Language Acquisition 101: Or, Becoming Germanick

So last week I completed my first wave of finals here in Germany. WTO, Venture Capital, EU Law, Comparative Intellectual Property. Check, check, check, and check.

Now, after a feverish week of studying and test-taking (4 days straight of early-morning exams), I have an entire week off. Many in the exchange group are traveling and enjoying themselves. I have decided, somewhat masochistically it turns out, to remain here in Hamburg and take intensive German classes for 4 hours a day.

The class itself is one of the more diverse collections of people you’ll find outside of a meeting of the General Assembly of the UN. In our group of 10 we have representatives from: Albania, Poland, China, Croatia, Mexico, Brazil, Britain, Kenya, and the US of A.

The people are friendly and the peer environment supportive and non-judgmental.

The teacher/student dynamic, however, is a bit different.

It’s not so much that he points out our plentiful errors, which, fair enough, is kind of what we pay him to do. No, it’s that he sees every mistake as a reason to mock us mercilessly with some sort of long stand-up routine.

Mercilessly.

To give an example of what I mean, imagine you are a non-native, limited-ability English speaker. You are trying to say that the boy “was running” around town, but you make an error and say “the boy was runny” around town.

That's mildly funny right? Sure.

Now imagine that the teacher, even though he is perfectly aware of what you mean, looks at you incredulously.

“Runny? The boy was runny?” he says, a faux-confused look on his face. “Like, he was a liquid? What, was he melting? Was he some sort of alien or mutant or something that had special powers and could turn his body into liquid?”

You quickly correct your error, but the class has begun to laugh at his outlandish examples, encouraging him.

“Was he like some sort of snail-man who oozes snail goo all over the place?” He continues, pointing at you and gathering steam and doing his best impression of what a snail-man would move and speak like. “Hey, everybody, look at me, I'm half snail, half man! Does this creature even exist? Who knows? Apparently Nick thinks he does. Nick literally thinks that there is a creature out there that is half snail, half man. Don't you Nick?"

He pauses and looks at you, as if he expects a real answer, and you nod wordlessly and hope he begins to start mocking someone else soon.

This, as far as I can tell, is his method. I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, it’s cheap and mean and dehumanizing.

On the other hand though, I’m starting to think it might be kind of brilliant. It might even be the best way possible to learn a language: one humiliating mistake after another.

Take law school, for example. The only way I can ever guarantee that I will remember something from class is if I screw it up. Or I suppose if someone else screws it up. I still remember a kid in 5th grade running out of class crying because he couldn’t remember the answer to a question about the human body (answer: tibia).

And that’s the point. You know all those memories that make you catch your breath in shame or embarrassment when you think about them? These tend to be instructive memories. And there’s this place in your brain where those memories are all indelibly recorded in high-definition to be replayed for the rest of your life. I think ideally, you need to get all your language mistakes into that part of your brain to succeed.

This is the Bob Knight school of language acquisition. And though the Bob Knight philosophy never really worked for me in basketball (it caused me to freeze-up and become erratic), I’m hoping it will be more effective in this field.

So, Mr. Professor Man, I’m going to put my faith in you. I’m going to trust that you know what you’re doing and that you are, like Bob Knight, a professional. Go wild. Next time I misuse the dative, pick up a chair and throw it against the wall. Next time I misconjugate a routine verb, call me an asshole, punch me in the gut and storm out of the classroom. Seriously, do it. You’ve got my blessing. The more outlandish and memorable the better.

It’s the only way I’ll learn.

A Poet and Don't Even Know It

This article is awesome.

Hart Seely from Slate went through three Sarah Palin interviews, pulled a few statements verbatim from them, lumped them into stanzas and then called them poetry.

The concept seems pretty straight-forward, but the results are beautiful.

Keep in mind, this isn't just a cheap shot at Palin for not being the most informed or clear candidate. I think this same process could probably produce amazing results for any politician (or any person for that matter). But I do think that Sarah Palin has the ability to be a really prolific poet if she keeps at it.

Here is one of my favorites. Especially note the deft use of repetition in the first stanza and the intentional ambiguity of the last line.

Absolutely brilliant.

"Outside"

I am a Washington outsider.
I mean,
Look at where you are.
I'm a Washington outsider.

I do not have those allegiances
To the power brokers,
To the lobbyists.
We need someone like that.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

Check out the article for more great hits like "On Good and Evil" and "Befoulers of the Verbiage."

Guanajuato (Guana-what-o?)

