vocabulary

Year in Languages 2022

19 languages

two flags and two languages

In French, the period between Christmas and New Year is known as la trêve des confiseurs, “the confectioners’ truce”, when many people fall into a festive lull.

For others, especially those like myself who do not care about confectionery, it’s time to take stock.

For 2022, I had set myself three lofty language goals: improving English, continuing learning Estonian, and bringing my Modern Greek to an upper intermediate level. 

But in early 2022, life brought corrections to this plan. I had to scrap Modern Greek, and decided to read in French instead, as an easy way out.

So, how did it go?

Spoiler alert: not according to the plan.

English

In 2022, I continued learning idiomatic expressions, grouped by theme, and deliberately using them in speech and writing. 

On a whim, I decided to read Jane Austen, and surprisingly for myself, I liked it so much that I read every single novel of hers, watched multiple film adaptations, and even followed some YoutTube channels dedicated to her and other female writers of the period. 

On a second whim, I read Agatha Christie, also someone I had never read before, and found her Poirot novels much to my taste. A friend mentioned David Souchet’s Poirot interpretation, I looked it up, and I was conquered, hook, line, and sinker.

I have mixed feelings about my progress, finding it too slow, but then keep repeating to myself, that slow and steady wins the race.

Estonian

Estonian was the second focus of 2022. I took an online intermediate course called Keeletee. 

I did not go to Estonia to practise and buy books, nor was I systematic in learning vocabulary. 

What I did improve, though, was my listening comprehension. I both did intensive listening to short videos in my course, and extensive listening to Kaja Kallas, Estonian Prime Minister, who is articulate, has a clear diction, and speaks about current hot topics at her press conferences. 

Finding an engaging learning material, something you are genuinely interested in, is key to successful language learning. For me, Estonian government press conferences tick all the right boxes, so I will stick with them for a while.

French

I read five books in French, got bored, and stopped. Lately, I have changed my approach and decided to focus on French idiomatic expressions I wish I had known in the heat of the moment. I need to let time do it work, donner du temps au temps, before seeing any results.

Spanish

Unexpectedly, this year I made a major breakthrough with my Spanish conversation. First, several Spanish friends came to visit, then I spent a week in Spain, and, finally, ended up speaking to different Spanish colleagues at various international events. Although the first interactions were always rusty, after a while of listening and mimicking, I would converse pretty comfortably and at times elegantly. It looks like I have reached the tipping point, where my passive knowledge has achieved a critical mass and somehow transformed itself into active knowledge. At least, I like to think so!

Czech

An extra bonus of the year was a trip to Prague. I did a quick refresher by listening to videos of Super Easy Czech and Easy Czech for a couple of weeks before the trip. When in Prague, my Czech was good enough to hold a basic conversation in the hotel, restaurant, or swimming pool. I bought some books and made a mental note to come back to Czech in the future.

Latvian

The local library in a Latvian village where I spend my summers has a good collection of Latvian Classical and contemporary writers, and I took full advantage of it. My Latvian is fluent, yet plain. Reading high quality literature has always been my favourite method to acquire a richer vocabulary; in due course, I trust to make good progress.

Russian

I read some books in Russian early in the year, but given what Russians are doing in Ukraine, I am off any Russian cultural or literary production for a long, long while.

Ancient Greek

I finished Selected speeches by Lysias over the summer, reading every day, and then stopped. 

In retrospect, I regret not carrying on after the holidays, something I had done in previous years, when I continued my morning Greek readings every single week-end, and progressed nicely. 

Latin

I started the year with a bang and read Tacitus Agricola. Tacitus is my favourite Latin author, and Agricola is a masterpiece. I plan to be more disciplined in 2023 with Latin reading, doing a passage every week-end and on holidays.

That’s a wrap!

Happy New Year, annum novum faustum felicem!

French without passion

19 languages

Michel Montaigne has something to say about passions

I had thought that in 2022, I would brush up my Modern Greek, but then life happened.

Not to abandon my carefully crafted plan to study three languages a year, I needed an easier option. I needed to choose a language that I can refresh or update without much effort. Thus an idea to read some French books came up. 

