shows, so they'll be there to watch them as a study break.

Aside:
I swear, I think 30 minute sitcoms were invented for students at boarding school. LOL An hour long show really eats into one's time, but 30 minutes is perfect. Similarly, I think the reason there's 7 and 11 p.m. news is because once one is "grown up," one gets home from the office around seven, dinner's at eight, and one'll pretty much be home by eleven, which gives the babysitter time to get home before her curfew. I didn't notice that until I had kids and a professional life, but sure as God made little green apples that's exactly how it worked, especially in the summer when the kids were back from school.
 
Now how many of those people that got As in four semesters in a foreign language class were still speaking that language 50 years after they graduated?
Why do you want to know that? What does how our lives function have to do with Donald Trump and his role as POTUS?

Whatever...Just to answer your question....

Among my cohort from then, all of us. We all worked internationally at various times. Sooner or later one'll happen upon a Latino neighborhood and speaking Spanish will be useful. We all travel internationally, including to countries where the language we learned is spoken. Hell, when traveling, plenty of times I've encountered locals who speak French or Spanish but not English, and I don't speak their native language. I'm sure that's not a unique experience.

Do we use our other languages every day of every year? Of course, not. No school, certainly not high school, teaches foreign languages because the students are expected to use them all the time.
-- https://www.wyzant.com/resources/lessons/english/esl/resource-guide/value_of_esl
 
Okay, and agree by and large. I'm sure you know there're elements of philosophy, governance, humanity one obtains from reading the classics. Momma calls it the "color" to one's understanding and perspective one daily uses, particularly a POTUS. Be that as it may, that's not the same as speaking the language, but it's something that comes from learning Latin and that Trump should have but clearly does not.


Curiosity + An anecdote:
Had the Jesuits there by then dropped their Latin requirement?

One of my childhood pals went to a Jesuit high school in the D.C. area and was required to take Latin, but by the time his younger brother got there, the Latin requirement had been dropped.


My folks would have bridge parties with a couple Jesuit clerics from Georgetown. God forfend one of Br. Jon's finesses didn't work..."Bovus stercus!" Qualem blennum! was sure to be heard the instant Fr. Bradley discovered Br. Jon had made a poor bid. We kids knew what they were saying, but we all knew better than to repeat it because our parents also knew Latin. LOL Momma never cursed, except in French when playing bridge.

So it is among the adults in my family. We all use foul language, but not foul English....




No I didn't go to a fancy prep school. Just your run-of-the-mill Catholic boys school, though now it's co-ed. It was and still is a good school but not elite by any stretch of the imagination. We had a choice of three languages: Spanish, French or Latin. As I recall there were 10-11 classes of Spanish, 3-4 of French but only 1 of Latin. The emphasis was on grammatical structures and vocabulary acquisition. The instructors mixed French and English in class, I don't recall how much French was spoken but it was certainly less than a quarter of the time. There was no reading that I can recall outside of what was in the textbooks. In retrospect it was designed to allow you to check off the foreign language requirement checkbox and not give you a usable skill. Contrast that to the way I'm learning languages on my own which is very heavily weighted towards reading and listening to authentic materials - sometimes as much as two hours a day.

I didn't have a language requirement at all at Fordham where I majored in Computer Science. According to the school's website Latin and Greek are still offered.

I did learn to curse fluently in Italian thanks to my grandmother. She was a seamstress and would cut loose with a stream of Italian 4-letter words if something got into her tomatoes or if one of us kids pissed her off.​
 
I did learn to curse fluently in Italian thanks to my grandmother. She was a seamstress and would cut loose with a stream of Italian 4-letter words if something got into her tomatoes or if one of us kids pissed her off.
Lord, but isn't that among the best reasons to learn and greatest uses of a foreign language. LOL It just doesn't sound so crass when one curses in a different language. LOL
 
Having traveled I can say English speaking people are a bit catered too, which has been helpful for me since I'm not bilingual. I do admire the trait, however. During my jaunts in Europe and the middle-east I've run into so many people that are not just bilingual, but trilingual and sometimes more. One Egyptian man I visited with spoke several languages which greatly aided him as a perfume merchant in the tourist bazar. He conversed easily in English. Said he also was fluent in German and I believe Italian, and was now learning Mandarin because of an uptick in Chinese visitors. Of course, being multilingual speaks largely to geography so I don't necessarily fault anyone for ending up speaking only their native tongue, but nevertheless, a person could only gain by speaking an additional language. Belgium has three national languages, Flemish/Dutch, French, and German.

I don't fault President Trump for his lack of foreign language literacy, however, I do fault him for how he uses English sometimes.

I was thinking that Bush II spoke passable Spanish. I have since found that fact debatable. Wikipedia notes the last President with fluid command of a foreign tongue(German and French) was FDR. Bill Clinton is said to have partial mastery of German, Jimmy Carter gets the same for Spanish, and Barrack Obama knows some basic Indonesian phrases from his time there as a child.