The mummy museum:

A while ago the authorities in Guanajuato started digging up the graves of people whose relatives couldn't afford to pay the graveyard fees (two guarantees: death and taxes right?). It turns out the minerals in the soil in Guanajuato naturally preserve human tissue and (especially) clothes, so they had all these creepy loooking mummies on their hands. If the mummies are presentable enough to make the cut, they put them in this museum.

This might be the coolest and most truly macabre museum I’ve seen in my life. My favorite bit? the little baby mummies perfectly preserved in cute, perfectly preserved baby blue cardigans (see above). In addition to the spooky music that keeps you on your toes as you make blind turns into new exhibition rooms, interpretations on Simon and Garfunkel play in the background free of charge. (Seriously).

Spanish speaking:

I’m currently doing the majority of my sightseeing with two excellent Spanish speakers, both who more or less speak it as a first language. This is obviously a plus and a minus. Plus: I can listen to them speak and crib notes and ask them questions. Minus: Whenever there is any millisecond break in communication or pause for reflection they are quick to the rescue. Eso es la vida.

The Basilica in Guanajuato:

It’s quite beautiful and impressive, but it’s under construction so I haven’t taken a picture. On one occasion I raised my camera, ready to capture her majesty, imperfections and all. But then felt a little dirty, like I was taking a picture of someone who wasn’t fully clothed without their permission. When the scaffolding on the walls of the basilica has been removed, I will get the shot that both I and the Basilica deserve.

The Ex-Hacienda Outside of Town:

The Ex-Hacienca included the luxurious mansion and immaculate, sprawling gardens where the nobles lived and played while the peasants slaved away in the hot Mexican sun. Some of them were over a million acres large. A million acres. Diego Rivera and Grant Wood would have been rolling, mummy-like, in their graves. Viva land reform!

Two New Blawgs at the University of Iowa, and Brief Discussion of My Hypochondriasis

It's just recently come to my attention that two new blawgs have sprung up in the past couple of weeks.

There's the UI Law Blog, which seems to have been created after the uproar of the Law School's three-spot, world-altering, student enraging slide in the upcoming U.S. News Ratings. Thus far they've provided pretty straightforward content dealing with the goings-ons at the Law School.

And there's also a blog called The First Floor that looks to have enlisted the help of some astute and playful bloggers to get them going and should be a pretty good read. Special kudos to the designer for making such a viewer/user friendly and handsome blog. Here' s a link to what I found to be the best post thus far, called "Law Student Tourette's."

In other news, I'm always kind of fretting about all of the awful, degenerative things that could be going on inside my body without my even being aware. I hear stories about people with brain tumors going undetected for years until they're the size of tennis balls and I think "is that happening to me right now?" In fact, I think about it so much that I give myself a headache. Which makes me think I have a tumor. Which makes me. . . etc.

So I'm always kind of fretting about things like that while still going about my daily activities and trying not to let it affect me. But lately something has changed. I'm beginning to think that resistance might be futile, that my environment is destined to get the better of me.

Take water for instance. Though I have long railed against bottled water as being an anti-environmental elitist perversion, I have recently grown very suspicious of the cloudy, chemical smelling liquid coming out of my faucet.

A few things have made me rethink my commitment to using cheap and easy tap water. First, in a Civil Action, which we were compelled to read for Civil Procedure this year, the kids who drank cloudy water ended up getting cancer and dying. Point taken. Second, the recent news in the DM Register a couple days ago brought it to my attention that we have a major ammonia problem with our water supply. Third, when we signed our lease at the beginning of the year I had to sign some sort of release about lead poisoning. I know it was a long time ago, but I still think about it when I turn on the tap after a late night jog.

Though I'm not ready to start importing Norwegian glacier water just yet, I might start trying to fill up my nalgene bottle at the law school for a little while and see how that works. Which brings me to another carcinogen (assuming we can count "water" as the first carcinogen) that I initially resisted.

Mobile phones.

They used to say things like "Get a cell phone," or "Why don't you have a cell phone?" or, more frequently, "Nick is the stupid person who doesn't use cell phones." They used to taunt and ridicule me for my studied, Amish-like (Amish-ish?) obstinacy. The abuse, the jeers, the rocks hurled in spite and disgust, it's all coming back to me. And all because a little boy didn't want to use a cell phone. In the year 2003 the burden became too heavy to bear, and I broke down and purchased a cell phone of my own.

For all of the convenience and handiness of cell phones, it is a decision that I will probably come to regret.

It turns out that cell phones are probably causing cancer too. A study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded that

"Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos. . ."

More than smoking? Really? Are you still considered a hypochondriac if the things you fear are REAL threats?

Feel free to read more about your imminent demise here.