How Learning Another Language Turned Me Into a Grammar Nerd
By Diana Giovinazzo | August 25, 2022 |
I always wanted to be fluent in Italian. There was something about being able to speak one of the most romanticized languages in the world, whose very mechanics force you to slow down and enjoy the language as one would a decadent plate of pasta. It also happened to be the language of my grandparents, however, by the time my generation came along we were primarily an English-speaking Italian-American family. Growing up, we spoke some phrases around the house like Che cosa fa? Meaning What are you doing?, often asked in frustration when my cousins and I were up to no good. Or a favorite, mangia, when it was time to eat. Beyond a handful of catchphrases and a few choice swear words, it was a language that wasn’t emphasized. I found myself jealous of friends who spoke one language in public and a second within their home, whether it was Italian or not.
For years, I played with apps or books that promised to give Italian instruction, but I was never able to put so much as two sentences together. However, it wasn’t until a few years ago, with the help of the pandemic, that I made a point of studying Italian seriously with a tutor from Bologna. Once The Woman in Red was translated to Italian, I was delighted to be able to correspond with readers and even be a guest on an Italian podcast (with the help of my wonderful translator), but I started to notice that my study had seeped into other aspects of my life.
To be able to communicate with others in their own language is a vital skill, one that could open doors both in travel and in the workplace. Learning another language can even change cognitive functioning and the brain itself. In a 2004 study referenced in an article on Bilingual Adaptation, researchers found “that grey matter density was significantly greater for bilinguals than monolinguals in the left inferior parietal gyrus (LIPG), with larger effects for early bilinguals and for contrasts in the left hemisphere.” This is the area of the brain that is involved with emotion, interpretation of sensory information, mathematics, the movement of others, body image, and most importantly, for us, language. Furthermore, adults going through intense study to become interpreters showed evidence of greater hippocampal volume (which controls memory) and cortical thickness (which plays a role in intelligence).
As writers, we are in a unique position to use grammar to sculpt magic with our words. We pick up on language from the time of birth, and when we are in school, we are taught the mechanics. But how often do we get to look at it from an outsider’s perspective?
Once, while I was in the midst of one of my Italian lessons, my instructor informed me that we were moving on to gerunds. Immediately my mind started to race, “What the hell are gerunds?” Shortly after I felt guilty because I’m a writer, I should know that. Discreetly I did a quick google search and learned it is a word that is derived from a verb but functions as a noun. I had known that there were verbs that acted like this but had forgotten what they were called. After my lesson, I took some time to reacquaint myself with those pesky English gerunds and how they acted in a sentence in comparison to their Italian counterparts. Soon I noticed something in studying Italian, and my fascination with English grammar grew. With each new topic that we started during my lessons, whether it be those infamous gerunds, modal verbs, or even pronouns, I found myself going back and reviewing how those elements functioned within the English language. So often we instinctively know how to speak or how to form a basic sentence, but do we ever take the time to study why?
While English was one of my favorite subjects in high school and college, I often found grammar to be necessary only to help read the books that I so cherished. I know, for a writer to say that they weren’t keen on grammar is like saying you enjoy being a baker but hate recipes. It’s true, I didn’t think much about or feel any fondness over grammar until one semester when I had a professor who dressed like a bohemian in class, and who used Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner to connect her love of literature to the basic building blocks of language. Still, I haven’t been able to consider myself a grammar nerd until I started to study my own language from the outside looking in. To see how someone else’s language functions makes me inherently curious about how our own language operates. I may never become fluent in Italian, and the growing intelligence thing may be debatable, but I am enjoying finally being able to call myself a grammar nerd.
Do you study another language? If so, have you noticed any changes in other areas of your life from it?
Diana Giovinazzo is the co-creator of Wine, Women and Words, a weekly literary podcast featuring interviews with authors over a glass of wine. Her debut novel, THE WOMAN IN RED, released in 2020, and her second novel, ANTOINETTE’S SISTER, released in 2022. You can find her in the Los Angeles area with her menagerie and husband.
I’ve studied several languages, both for humans and machines. I’ve always been fascinated with language, because language is culture. If there is a word for something, then that thing exists. It has importance. It has power. That is culture. Some languages are much aware of contexts, like distance of items, sacredness, or status of speakers. That is culture. A language creates a frame for thought and communication – the way we think about things. That is culture. When a language is lost, a part of culture is lost.
Studying foreign language ms in high school opened my eyes to several grammar issues.
I learned English in the States, then Spanish when my parents moved to Mexico when I was 7 (before that I would tell my mother, “Don’t talk to me like that!” when she tried to teach me Spanish), and a decent amount of French (enough to converse with a cab driver and function in Paris), and threw ‘Greek and Latin Etymologies of Spanish) into the mix in Preparatoria, so it’s sort of always been there.
It does help. Spanish has 14 tenses – ONE of them will be what you need – but in English so many of the tenses are indistinguishable from each other it almost doesn’t matter they’re there. Other languages have so many more ‘persons’ – plural and singular, I/you, you (formal)/they – that again the nuance is built in. You can’t represent ‘I see’ and ‘You see’ by ‘See’, where in Spanish ‘Veo’ (first person singular) and ‘Veis’ (second person plural, formal) are each enough to tell you who is beinf referred to.
