"Don't think in English, think in German," my German tutor tells me as I translate yet another sentence from English to German in my head. I can't. I find it difficult to not think in English for that's what I've done all my life. German grammar is tough, but English hasn't been all that easy either.
"You must learn to think in English," our fourth-grade English teacher had once told us. I looked at my report card. Of all the subjects I had scored the lowest in English. Damn! Screwed the percentage again. I did not understand why I couldn't 'get' English. Somehow, I always got it perfect when I wrote the tests in the language on other subjects - Science, History, Geography, etc. Then why couldn't I score in the English Language paper?
Our English papers were divided into two. Language stressed on grammar, comprehension and composition. Literature, I loved for it provided me with stories and poems from the faraway land I was fascinated with. But damn Language! It was really strange. I could compose but I couldn't comprehend. I had once scored 1.5 out of 10 in a comprehension test. My teacher was as shocked as I was. "Who scores a 1.5? All you had to do was pick the answers out of the comprehension passage," she said, disbelievingly. But the teacher missed one crucial point. I couldn't comprehend Comprehension. It wasn't exactly 'Reference to the Context' that we had in Literature. Besides, I was a slow-reader. Had they given me 20 minutes more, the results might have been different. Or maybe not, for I didn't like the idea of reading long passages in the first place.
Still, from fourth grade till the tenth grade my struggle continued. "Keep it simple," my mom advised. I became better as I started to think only in English, read mostly English and write almost only in English. I read the works of Shakespeare, Wordworth, Milton and Lawrence. I took to William Somerset Maugham and his writings on the south-East. I was a brilliant writer in Hindi, but that took a backseat. Thanks to my bullish attitude towards the language, my English grades improved tremendously. The language became my medium during my years at college and my tool of communication through my years in journalism.
I am not good with languages. I can read, write and speak English and Hindi. My mother-tongue is Bengali, which I can neither read nor write and I speak without an accent. I can read Marathi, Italian, a little Latin and now a bit of German but I lose my words in conversation. I understand much of Gujarati and Punjabi, a lot of Urdu and a smattering of Persian, Tamil and Arabic. I understand many languages but I am not a linguist. I use English. I choose English. Call me Anglophile, but that's the language of my thoughts and letters. It's difficult to let it go all at once to think in another language. But, I shall try.
"You must learn to think in English," our fourth-grade English teacher had once told us. I looked at my report card. Of all the subjects I had scored the lowest in English. Damn! Screwed the percentage again. I did not understand why I couldn't 'get' English. Somehow, I always got it perfect when I wrote the tests in the language on other subjects - Science, History, Geography, etc. Then why couldn't I score in the English Language paper?
Our English papers were divided into two. Language stressed on grammar, comprehension and composition. Literature, I loved for it provided me with stories and poems from the faraway land I was fascinated with. But damn Language! It was really strange. I could compose but I couldn't comprehend. I had once scored 1.5 out of 10 in a comprehension test. My teacher was as shocked as I was. "Who scores a 1.5? All you had to do was pick the answers out of the comprehension passage," she said, disbelievingly. But the teacher missed one crucial point. I couldn't comprehend Comprehension. It wasn't exactly 'Reference to the Context' that we had in Literature. Besides, I was a slow-reader. Had they given me 20 minutes more, the results might have been different. Or maybe not, for I didn't like the idea of reading long passages in the first place.
Still, from fourth grade till the tenth grade my struggle continued. "Keep it simple," my mom advised. I became better as I started to think only in English, read mostly English and write almost only in English. I read the works of Shakespeare, Wordworth, Milton and Lawrence. I took to William Somerset Maugham and his writings on the south-East. I was a brilliant writer in Hindi, but that took a backseat. Thanks to my bullish attitude towards the language, my English grades improved tremendously. The language became my medium during my years at college and my tool of communication through my years in journalism.
I am not good with languages. I can read, write and speak English and Hindi. My mother-tongue is Bengali, which I can neither read nor write and I speak without an accent. I can read Marathi, Italian, a little Latin and now a bit of German but I lose my words in conversation. I understand much of Gujarati and Punjabi, a lot of Urdu and a smattering of Persian, Tamil and Arabic. I understand many languages but I am not a linguist. I use English. I choose English. Call me Anglophile, but that's the language of my thoughts and letters. It's difficult to let it go all at once to think in another language. But, I shall try.
No comments:
Post a Comment