Possible insanity

So, a comp lit fit has struck me. With my new biblical Hebrew study in the mornings, the modern languages were feeling neglected, and that just couldn’t be. To remedy it, then, I’ve taken up a new schedule, this one fairly lightweight but hopefully the benefits will be more than chaff. My longterm goal (and this could be very longterm) is to read French, German, Italian, and Spanish fluently. (I’m interested in other modern languages, too, but I want to be really good at these, since they’re the major ones. And yes, Arabic too, but it’s later down the road. :))

Here’s how it’ll work: I spend ten minutes a night (just before I write in my journal and go to bed) reading from a book in the langue du jour, except instead of du jour it’s du week. :P This week it’s Italian, reading Dante’s Commedia, starting with the Inferno. Next week it’ll be French, reading Molière’s Le Misanthrope. After that, the Brothers Grimm in German. And for the last language of the cycle, Gabriel García Márquez’s Crónica de una muerte anunciada in Spanish. And then back to Italian, and so on and so forth.

At this point I should make it clear that I don’t actually know most of these languages. I’ve dabbled in all of them, and I know a smattering of each, but I’ve never formally studied them, and so I’m basically just winging it. Ordinarily this would be a dangerous thing. :) But you see, this won’t be the last time I read Dante in Italian, and so I’m seeing this mainly as an exercise to get some regular reading in and pull myself up by my (nonexistent) bootstraps. It’s okay if I don’t understand everything. I don’t expect to. But with a dictionary in hand and supplementary grammar study on the side, I can understand quite a bit, and just immersing myself in the literature will get me some bonus knowledge for free. And because I’m not going to be writing a dissertation based on my reading of these texts, or anything like unto it — no scholarly output, that is — it doesn’t matter if I read something wrong. I’ll read it again, and by then I’ll be really good at reading the language, and I’ll pick up all the nuances I missed the first time round.

Yes, this is kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. And yes, in a way it’s terrifying. But at the same time, what do I have to lose? Sure, Dante’s hard. Sure, Grimm is grim. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Sure, I don’t know these languages, at least not well. But you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. This’ll be fun. I’ll learn a lot, get some good experience with original texts, and eventually be able to say that I learned Italian by reading Dante. :)

I had a prof at the Y. He just read an article in a target language a day. He just read in a different language each day. He read his scriptures in their biblical language.

All said, it sounds like you have too much time on your hands;)

Ben, you’re my hero. And where do you get the time to do all this?

You should have said “Dante is daunting and Grimm is grim”

That would have been a lot cooler.

Donna: Too much time? Not possible. :) Reading in the different languages is the key, and once you get to the point where you can read easily, it’s not too hard to keep them up as long as you keep reading regularly. It’s only hard when you’re also wanting to typeset books and paint watercolors and write songs and novels and maybe even date somewhere in there. ~sigh~

James: LOL, I’m not quite sure where I get the time. The only answer I’ve come up with so far is that I don’t watch TV, but surely it doesn’t give me that much time. I do try to use my mornings effectively…

Sixline: LOL, rats, I wish I’d thought of that. :)