All fascinating – all stuck in the background of the mind somewhere.
I like knowing it – I doubt I would have had the energy to learn as an adult, much less as an older adult – but the bones are steeped in it.
When I was a freshmen in high school, I was offered a choice of languages. Out of French, Spanish, and Latin, I chose Latin because it was described as a dead language, which intrigued me. Among the unexpected joys of studying Homer Vergil and Caesar, I was infused with a deep love of etymology. Discovering word-roots in Greek and Latin and even Sanskrit has remained with me until this day, and has made me a better reader. I’m also obsessed with dialects and how they are affected by human migrations and geological boundaries. The Lenape language here in PA reflects a poetry of description and a reverence for nature missing in other languages. Wonderful post!!
Spot on. For the past eight years, I’ve lived in Italy, and I can’t say my Italian is spectacular, but I know enough to understand “clean,” non-dialect Italian (the further south I go, including Rome, the less I understand), and learning Italian grammar has definitely informed my writing. It has also made me appreciate the beautiful succinctness of our own language. As you know so well, it takes 20 mellifluous syllables of Italian to say the same thing you can spit out in five syllables of English. Everything is MORE here. I love this country.
You might get something out of my newsletter, Cappuccino. It’s not all Italocentric, but a lot of it is.
You have a sumptuous cultural heritage. Not one drop of Italian blood do I have, but I sure wish I did. My job is simply to admire and love this 3-D fairytale called Italy and report back from the front.
YES TO ALL THIS!!!!!!!!!!
Ph.D. linguist here, the sort of person who reads grammar books about other languages for fun! I have varying levels of proficiency in about…too many ancient languages to count (I stopped at 10) and about six modern ones. It is a delight, and there is no sweeter pleasure than reading poetry in languages other than one’s own.
I didn’t learn the difference between lie and lay until I studied German. Studying another language really does help!
Hi Dianna, fun post! I am 65 and have been studying French daily for a couple years now, inspired by gaining a French daughter-in-law. Back in 8th grade, entranced by the notion of learning a new alphabet, I’d chosen Russian though, which I continued with for 7—hoo boy, what a difference! Harsh to fluid, R’s thrown from hard palate to soft. The differences in syntax are fascinating, as are the cognates (there are so many languages, for example, in which the word ”flag” is the same). But I’m learning much more about English etymology through French, noticing things I’d never noticed before—such as that ”garage” sounds French because it is indeed borrowed from French, and a noun form of the French verb « garer », which means to park. Loving it!
What a fun post, Diana. My kids learned more English grammar from studying Spanish. I’ve always loved languages–grew up trilingual speaking Marathi at home, Hindi with friends, and English at school. Learned enough French and German to get by while living in Belgium. Now, the focus is on churchy Latin. And of course, math and music are languages too. Love all of it. Language is essential. I have a cousin who was born deaf and until she acquired language, she had terrible tantrums. Language opened so many doors–for meaningful relationships, for education, and for expression.
Diana, I’ve been using DuoLingo to study Spanish almost every morning (albeit for just 10-15 minutes) for a couple of years, and verbs still defeat me. (See Alicia’s note above.) Gender brings me to my knees too. I live in a town that’s more than 70 percent Hispanic, so it’s helpful to have some Spanish, but I still miss so much when I eavesdrop, I know I should go to a conversational class to supplement the Duo.
I just came back from house-sitting in Malta, and what a wealth of languages there. Obviously Italian, but you hear so many people speaking Baltic/Slavic languages, French, German, Arabic and of course Maltese. And so many Brits and Aussies there too. I was hopeless with Italian there (English is widely spoken), but I found that being able to say “pasta” and point to have the time of my life—the food speaks every language of “good!”
Excellent post! I have found my knowledge of languages other than my native tongue is incredibly useful to me as a writer – I studied French, Latin and German in high school, learned Italian as a singer and did one year of Russian at university (that was the hardest.) I think the study of languages not only gives people a better grasp of grammar, but also broadens their general view of the world.
I was lucky enough to do my primary schooling at a time and in a place where grammar was part of the curriculum for all. Great foundation for a writer, so a big thank you to the New Zealand state school system as it was back in my time.
I grew up as a State Department kid in Spain and Italy, and to me, it was normal to speak at least two and probably three languages–every other kid I knew did also. Later, I added French and Norwegian. I’m sure we all love the nuances of languages and the insights they give into cultures—ex: there is no word for “please” in Norwegian and no word for “awkward” in Italian. From what I understand, Norwegians are big on thank you’s and (my theory), being very polite and not wanting to disturb others, they don’t like to put people out by asking them to do something for them, so the closest they get to “please” is “I would gladly have.” In Italian, the closest to “awkward” is “imbarazzato.” What a relief to know that we’ll never be awkward in Italy–only embarrassed. :)
It’s not necessarily surprising, but it is still fun to see how many of us have an interest in language and linguistics!
I used to want to know 10 languages (or more). Now I will be happy if I can master 3 haha. I’m at 2.5 ish? English (native) and Spanish (semi-fluent, though quite rusty) and Chinese (toddler ish) lol.
Also relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/books/review/violet-made-of-thorns-gina-chen.html
Anyway, thanks for posting about this!