Year in Languages 2021

19 languages
reading Cicero on the terrace

The name ‘19 languages’ reflects my desire to learn 19 languages, to various degrees of mastery.

I first started planning language learning in 2020, as remote work had given me more control over my free time. 

For 2021, I had three priorities: improving English, an uphill battle, learning Estonian, and maintaining German. 

It is time to take stock of the progress made.

English.

In 2021, I set myself only one goal: to speak more idiomatically. To this end, I learned plenty of idiomatic expressions, grouped by theme, and deliberately used them in speech and writing. To continue.

Estonian. 

Estonian was the second focus of 2021, and I am pleased with my progress. I finished the beginners’ online course Keeleklikk, and have started its sequel, called Keeletee and intended for intermediate learners. I listened, once again, to a radio show Как это по-эстонски? (‘How do you say it in Estonian?’), and did grammar exercises. I have read my first book in Estonian, Maailma otsas. Pildikesi heade inimeste elust (At the End of the World. Scenes from the Lives of Good People) by a contemporary writer Andrus Kivirähk, and I watched some Estonian cartoons.

In 2022, the goal is to finish the intermediate course, to work systematically on acquiring vocabulary, and to go to Estonia to practice (and to buy books).

German.

I had many lofty goals for brushing up my German: revising grammar, enriching vocabulary, and improving listening skills. I started the year with a bang, doing grammar exercises every day, but as the year progressed, I threw methodology to the wind and just carried on reading fiction. As a result, I read 17 books in German over the year, which has enhanced my passive vocabulary. Given that travelling is out of the question for the time being, perhaps, that’s not too bad, I console myself.

Italian.

The only trip I made last year was to Bologna, where I not only talked to locals and ate copious ice-cream, but also went to a book-shop and got a copy of Machiavelli’s Il Principe (‘The prince’), a long-time object of desire, to read it on the plane back home.

Spanish.

Slowly but steadily. I have read one book, spoke Spanish to some colleagues, and spent several memorable evenings with close friends from Spain who were visiting. 

French.

Nothing to write home about. I speak French daily at work, and feel this is more than enough. I read one book, though, Les vacances du petit Nicolas (‘Nicholas on holiday’), part of a series about a mischievous boy, which I used to adore in my French-learning years.  I got the book for a neighbour who is learning French, and ended up reading it myself on a plane.

Ancient Greek

Not too bad. I finished the final books of Plato’s Republic, reading several sections every week-end.

Latin

The surprise of the year. I got inspired by an old FS post on friendship to read Cicero’s De amicitia (‘On friendship’), enjoyed it, and read another two texts, De petitione consulatus (‘How to win an election’) and  De senectute (‘On old age’). 

This year, just like last year, was a year of reading. I read over 60 books in total, in English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, and Latin.

The picture that sums up the year: I sit on the terrace, sip my morning coffee, and read Cicero.

Dripping water hollows a stone

19 languages
gutta cavat lapidem

Among different branches of linguistics, phraseology is among my favourites. 

I like encountering new idioms, phrases, and metaphors, learning them, and using them. I like researching their origins, I like comparing expressions in different languages, and I like figuring out how some darling expression of mine from an obscure source can be rendered in English, lingua franca of my life and work.

Here is a random selection of idioms in different languages and coming from various sources, which I added to my inner multilingual thesaurus this year.

French: la fête du slip (‘the underpants party’) describes a messy, grotesque, and shameless situation that degenerates quickly, when everyone feels like everything is allowed; an open bar. 

French: fondre comme neige au soleil (‘melt like snow in the sun’) is to melt away overnight, to disappear into thin air.

French: ne pas y aller par quatre chemins (‘do not go there by four ways’), meaning not mincing one’s words; not beating around the bush.

German: jemandem fliegen gebratene Tauben in den Mund (‘roasted pigeons fly into somebody’s mouth’), is to have it easy, to be handed something on a silver platter.

Italian: passata la festa, gabbato lo santo (‘the festivity is over, the saint is cheated’), which means that promises made in unusual circumstances are easily & often broken; similar to the ‘once on shore, we pray no more’.

