Photo of Romance Author Julie Tetel Andresen

When I was little, I shared a room with my sister. As we would get ready for bed, I would tell her all the new words I had made up that day. Somewhere along the way I discovered that there were other languages in the world with the words already made up. And all I had to do was to learn them. Fantastic!

Also, when I was little, I loved to roam my neighborhood. Now I roam the whole world. My love of roaming and language learning has led me to Germany and France for extended periods. I spend summers in Bucharest, and even though my Romanian is now at an advanced level, I still take language classes. My Romanian friends wonder why. I tell them it’s entertainment.

I spent six months in Saigon learning Vietnamese. Four hours in the morning, five days a week. After class I’d go to a restaurant and pull out my workbooks. Groups of young waiters and waitresses would crowd around me to hear me place my order in Vietnamese. They would also help me with my homework. I was in heaven.

I spent six weeks in Ulan Bator learning Mongolian. It was less heavenly. On my first day of class, on May 1, I looked out the window and exclaimed, “Is that snow?” I thus learned my first sentence in Mongolian: tsas orcen ‘it’s snowing’ with the idea that ‘snow opens.’ It was a very cold six spring/summer weeks. But also rewarding. I still remember my delight to learn that the Mongolian word for Korean is solongos from the word solongo ‘rainbow.’ Mongolians associate Koreans with their colorful clothing. I love it!

I was fortunate to land a job at Duke University where I enjoyed not only wonderful students and colleagues but was also part of an innovative linguistics program. As long as core courses were covered, I could offer any linguistics class I wanted. Semester after semester I’d think, “Hm. What don’t I know about?” Then I’d teach a course on that subject.

I went so far to offer a course titled Language and Gesture. It was even more interesting than I had anticipated. It did not involve the study of conventional gestures such as a thumbs up or a wave good-bye. Rather, it involved the study of idiosyncratic and unconscious gestures that we all do, even when we’re on the phone and the other person can’t see us. It turns out the linguistic system is an integrated speech-gesture system. Very young language learners, when presented with a mismatch between what an adult is saying and gesturing, they will obey the gestures. When adults suffer any kind of language loss their gestures are similarly impaired.

What about people whose language is gestural, such as American Sign Language? I heard the story of a woman who was signing with her friend about a group of people. When she used the word for ‘people’ she signed it below her usual signing frame, thereby unconsciously betraying her low opinion of those people. It was for her an embarrassing slip of the hand.

Languages and the people who speak them are endlessly fascinating. To this day I retain Beginner’s Mind with respect to language and linguistics. The subject is ever fresh, and I’m always eager to learn.

End note: The original meaning of linguist was ‘polyglot,’ a person who speaks many languages. These days a linguist is someone who studies any aspect of language, say, how language is processed in the brain or the history of a particular language, such as English. The neurolinguist and the historical linguist do not necessarily speak many languages.