Unless there is another war, it's unlikely any of you will ever be going there!!
So we were encouraged in our studies back in the 1970's by some of the less psychotic staff. ENOUGH was all one of them could say, he was Chinese/French and not culturally smart enough to stay away from Northern England Schools. We had great fun once we realised he didn't speak english and slipped all sorts of terrible words into sentences by the use of our fast Yorkshire accents. I wonder if in later life he learned swear words and realised he had been called most of them openly throughout his year in hell. Ripon County Secondary Modern... or colloquially... T'Modden.. as in "ah went tat modden".
France and Europe back then were only accessible to the rich or to soldiers and none of us wanted to go there as it seemed the other side of the world. So in 2000 when I arrived in France to work I spoke no french at all. Not even Bonjour.
Years later this stuck with me and I went to night classes, learnt German which lead me to the job in France. I then learned some french "Poubelle" being my first word as the dustbin man on the campsite shouted over and over again. Then the beautiful Julie and Helen took me under their beautiful wings, taught me many things!!! and introduced me to French Karaoke. Great times, and if our teachers had only thought to get us beered up and go out singing back then, we would all be the better for it.... linguistically.
I enjoyed it and was quite good on the listeneing and reading side. My soft Yorkshire tones though are not whats required to speak it. Ok for the German, but the French... non!
Next it was Thai. I wasted 3 years learning it before I met my wife. By this stage I was calming down a bit and looking for things to do that did not involve Chang, Sangsong and Lao Khao. I once sat down and read out a list of thai words and she didn't understand any of them in isolation. She later explained that Thais only really know what we are on about most of the time because of context (in a restraurant if we say Khao we want rice.. even though we may have said Hill, white or News) and gesticulating. Scissors, pen paper being the ones I remember at the time.
There and then I stopped learning, went back to basics and learnt the alphabet, then got some kids books and I was off. The words I learnt since then, I can pronounce better and I deliberately keep my hands still when asking for items. It means I have to try verbally much harder than if I'm making cutting signs when asking for scissors.
It opens so many doors for us when we are seen to be learning language. I'm looking for a new on-line forum that I can get on with it and will start learning a new word every day and posting it on the bottom of my blog. I'll link in with any interesting ones I can find.
I started with this. http://www.learningthai.com/books/manee/ along with baby learn alphabet books. The learning Thai site has tons of resourses on it and is free. Alphabet song to get us all started in a morning. Now Tony is in Nursary, I am readying myself to improve my Thai by learning along side him.
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