Spanish: todo el pescado está vendido (‘all fish is sold’), meaning cut and dried; be done and dusted.

Latin: gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed sæpe cadendo (‘dripping water hollows a stone, not by force, but by falling often’). The meaning is similar to the English saying ‘little strokes fell great oaks’. 

This one is worth remembering as we are heading into a new year.

It’s all Greek to me

19 languages3 Comments
this is not a fig tree

The question of the third language for 2022 began to preoccupy me in late Summer.

Each year, I focus on three languages of the eponymous nineteen.

One is always English, an uphill battle. 

The second is a new language, to start from scratch and to keep learning for three years. The current target is Estonian, which I started in 2020, have been learning  in 2021, and will continue learning in 2022.

But which language will be number three? 

Among several contenders, my mind was returning again and again to Modern Greek. 

I started a year by doing a joint event with colleagues in Cyprus, and was positively impressed by their competence and reliability. (National stereotypes have a long life.)

As the year progressed, I embarked upon several projects with partners in different parts of Greece, and was positively impressed, every time, by their competence and reliability. (National stereotypes die hard.)

Finally, one autumn afternoon, as I was eating the last fresh figs of the season and dreaming of reclining in a hammock under a fig tree together with a charming Mediterranean gentleman, I received a message from my closest friends, that they would be moving to Athens, of all places.

The stars have aligned. It will be Modern Greek in 2022.

I do not remember where and how I started learning Modern Greek, but I remember vividly my first trip to Greece. It was a study trip with a group from university. We travelled by car, visited stunning out-of-the-way places, ate in roadside tavernas, swam in the turquoise sea, and slept à la belle étoile (under the open sky). Our professor spoke Greek to the locals, which often led to preferential treatment. I remember how impressed I was with his language knowledge!

I learned some Modern Greek in the following years, and acquired some Greek friends, who introduced me to Greek culture, food, and hospitality. 

When the opportunity to do a Modern Greek course presented itself, I jumped into it, and for several years in the late 1990s – early 2000s, attended conversation classes, learned grammar, and read literary excerpts. I even spent six weeks in Thessaloniki, enrolled in a summer language school. Travelling the country after the end of the school, I comfortably negotiated with hotel owners, shop assistants, and restaurant waiters.

That’s to say, that once upon a time, my Greek was roadworthy enough. I had some Greek friends with whom I conversed mainly in Greek, and could hold a decent conversation.

But that was almost twenty years ago. Last time I was in Greece was 17 years ago, the last time I spoke Greek was at least 10 years ago, and the last time I heard Greek conversation was five years ago.

2022, time to catch up!

Knocking at an open door

19 languages
doors are open

Whenever I think that my inner linguist is half asleep, she’s always wide awake.

In the middle of a busy day, a colleague of a former colleague asked: what is an English equivalent of a German expression offene Türen einrennen (literally, “to run into open doors”).

My inner linguist immediately leapt to help with a version in French, enfoncer des portes ouvertes, in Russian, ломиться в открытые двери, and in Italian, sfondare una porta aperta.

For English, however, she had to consult a dictionary, to find out that indeed, there is an expression to push at an open door (or to push against an open door).

Other English expressions with close meanings are to state the obvious, to preach to the choir, and to preach to the converted.

I like to think about meanings of similar expressions in different languages as Venn diagrams. 

Sometimes, the overlap is almost complete, perhaps, due to a shared origin or source. 

For example, the expression open sesame in English, if we continue with the door theme, has close parallels: Sésame, ouvre-toi in French, Сим-сим, откройся! in Russian, apriti sesamo! in Italian, Sesam, öffne dich! in German, etc. They all come from the magical command used by Ali Baba to open the door of the robbers’ den in “One Thousand and One Nights”, rather, in its translations into different languages.

Often, the overlap is partial, like in the case of the French expression “enfoncer des portes ouvertes”, which can be rendered in English also as to flog  a dead horse and even to teach your grandmother to suck eggs — depending on the context.

Sometimes, there is no overlap, and in order to render the meaning correctly, I need to have more than one string to my bow.

