The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/182280
FEATURES in Portuguese at Lisbon University. I had studied Portuguese for nine months while doing my postgraduate diploma in translating and interpreting, but when I started work and signed up for evening classes I found the pace of the lessons in a class full of non-linguists frustratingly slow. So I saved up and managed to persuade my employer to let me take all my leave in one go to attend the summer course. The four weeks I spent in Portugal, slaving over the subjunctive, speaking Portuguese every day, in and out of class, and soaking up the culture through organised trips to Lisbon's many museums and the 'Portuguese civilisation' lecture series enabled me to make that leap to competent language user. When I changed jobs a year later, I was able to offer Portuguese as one of my languages. Making the transition from Spanish to Portuguese is relatively easy. Learning a Baltic language on the basis of Romance languages, and even a Slavic language (I have already had to learn Polish for work), is rather more challenging and requires a lot more time and effort. This is where an immersion course proves very useful. Not only do you get the time to focus on the language day in, day out in class, but you are surrounded by the language every day outside class. You see and hear the language in context, not just in text books. Seeing the word išpardavimas ('sale') so often in shop windows means I can now never forget it. You learn vocabulary and grammar structures in your morning lessons and then go out and practise them in the afternoon. For me and my classmates, lunch in Vilnius is classified as a success only if we manage to negotiate the whole procedure in Lithuanian. This can be quite challenging as most waiters are only too happy to speak to us in English. What's more, unexpected questions often throw me. I'm ready for kortele ar grynais? ('card or cash?') so when I'm asked if I have a loyalty card, all I hear is the word 'card' and reply 'cash' – cue English translation from the waitress. On the other hand, since so few foreigners speak Lithuanian, my attempts at speaking the language often result in compliments on how well and beautifully I speak it, even though it's clearly not true. Some of my classmates even manage to buy souvenirs at a discount because of their 'lovely' foreign accents when they speak Lithuanian. For me, one of the particular difficulties of Lithuanian is its declensions. With seven cases it is quite tricky to put any sentence together. I spend many hours learning my declension tables for nouns, adjectives, pronouns, demonstratives, etc, and at one point I even wake up in the middle of night and realise I have been declining nouns in my sleep! I have to overcome my perfectionist streak, focus on communication and worry less about LITHUANIAN EXPERIENCE John Evans with his classmates (top); and snapshots from his time in Vilnius (left and below) My head feels as if it's going to explode. If my brain is a sponge, it may have reached saturation point getting every declension right and more about getting a sentence out in under a minute. However, although I may not need to be able to speak Lithuanian to translate the language, I will need to be able to recognise the different case endings to make sense of any text. Three hours a day of language classes means there's a lot of information to take on board and, by the middle of the third week, my head feels as if it's going to explode. If my brain is a sponge, I think it may have reached saturation point. Each day we get homework and at the end of the course there is an exam, but we are still learning new things, including reflexive verbs (which are more complicated in Lithuanian than in Romance languages), the day before the final test. Sometimes it can be a struggle to find the right balance between studying and sightseeing, as the visits organised by the university – the old town, national museum, KGB museum, Rumšiškes open-air museum, Kaunas – are important in teaching us about the country, which is unfamiliar to many of us. I especially enjoy the lectures on aspects of Lithuanian history, politics, literature, linguistics and culture, which give me a much better understanding of the country that I will be translating about. With the course coming to an end, the challenge in the future will be to keep my Lithuanian going. I remember returning from Poland and meeting a Polish friend for coffee and chatting to her in Polish. A few weeks later when we met again it was more difficult, but while my active use of the language faltered, my passive knowledge continued to flourish the more Polish I translated. I may not be at that stage yet with Lithuanian but, with some perseverance, I may just get there. For anyone learning a new language, a short immersion course can give a great boost, and even someone wanting to refresh their language skills can benefit. University-run courses often provide cheap accommodation and scholarships, so it's worth checking those out first. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 21