There was a hiccup, however. My relationship with French is a passionate romance that turned sour. Long gone are the days when I was begging to be accepted to a French phonetics class, learning French songs by heart, and bracing the cold to get to the médiathèque française to borrow French  books.

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan (“where is the snow of yesteryear?”)

This year, I willy-nilly read a couple of French novels, more out of duty than for fun, and said to myself that this approach was going nowhere. 

I, who would usually eagerly wait for the night to fall, to intimately engage with my Spanish, Italian, and even German novels, was looking for pretexts to do something else, anything really, rather than to read French romans. 

Is there anything at all I can do to improve my French and enjoy the process?

Deliberate learning is a well-known technique of identifying, isolating, and working on a single issue that you need to improve, and which will move the needle. 

I wanted to work on something that would give me the most bang for my bucks. 

My French pronunciation is passable. In any case, working on your phonetics is not much fun.

My grammar is reasonable. Besides, I adhere to the line of thought that the importance of grammar in achieving language fluency is exaggerated. 

But what about vocabulary? Hold on,  I really like phraseology: hearing a new idiom is music to my ears. 

I have been working steadily on my English idioms for three years now. Although I sometimes want to throw in the towel, my English has gradually become more idiomatic. I have been slowly acquiring flexibility, elegance, and effectiveness in expressing myself. 

Thus, I decided to make my French more idiomatic. More so, I decided to do comparative idioms in French versus English, which is right up my street.

I would start with English expressions that I actively use, and for which I do not know a French equivalent off the cuff. 

(How do they say “off the cuff” in French, by the way? “Sur le champs” is one option, I just checked. Others include “au pied levé”,  “spontanément”, and  “à l’improviste”).

For example, I comfortably and frequently use English idioms “lay the groundwork”, “mince your words”, or “not set in stone”, but needed to look up their French equivalents: “poser les jalons”, “mâcher ses mots”, and “pas gravé dans le marbre”.

The process would be that of deliberate learning: identify the gaps and work on filling them. Look up new French idiomatic expressions, learn them, and use them.

Let’s hope that this comparative phraseology approach rekindles some French passion.

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.

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. 

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.

Year in Languages 2020

19 languages
light in the darkness

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

Unlike in 2019, when I had not planned my language learning ahead, in 2020, prompted by the first lock-down, I actually sat down and thought deeply about my language focus for the rest of the year.

I decided that three priorities would be more than enough: improving English, improving Italian, and learning Estonian.

These three languages were in focus in 2020, although I used more throughout the year. In fact, every day I use at least three languages, but the average is five.

So, how well did I do in 2020? Let’s look first at my three priorities.

English.

I set myself tree goals: to speak more idiomatically, to have a richer vocabulary, and to improve my pronunciation and intonation. To achieve these goals, I intended to learn idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs, to do pronunciation exercises, and to shadow native English speakers.

I managed to work only on the vocabulary, focusing in idioms, and learned plenty: colour idioms, food idioms, nature idioms, you name it. Although I still feel that improving my English is an uphill battle, sometime in September I caught myself using in professional setting the idiomatic expressions that I had learned. For example, I would write that a proposal was not ‘set in stone’, that two partners were working ‘hand in glove’, or that we needed to ‘keep the show on the road’. I was pleased like a cat that ate the cream.

Lesson learned from this experience: have fewer goals for English. In fact, with English, one goal at a time would be enough.

Estonian.

Estonian was the second focus of 2020, and I am pleased with my progress. I finished my 1980s Estonian manual, followed all 30 episodes of the first series of a radio programme Как это по-эстонски? (‘How do you say it in Estonian?’), writing down all grammar rules and examples, and finished 13 out of 16 lessons of the free online course Keeleklikk for beginners. I have followed some Estonians on Twitter, managing to understand some tweets about current Estonian politics, and learned some useful words, such as valitsus ‘government’.

Italian.

Back in June, I decided that 2020 would be an Italian year, and set myself three lofty goals.

First, learning Italian poems by heart. Total failure: I learned only one poem in the whole year, albeit a wonderful one, Meriggiare by Eugenio Montale.

