I’d always heard that Europeans can speak at least 8 to 10 foreign languages including Urdu and Mandarin Chinese while doing differential calculus and chewing gum at the same time. They can do this due to their schools teaching University level subjects for 2-year-olds with no grading curve. They’re tough! Europeans live on a plot of land no bigger than Broward County and with half as many cars. If you’ve seen video of a street scene in any given European city, you’ll know they are more crowded than a Tokyo subway during ride for free day.
There are pictures of residents standing on the shore because there’s just no more room. The Jacksonville city limits would stretch from London to Minsk.
The reason they learn each-other’s language is that when you rub shoulders with the next guy on the street, you want to exchange a pleasantry like ‘Whose idea was the Euro?’ Or ‘Hey, we were just kidding when we said we invented pizza’. On a side note, when Marco Polo went to China, he told his wife he was just going out for a slice of pita which was big in the middle East. She was a little hard of hearing and thought he said ‘Pizza’. He left the house and must have had something else on his mind, made a right at Istanbul and never stopped. When he got back 24 years later, She meets him at the door and says, “The pizza better be hot!” He didn’t want to correct her, so Pizza was born.
Anyway…. Here in South Florida, we know the value of being bi-lingual. For some of us, it’s easy and for others it’s the toughest thing in the world. My wife Kathleen learned Spanish in high school and taught me a lot. After we got married, one of the first things she taught me in Spanish was ‘You are a wise and generous husband’ which she then translated for me, ‘El burro sabe mas que tu’. People always laughed. It wasn’t until years later that I found out what that meant, and by then it was too late. I needed to be bi-lingual but didn’t have the time for any of the standard courses and learning en la calle would be too slow.
I wanted to at least appear bi-lingual and like everyone else I wanted it yesterday.
Scrolled the internet for a language school and came upon Berlips. The Berlips School of accents. I called and spoke to a person with a heavy French accent. That is, he was speaking English with a French accent. It sounded like a Frenchman who could speak English, but badly. I had no trouble understanding him because I had seen all the old Hollywood movies Charles Boyer appeared in, and his accent is the accent they use.
I asked him about the course. He said it was easy, they didn’t promise I would become proficient in the language of my choice only that I could make myself understood with the accent alone. What a concept! This is what I was looking for. Why waste time with tapes or records. It was a quick and dirty course of only two hours. All I had to do was come in and listen to Maurice Chevalier sing Louise. He explained that this was a course pioneered in England and used in all the war movies, which is why all the Nazis spoke with a British accent.
So now when I want someone to think I can speak say, French, I speak with a French accent, and they say your English is very good for a Frenchman.
That’s the Berlips school of accents who say, “Why spend time learning the language when an accent will do!”