At one time America was not the center of the world so conversing in a foreign tongue bore greater strategic importance, as well as was a reflection of a classical time. Not as much anymore, however I do believe having a fluent bilingual President would aid in America's standing in the world, as well as just be a generally good idea.
 
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I'm not going to argue the point about Trump's demonstrable lack of education since I agree with you completely. He may know something about business, or at least charlatanism, but strikes me as intellectually incurious, completely ignorant of history and, as you point out, probably speaks English at about a 6th grade level, if that much.

When I was speaking about Latin and Greek not being useful I was speaking more from a practical aspect of the day to day work that a President does. As a practical matter a modern president would be better off know Russian or Chinese. Herbert Hoover and his wife both spoke Chinese, he spent years there and was a student of the culture. They apparently spoke Chinese to each other in the Whitehouse when they didn't want others to know what they were speaking about.

As far as school language learning is concerned I went to high school in the late 70s and college in the early 80s. I took three years of French in high school but had no language requirement in college, I graduated from Fordham. Language has become something of a hobby and I've been self teaching myself several, Latin among them, in recent years. My experience self teaching, which has included spending hours reading about various methods to learn languages, is that modern classroom instruction, at least that which I was exposed to, is completely useless. After three years of drilling French grammar and vocabulary I couldn't speak or read anything in the language outside of prepared textbook material.

One comment, as I generally agree about studying in school being of limited value. Grammar is important. I went to Mexico for two plus years. with roughly a year and a half of high school Spanish. I think I learned it much more quickly having had Spanish basics. One tip from a fellow gringo about subjunctive, plus a day or two memorizing verbs and I was more or less set. One advantage in Spanish is the ease of pronunciation, so that bad Spanish is understandable to Mexicans, but bad English can be incomprehensible to English speakers.

But I wouldn't be so harsh on monolingual Americans. We have a huge country, two borders are oceans, and English speakers north of us.
 
In retrospect it was designed to allow you to check off the foreign language requirement checkbox and not give you a usable skill.
My junior high and high school years were "all about" getting kids to the point that they could score fours and fives on as many AP exams as one could possibly take and building character. The rationale of the former was that one would, as befit one's situation, either finish college six months to a year sooner than one's "general population" age-peers or graduate from college with far more formal training than one's age-peers who attended "regular" schools.

None of high school was first and foremost about usable skills; "everyone" was going to college anyway, so there was no need for that. Our education was all about developing our analytical/critical thinking skills. Nobody ever talked expressly about critical thinking -- I don't think I heard that phrase at all until it was time for my kids to go to school -- but that's what one was being taught, somehow, to do in every class. Far and away, the most common phrases we saw/heard on assignments and exams were:
  • Evaluate the implications of...
  • Evaluate the impact of....
  • Compare and contrast....
  • Explain how "such and such" would be different were "thus and such" to have been....rather than.....
  • Explain the significance of....
  • What are the critical factors that distinguish....
Hell, we even had questions like that in math class. Truly, I have yet to meet anyone who routinely had a couple essay questions on math and science exams, but we damn sure did. My kids did.

It was challenging, but it was fun too. Your heart sank when you saw the exam questions. Test after test, I always had the same thought, "I studied everything under the sun, but not this. Where the heck did he come up this question?" I just did the best I could and hand in my exam booklet and wait. Then grades'd be posted and low and behold, you'd done well. I was dumbfounded over how, but sure wasn't going to complain. Then you get to class and get your bluebook and see where you lost points and sit there thinking, "Well, damn! I knew that. I coulda said that." All the same, you'd been tested and performed admirably. That felt good, and that was the fun part.

The character building was just as important. I didn't know it until years later. Take, for example, posting of grades. That was one way in which we learned that we'd have reputations that, one way or another, people'd know us by, and no part of it would be secret. When all your "stuff" is out there on a bulletin board in the dorm hall for everyone to see, it doesn't take long to figure out that one has two choices, be comfortable in one's skin, or do something productive to "grow new skin." If you wanted to have a different skin, academically, on the sports field, socially, whatever, other kids in the class were willing to help....The "open book" way life was at school fostered honest and respectful relationships, great ones that endure even still. That's easily the best thing about the whole experience.
 
One comment, as I generally agree about studying in school being of limited value. Grammar is important. I went to Mexico for two plus years. with roughly a year and a half of high school Spanish. I think I learned it much more quickly having had Spanish basics. One tip from a fellow gringo about subjunctive, plus a day or two memorizing verbs and I was more or less set. One advantage in Spanish is the ease of pronunciation, so that bad Spanish is understandable to Mexicans, but bad English can be incomprehensible to English speakers.