Second, covering my gaps in grammar and vocabulary. 50/50: I learned quite a few idioms and wrote down expressions and idioms from the books I was reading.

Third, reading in Italian for pleasure. Bravissima: I read 12 Italian books, including Boccaccio Decameron, Dante Inferno, Italo Calvino I nostri antenati, and all four volumes of Amica geniale (Neapolitan novels) by Elena Ferrante.

I had a plan to revise some forgotten aspects of Italian grammar over summer, but did not do it. My spoken Italian is grammatically sound, hence, given traveling to Italy was out of question this year, I decided I would rather read books than revise subjunctive.

Other languages.

Ancient Greek.

This year, I read my way through books 4 to 6 of Plato Republic. I read several sections each Saturday morning from January through June, then took a summer break, and resumed my reading in November, reading both on Saturdays and on Sundays. I finished the last chapters of book 6 by reading every day over the Christmas break.

In spring, I read one of the earliest accounts of an epidemic, namely chapters 2.47–2.54 of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War where he described the Plague of Athens, which devastated the city in the 5th century BC.

For 2021, my plan is to finish the remaining four books of the Republic, and move on to my beloved and difficult Thucydides after that.

German.

My interest for German spiked with the corona crisis, as Germany was handling the crisis rather well and German epidemiologists were a good source of reliable information. I followed some of them on Twitter, listened to several Angela Merkel speeches, and read some articles. I also decided that improving German would be my priority in 2021.

French.

I use French at work daily, and read some work-related stuff. I also followed French news and learned a couple of useful idiomatic expressions from my French colleagues.

Latvian.

I have not read a single book, but I followed the news, and spoke weekly with friends and acquaintances. This year, some of the most intellectually stimulating conversations I had were in Latvian.

Russian.

I read some twenty books by the 19th, 20th, and 21st century writers, ranging from Lev Tolstoi and Mikhail Lermontov to Dina Rubina and Narine Abgaryan.

Spanish.

I read one book in Spanish at the beginning of the year, and many articles. After that, I followed some Spanish speakers on Twitter, and read an occasional article. I made several trips to Spain before the pandemics, when I managed to speak in Spanish in professional context.

Throughout the year, I followed with delight all news related to a rising star of Spanish literature, Irene Vallejo, whose book El infinito en el junco (‘Infinity in a reed’), about the invention of books in the ancient world, has been voted the Spanish book of the year 2020. Published in September 2019, the book is a bestseller: 26 editions, over 150 000 copies sold, multiple national awards, raving reviews, and translations rights to some 30 languages. I am a fan, and cannot wait to see how the world discovers this thoughtful and delicate writer.

In Spain, the book has been considered an antidote to the pandemics, as many readers reported the book gave them consolation in the times of darkness.

This year, I read fifty books in total, in English, Russian, Italian, Ancient Greek, and Spanish, and for me, too, reading was a star of light in the dark.

That’s all, my language year 2020 in review.

Language Monthly, December 2020, Etymology

19 languages
white December

December is the 12th month, despite the fact that its name means the ‘tenth’. It derives from Latin decem ‘ten’, as December was the tenth month of the old Roman calendar, which began with March.

I can spend hours looking for etymologies, and have compiled a list of my favourite resources.

English

Online Etymology Dictionary

Italian

Vocabolario Etimologico della Lingua Italiana di Ottorino Pianigiani

Vocabolario Treccani

Spanish

The Online Etymological Dictionary of Spanish

Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE)

Multilingual

Etymologeek

The advantage is that you can search in many languages. The disadvantage is that being a compilation, it can be unreliable or plainly wrong.

Estonian

Eesti etümoloogiasõnaraamat

Yes, it is in Estonian, but invaluable for comparative Finno-Ugric and comparative linguistics. In fact, for anyone who already knows some Baltic, Slavic, or Germanic languages, understanding etymologies of Estonian words is a useful tool for remembering these words.

Let’s take an Estonian work raamat, meaning a ‘book’. At a first approximation, it resembles nothing. But when you look at its etymology, you realise it is related to the Latvian grāmata, meaning a ‘book’, which in turn is a borrowing from Slavic. In Russian, грамота means ‘official document’ and also ‘ability to read and write’. The Slavs borrowed the word from the Greek γράμματα ‘letters’, of which the English grammar is also a descendant.

