A Chinese woman came up to me at the bus stop the other day and said, "I look big art building." After a long silence, I told her I didn't understand.
"I look big art building," she said again.
It took me a while to figure out that she was looking for the Nasher Museum of Art. I gave her directions, and she nodded and went on her way.
The encounter got me thinking that this woman, who had trouble putting together a sentence in English, still managed to communicate with me and, hopefully, reached her destination. She didn't need to worry about indirect object agreement or the difference between the past and imperfect tenses that we learn in our foreign language classes.
She knew the bare essentials of the English language, and it served her just fine.
Maybe the basics are really all we need.
I took six years of French in high school, so I had a lot of confidence when I went to Paris last year. However, it took me about four seconds standing in the airport among thousands of native speakers to realize that an A in French class in Wilmington, Delaware is worth about a D+ in France.
"Thank you drive for we to hotel," I told the taxi driver. "I from States United. France are big and friendly."
One time I got lost while running along the Seine. (Apparently, even a giant river to my left wasn't enough of a landmark to keep me on track.) After a half-hour of wandering, I finally decided that I had no choice but to use my French. I came across a man smoking a cigarette and wearing a tight black shirt and leather pants.
"I not know where is here. Want metro, where metro?" I asked.
He looked me up and down, put out his cigarette, and said, "Yer lookin' fer the metro?"
It turned out the guy was from Tennessee and had just moved to Paris a year earlier. He gave me perfect directions and even complimented my French, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't serious.
The bottom line, however, is that just those few confused words got me where I needed to go.
In a way, it's sad that all the French I used in Paris was stuff that I learned in my first year of study. Sure, I could read Les Miserables by the time I graduated high school, but it came of no use to me when I was telling waitresses that we needed "big water on table and more of bowl with bread."
I, like the Chinese woman looking for the museum, didn't need to use a bunch of flashy prepositions or even complete sentences. We threw away all of those distractions and focused solely on the white meat.
I agree with the Duke administration's requirement that students in Trinity study a foreign language. But I would much rather take introductory courses in three different languages than have to stick with the same language for three semesters. If I have to go all the way to Paris to screw up the six years of French that I know, then why will it be different with any other language?
Besides, imagine being able to ask "Where is the milk?" in three different languages. It's guaranteed to impress people at parties when you're 40, which is pretty much the best reason to do anything. Plus, it would enhance your ability to communicate with a variety of people when you travel.
Three years of Spanish takes care of a good chunk of the world, but it probably won't get you too far in Romania or Iceland. And with just one semester of Swedish you could walk around the streets of Stockholm armed with a road map, 75 kronor and the phrase, "Me need hospital, me sick" in case of emergencies.
I really like studying foreign languages, but I think people have far too high expectations for the payoff. Things that seem under control in the classroom spin out of control when you throw yourself into the lion's den of a native-speaking country. So instead of reaching into the back of my mind for reflexive verbs and jumbled information on the French political system in a 100-level class, I'd much rather shrug my shoulders and tell the professor, "I understands never when you talk."
Then holding my head high, I would continue on my way to Aramaic I class.
Steve Brown is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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