I am fascinated by comparative phraseology and tend to repeat that all languages can convey any meaning, but they do it with different means. 

My first foreign books

19 languages2 Comments
at the end of the world

“Rein Kamm felt suddenly that it would be nice to go on a trip around the world.”

Rein Kamm tundis korraga, et tore oleks minna ümbermaailmareisile.

This is the first sentence in my first Estonian book, Maailma otsas. Pildikesi heade inimeste elust (At the End of the World. Scenes from the Lives of Good People) by a contemporary writer Andrus Kivirähk.

A friend lent it to me, when I asked her for an interesting book suitable for beginners, and it has turned out to be the perfect choice. It’s entertaining, funny, and not too difficult. Several ordinary characters go about their ordinary life, but somehow they do it in the most grotesque ways. You have a bar owner who cooks only one dish a day, closes his bar at 7 pm, and goes home to read ‘War and Peace’. You have an old bachelor living with his mother who tells him what to wear. You have a family that offer potatoes to whoever passes by.

People learn languages for various reasons: job, travel, love & friendship. All these are valid for me, but my major motivation in learning any language has always been to read books in the original.

Thus, I tried to recall my first books in all my languages. In some cases, I have not read any book yet (Hungarian and Japanese, currently on the back burner); in others, I cannot remember, even vaguely, which were books I read first (English, Latvian, Russian, Ancient Greek), thus, my list is incomplete.

In Czech, although I really like český černý humor (‘dark humour’), absurd, and grotesque, the very first book I read was Bílá nemoc (The White Disease) by Karel Čapek, a dystopia written in 1937 about a country on the brink of war, which is also attacked by an incurable disease killing older people. The novel does seem so dystopian in 2021.

In German, I started with Goethe’s Faust. Yes, I know, this is hardly a suitable choice for an absolute beginner. But hey, I was 18, German was the first language I was learning on my own, I was studying philosophy and puzzled over the meaning of live. To me then, Faust did seem a suitable choice. I did not learn much from in in the matter of German conversation, but still can recite the first lines by heart.

Habe nun ach ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und leider auch Theologie
Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn.
Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;

In French, one of the first books I read were novels by Prosper Mérimée. I still own the book, a Soviet-era edition with beautiful lithographs and a bilingual commentary. I had bought it in a foreign second hand bookshop in Riga, grāmatu antikvariāts Planēta, a venerable institution.

In Spanish, I read first Platero y yo (Platero and I) by Juan Ramón Jiménez, a charming, touching story of a friendship between a man and a donkey. I got the book in the same second hand bookshop, where I was spending my scarce student stipend.

In Italian, I do not remember my first book. What I do remember vividly though, it is how I was reading Dante’s Divina commedia for the first time. It was in Italy, with a friend who was doing a PhD in Italian literature, who recommended a good old edition and taught me how to scan.

I read several chapters then, and read the whole Inferno last year.

Accidentally, 2021 is anno dantesco, which l’Accademia della Crusca (The Italian Academy) celebrates with the series of events, including Dante’s word of the day. The tradition says that Dante started his masterpiece on 25 March, thus, the word cammin (way, road) was analysed that day.

nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

In Latin, the first work was Cicero’s In Catilinam I (Against Catilina). We had to read it our Latin class, in its entirety, to analyse and translate it, and to learn multiple passages by heart. It took our small group a full academic year.

quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?

I hated the speech and my patience for Cicero was definitely abused after this exercise. I had never touched a text by him afterwards – until last month. Inspired by an old FS post on friendship, which showed Cicero in different light, I started De amicitia and have been really enjoying it.

Napoleon’s defeats

19 languages
we all possess Napoleon’s features …

This year, I reread Leo Tolstoy War and Peace, for the fifth time. War and Peace is one of my favourite books, and since I first read it at high school, I reread it regularly. This time, I reread it so quickly, I was so absorbed in the narrative, that I turned the last page regretting that there were four volumes only. I would have enjoyed reading twenty of them!

While I was regretting War and Peace was so short, my inner linguist started wondering about expressions related to Napoleon, in any language that springs to mind.