But I wouldn't be so harsh on monolingual Americans. We have a huge country, two borders are oceans, and English speakers north of us.

That's English that they speak up there?? :)

I don't disagree that grammar is important, I just question the value of spending lots of time studying it. I agree with this quote from Kato Lomb, who spoke 16 languages all but her native Hungarian learned as an adult, and was one of the foremost translators of the 20th century, "you learn grammar from language, not language from grammar."

Be careful about Spanish pronunciation. My wife's family is from Spain and her mother was a native Spanish speaker, while my wife is bilingual Spanish and English. When we were first dating I tried to impress her mom around the holidays by wishing her "Happy New Year" in Spanish, "Feliz ano (with the tilde over the n) nuevo." Only, in supreme gringo fashion, I pronounced it as "ano" without the tilde and wound up saying "happy new anus" instead. Proper Spanish lady or not she laughed.
 
One comment, as I generally agree about studying in school being of limited value. Grammar is important. I went to Mexico for two plus years. with roughly a year and a half of high school Spanish. I think I learned it much more quickly having had Spanish basics. One tip from a fellow gringo about subjunctive, plus a day or two memorizing verbs and I was more or less set. One advantage in Spanish is the ease of pronunciation, so that bad Spanish is understandable to Mexicans, but bad English can be incomprehensible to English speakers.

But I wouldn't be so harsh on monolingual Americans. We have a huge country, two borders are oceans, and English speakers north of us.

Interesting thing about the subjunctive. Learning the subjunctive mood in French did wonders for my grasp of it, and mood in general, in English. Who'd have thought learning another language would improve one's English skills? French also helped me with having a better sense of syntax, adverbial/adjectival phrases, prepositional phrase placement, and a few other things in English.
 
We as a country are isolated, we are arrogant and don't really care as a whole, also with English being the "International language" others are forced into knowing English.

If every state had a different language like countries in Europe did, we'd speak more languages. I live in NJ, I can be in NY, in 10 minutes, 5 with no traffic. 60 min. and I'm in Ct., 90 minutes and I'm in Pa.,3 hours and I'm in Del. So knowing 5 languages would not be uncommon for people in my region.
 
But I wouldn't be so harsh on monolingual Americans. We have a huge country, two borders are oceans, and English speakers north of us.

Americans in general --> I agree.
Individual Americans who've been "spoon fed" the opportunity to be multilingual and wasted it --> I'm not going to give them a "pass." I don't because there are so many people who for one reason or another are given nothing. I think it's vulgar and depraved to do that. In a way it's sort of like nibbling a tiny bite from each course in a nine course meal and discarding the rest while hungry people watch one do so.
 
The title question is straightforward enough.

Of course, unlike Europeans of whom over half are bilingual, only about a quarter of Americans can hold a conversation in another language.

This is, after all, the 21st century. Airplane travel is cheap and common. I'm almost 60, and even when I was in school, mastering a modern foreign language was required. Hell, we were required to study one as far back as what was then called "nursery three," if I recall correctly, but many places these days call it "preschool." In my day, it was fun, and there was plenty of "playing," but there wasn't any "pre" about it. It was school....we were writing, counting, and singing in two languages. Hell, we were even graded on our performance. Even my nonagenarian mother speaks French and Latin along with English. Trump went to a good school (academically), yet he speaks English, which, no less, he speaks poorly.


He speaks the only language needed, and that's dollars and cents, and carries a very big stick. ;)

Tim-
 
That's English that they speak up there?? :)

I don't disagree that grammar is important, I just question the value of spending lots of time studying it. I agree with this quote from Kato Lomb, who spoke 16 languages all but her native Hungarian learned as an adult, and was one of the foremost translators of the 20th century, "you learn grammar from language, not language from grammar."

Be careful about Spanish pronunciation. My wife's family is from Spain and her mother was a native Spanish speaker, while my wife is bilingual Spanish and English. When we were first dating I tried to impress her mom around the holidays by wishing her "Happy New Year" in Spanish, "Feliz ano (with the tilde over the n) nuevo." Only, in supreme gringo fashion, I pronounced it as "ano" without the tilde and wound up saying "happy new anus" instead. Proper Spanish lady or not she laughed.

Great story. Nice lady.

Some years ago the farmworkers union's first button said "Huelga Delano" (Strike in the town of Delano). Some non Spanish-speakers printed it as "Huelga del ano" (Your anus refuses to work.). Also, Hueco, the origin of the name of the town Waco, means a crack, a narrow space in Mexico, named for an Indian nation that settled there. In other Spanish language countries, my impression is that it is not used so much, as it can mean a woman's, ahem, certain body part.

The problem is universal. With my dad sick in Italy, I informed the doc in the elevator as he came up to our room, that he was "dizzy." My Italian was faulty. What I said was that my father was stupid.
 
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