Everything in the garden is lovely

19 languages
up the garden path

I spent the summer and early autumn in the countryside, where I decided to learn English idioms related to gardens, trees, plans, flowers, fences, and such. (All in a vain attempt to improve my English, stuck on a plateau for the last 15 years.)

The one expression I did not know before is ‘to lead somebody up the garden path’, meaning to deceive on purpose. This expression will surely come handy when I have to deal with a particularly manipulative business partner.

The next expression is ‘to rest on one’s laurels’, which has equivalents in many European languages.

In general, I have a quick rule of thumb: if the same expression exists in the three languages that come to my mind most quickly (English, French, and Russian), it implies a common origin — Classical, Biblical, or literary. Here, the origin is Classical: ‘s’endormir sur ses lauriers’ or ‘se reposer sur ses lauriers’ in French, ‘почивать на лаврах’ in Russian, point out to Ancient Greece and its tradition to crown winners with laurel wreaths.

Several expressions are Shakespearean: ‘to gild the lily’, ‘a rose by any other name / would smell as sweet’, and, the most mysterious, ‘primrose path’, which usually leads to ruin, destruction, or similar unwanted outcome.

But the one I found most congenial is ‘everything in the garden is lovely’, which often implies the loveliness only on surface, perhaps even a lull before the storm.

In Russian, an expression with a similar connotation is Всё хорошо, прекрасная маркиза!, which in turns is a translation from a French 1930s song Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise!

Not a day without a line

19 languages1 Comment
so many lines

I have always enjoyed reading long books, especially long novels. In my youth, my favourite novel was War and Peace, which I reread in Russian at least three times. Last year, the book I liked most was a 1575 pages novel in German. This year, a tetralogy in Italian.

Some of these books are difficult to read, either because of a complex subject matter, or of the language I do not master, or an older variety of a familiar language. Plato in Ancient Greek. Don Quixote in Spanish. Dante in Italian.

Still, if I want to read them, I plough on. Over the years, I developed a method of reading long and linguistically complicated texts, based on three principles.

First, as they say it in Latin, nulla dies sine linea, ‘not a day without a line’. To keep the momentum going yet not to get overwhelmed, I read a portion of text, be it a page, a chapter, or a section, every day, often, at a dedicated time in the day.

The daily lesson can vary in length, but it should be short enough not to tire me out.

Thus, I read Boccaccio’s Decameron over three months this summer, every morning going through three or four stories. Now, I am reading Dante’s Inferno, one canto every evening.

Second, I read every daily portion at least twice.

I first learned this principle many years ago, from a book on language learning by Kató Lomb, an accomplished Hungarian polyglot of the 20th century, who relied on reading as her main language learning method.

I adopted this principle of reading every passage multiple times, and have been using it ever since.

First time, I read to get the gist of what is going on. It is often surprising how much one can gather, guess, and deduce from the context. Second time, I read to understand what I have not understood the first time, sometimes looking up words in a dictionary or pieces of grammar in a manual. I might reread some passages the third time, if I did not get a critical aspect, or if I like a particular turn of phrase and would like to learn it.

Third, I do not really bother about unfamiliar words. At first, I skip them, and look them up only if I miss the meaning. Only when a word pops up repeatedly, and its precise understanding is critical, I will learn it by heart.

For example, in Decameron, I could easily guess the meaning of ‘cagione’ (an archaic variation of ‘occasione’), but really needed to know the precise meaning of ‘vago’ (the women are often referred to as ‘vaghe donne’), as the word has multiple interpretations.

I borrowed this approach from a report I read somewhere, on Anna Akhmatova, a famous Russian poet, learning English in mature age to read Shakespeare in the original. Allegedly, every time she consulted an unfamiliar word in a dictionary, she would put a dot next to it. Once a word had more than seven dots, she would learn it by heart.

I do not remember when I read this report neither whether it is authentic. Still, this vocabulary learning method works well for me.