Any language in this case meant English and French, and the two expressions refer to Napoleon’s defeats.

In English, you can meet or face your Waterloo, the expression popularised not so much by the Battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon indeed did surrender, but by the song Waterloo by Abba, which won the Eurovision song contest in 1974.

Just as I was humming Oh, oh, oh, oh, Waterloo / Finally facing my Waterloo, a French colleague commented on a committee she participated in, with the words c’est la Bérézina. The expression means disastrous and disorganised matter, and refers to another Napoleon’s defeat, this time by the river Berezina, at the hands of Russian army.

Strangely, nothing in Russian came to my mind. There are obviously quotes: Napoleon was a popular figure in the 19th century Russia, which is reflected by ambivalent feelings of the War and Peace male protagonists towards him.

Alexander Pushkin mentions Napoleon in his Eugene Onegin: мы все глядим в Наполеоны (we all aspire to be Napoleons).

We all possess Napoleon’s features;

The millions of two-legged creatures

Are only instruments and tools;

But today, the most famous Napoleon in Russian is a mille-feuille pastry that is called наполеон, although the etymology is unclear, perhaps it is a corruption from Neapolitan, Naples being famous for its pastry.

Winter words

19 languages
the snow of yesteryear

This winter, we had beautiful snow in the Baltics, and I took up cross-country skiing again, which used to be my favourite sport at school. Now, a thought has crossed my mind that in alternative reality, I would have enjoyed being a professional cross-country skier. Snow, cold, movement, solitude, pure bliss.

While I was daydreaming about skiing championships, my inner linguist was wide awake and was wondering about expressions related to ski, in any language.

I could recall only one, in Russian: навострить лыжи (to sharpen ones’ ski), meaning to try to leave surreptitiously.

Another Russian expression is about sledges: любишь кататься, люби и саночки возить (if you like sledging, you should like to carry the sledge). The closest English equivalents are ‘if you want to dance, you have to pay the piper’, or simply, ‘there is no such things as free lunch’.

What about other winter delights, such as snow, frost, and cold?

In English, many useful expressions relate to the word cold. To come in from the cold, to be left out in the cold, to get cold feet, to get (and to give) the cold shoulder, cold comfort.

Surprisingly, French is quite rich in wintry expressions: ne pas avoir froid aux yeux is the equivalent of ‘not be faint-hearted’ , battre froid à qqn means ‘to give somebody the cold shoulder’, faire boule de neige is ‘to snowball’, and fondre comme neige au soleil is ‘to melt away’, ‘to disappear into thin air’.

My favourite expression is mais où sont les neiges d’antan (where is the snow of yesteryear?), which comes from a poem Ballade des dames du temps jadis (Ballade of Ladies of Time Gone By) by a 15th century French poet François Villon. In the 20th century, it was made into a song by Georges Brassens.

Eleven

19 languages
eleventh hour

I have been learning English idioms with time units, and came across the expression eleventh hour.

To do something at the eleventh hour is to do it at the last possible moment, just before it is too late.

I have heard this expression before, but was never sure of its meaning, even less of its origin. Whereas expressions with numbers are frequent in many languages, some numbers, such as one, two, or seven, are clear favourites. Why on earth the eleventh?

It turns out the expression has a Biblical origin: it comes from the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew xx.1-16), where some laborers appeared only at the eleventh hour (qui circa undecimam horam venerant). The eleventh in the expression does not refer to the last hour before midnight, but to the eleventh hour according to the Roman timekeeping, which started at sunrise, and roughly corresponds to the late afternoon, hence the meaning ‘at the last moment’.

Many Biblical expressions have their equivalents in multiple languages, but to my knowledge, not the eleventh hour. Perhaps, the reason is that some vernacular translations, such as Italian, localize the hour, and speak about five in the afternoon.

Speaking of eleven, its etymology is also curious. In English, eleven (and its twin sibling twelve) are odd ones in the sequence starting with thirteen and going to nineteen. Eleven derives from the Old English enleofan, literally “one left” (over ten), and is comparable to the German elf (and its twin sibling zwölf).

