Blogging
From Abroad

I’ve always been a fan of the music is a language metaphor, but now that I am actually learning a language, I understand and appreciate it even more. The skill sets for playing music and speaking a new language are incredibly similar: both require recognizing aural patterns, relating new ideas to present knowledge, knowing how and what to practice, and having the patience to keep trying.

Just like in music, listening is the key. I’m trying to imitate everything I hear and constantly surrounding myself in the culture. I’m studying Portuguese not only with other Americans but students all around the world, yet the default language for us all is English. I met a German who I still think is American. His English is perfect, and he says he was never paid attention in English classes at school but instead learned the language by watching American movies. Therefore, I’ve been watching Brazilian TV, especially soap operas. Not because I particularly enjoy them (they are just as cheesy here as in the US), but my host mother watches them often, so I’ll sit down and absorb as much as I can.

Perhaps even greater for me is the effect learning a language has had on my conception of music. I had a wonderful teacher who would always talk about saying something with music: he talked about phrases, pacing, repetition, using space, and creating tension. All of these things are part of the way we talk, and when I first heard these ideas I accepted them and moved on. But know I see just how well the metaphor works: you can’t tell a very good story if you only know all the correct tenses. Grammar is a wonderful tool that greatly enhances how we convey ideas, but at the very simplest level, a story with great content and poor punctuation will be more effective than a perfect sentence with a perfectly boring tale. Being able to connect with people on a simple, direct level is always more useful than being able to rattle of conjugations and gerunds, scales and arpeggios.