How to Learn Any Language 29

How to Learn Any Language 29

At No Extra Cost
You may think you have a good idea precisely how your life will improve once you’ve mastered your target language. You’re wrong. It will be much better than you think.
Unexpected good things happen to you when you learn even a little of the other guy’s language. A chapter detailing some of those things may seem like preaching to the choir, when you consider that anybody likely to be reading this has already decided he wants to learn. So what? Who more than the members of the choir deserve the inspiration?
All the case histories that follow were culled and corroborated by members of the Language Club who were asked to be alert to all the nice little extras that come your way when you speak another language. Many of them happened to me personally and continue to happen almost daily.
In New York and some other major cities a huge percentage of the cab drivers are from Haiti. Try this, just to get a taste of the power of another language. If your driver is Haitian, lean forward and say (phonetically), “Sa (rhymes with “ma”) pass (“pasta” without the “ta”) SAY (as in the English “say”), pa-PA (“papa,” but accented on the last syllable). Sort those sounds out and try it. “Sa paSAY paPA?” It means something like the French Comment ça va? (“How are you?”), but it’s not French. It’s his native Haitian Creole slang and he may never before have heard that utterance from the lips of a non-Haitian.
That one line is guaranteed to get you reactions ranging from a long, slow smile to a cheery “Where did you learn that?” to loud and joyous laughter to the exclamation, “You must know Haiti well!”
Don’t get the idea that Haitians are the only ones susceptible to the charm of hearing a few words of their language. They just may be more demonstrative than most in showing it. Romanian cab drivers have turned off the metre and given me a free ride in return for my “Good morning” in Romanian. A Soviet Georgian cab driver refused to take my money and invited me to Sunday dinner at his home, one of the tastiest treats and most interesting evenings I’ve ever enjoyed. An Indonesian cab driver screamed – that’s all, just screamed – upon hearing “Thank you” in his language.
I’ve long suspected there’s a memo posted in the kitchen of every Chinese restaurant in America instructing all personnel not to let any American who exhibits any knowledge of Chinese go unrewarded. Try this experience, just to taste the power.
The Chinese term for “chopsticks” is kwai dze. The first word is pronounced like the Asian river the American war prisoners built the bridge over. The second word sounds like the ds in “suds.”
The next time you’re in a Chinese restaurant, smile at the waiter and say “Kwai dze.” When he brings the chopsticks, smile again and say, “Shieh, shieh” (“Thank you”). Pronounce that as you should “she expects,” making sure you never get as far as the x and accentuating the “she”. The immediate payoffs on this one can range from a free plum brandy cocktail at the end of the meal clear over to a stubborn refusal to let you pay. The more subtle, and satisfying, payoff is that they will assume you know not only the rest of the Chinese language but the Chinese cuisine as well, and they’ll probably give you no less than the absolute finest the house can produce every time they see you come in.
Your rewards for knowing even a paltry few words of a language vary in inverse proportion to the likelihood that you’ll know any at all. A German baker isn’t likely to endorse his whole day’s profit on strudel over to your favourite charity merely because you enter his shop with a big “Guten Tag” (“Good day”), but an Albanian baker might if you enter with “Tungjatjeta.” You won’t knock French socks off with a “Comment allez-vous?” (“How are you?”), but you may set winter gloves flying in Helsinki with a correctly pronounced “(Hyvää Päivää)” (“Good morning”).
Don’t overdo it. I’ve known cab drivers from obscure countries almost drive off the road when they’re surprised with a burst of their native tongue from an American passenger, and once I had a Chinese waitress in a Jewish delicatessen (honest!) get so rattled when I ordered for our party in Chinese that she messed up our order beyond redemption.

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