I also learned that in Lithuanian (which is an Indo-European language, but Baltic, not Germanic), the cardinal number from 11 to 19 use the same formation: they all end with -lika, which means “something that remains beyond ten”, and that –lika is related to the -leven/-lve in English. Hence, the English eleven has a Lithuanian cousin, vienuolika.

Diverse reading

19 languages
reading in different directions

The turn of the year is often the time to share book lists, reading insights, and recommendations. Many newspapers, media outlets, and personalities share their reading finds.

I always find it fascinating to know what other readers find fascinating, and often happy to follow book recommendations.

For non-fiction, I like yearly book recommendations of Farnam Street.

For fiction, this past year I noted an initiative in Spain, where Zenda and XLSemanal asked their readers which books should make a perfect library. The final list of 101 book, la biblioteca perfecta, can be consulted here. There were several books in that perfect library I have not heard of, so I took note.

This coming year, however, I plan not only to follow the reading recommendations and read what everyone else is reading, but diversify my reading habits.

I first heard the notion of diversified reading from a young colleague of mine, a prolific reader. She keeps tracks of the books she reads and sets herself reading targets, including diversity. For example, she tries to read as many books by male authors as by female, to respect a balance between European and non-European authors, to read both in French and in English, etc.

We are living in the era of powerful recommender systems and optimised search engines, which result in echo chambers and rabbit holes. That is why this year, I would deliberately seek to diversify my reading, and encourage you to do the same.

Obviously, for language freaks like myself, reading in different languages is one of the ways to go.

Last year, my focus was on Italian. Accordingly, one quarter of the fiction I read was in this language, with balanced distribution across centuries: Dante and Bocaccio, Italo Calvino and Luigi Pirandelli, Elena Ferrante and Antonia Arslan.

This year, I will focus on books in German, in particular, on contemporary fiction, as I know next to nothing about this period’s writers.

Any recommendations?

Good slide into the New Year

19 languages1 Comment
sliding into the New Year

In 2021, just like in 2020, I will have three language learning priorities. The first two were easy to set: improving my English, a never-ending task, and learning Estonian, which I started chaotically in 2019 and continued systematically in 2020.

It took me a while to decide on the third language priority.

Finally, it is going to be German.

I spoke decent German in the late 1990s and read German books occasionally afterwards, but I did not put any deliberate efforts to improve it. My grammar is rusty, my vocabulary is primitive, and my listening skills are poor.

My interest for German language spiked with the corona crisis, as Germany was handling the crisis better compared to its European neighbors. I consulted German epidemiologists’ articles as a source of reliable information about the virus, and much admired the corona speeches of Angela Merkel for their clarity, pragmatism, and scientific approach.

Given that we are not out of the woods yet, I thought it would be useful to have better, finer understanding of spoken and written German.

It would be useful for me professionally as well: at work, Germany is one of the countries we collaborate most.

But the moment I really said to myself ‘yes, German’, was in early December, when I read the beginning of this poem.

Das Jahr ward alt. Hat dünnes Haar.
Ist gar nicht sehr gesund.
Kennt seinen letzten Tag, das Jahr.
Kennt gar die letzte Stund.

Ist viel geschehn. Ward viel versäumt.
Ruht beides unterm Schnee.
Weiß liegt die Welt, wie hingeträumt.
Und Wehmut tut halt weh.

Noch wächst der Mond. Noch schmilzt er hin.
Nichts bleibt. Und nichts vergeht.
Ist alles Wahn. Hat alles Sinn.
Nützt nichts, dass man’s versteht.

It is called Dezember (‘December’), is by Erich Kästner, and you can read it fully in German and in English translation here.

The comparison of the old year to an elderly gentleman with thinning hair, in poor health, who knows his last day and even his last hour, resonated with me. I found this image endearing and apt for the moment, and on the spot decided that I had to improve my German.

I will take stock of my German level after the celebrations and will set up a learning plan, but off the cuff, I need to learn the grammar properly, to enrich my vocabulary, and to work on my audio comprehension.

Meanwhile, happy new year! Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!