The Citizen, 1996-02-14, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1996 PAGE 5.
Arthur Black
Life not about
what happens to us
Chance makes a football of man's life
Would you care to hazard a guess as to
who said the above? Knute Rockne, maybe?
Kim Campbell? This week's head coach of
the Ottawa Senators?
Wrong, wrong and wrong. The
observation is more than 2,500 years old. It
comes from the writings of the ancient
Greek philosopher Sophocles.
A football. What a perfect analogy for the
bounces - in bounds and out - that beset a
body during its broken-field run down the
gridiron of Life.
Life when you think of it, is really a series
of accidents all strung together like a
necklace fashioned by a drunkard. We don't
choose our parents. We don't select our place
of birth. We don't elect to be left-handed, or
curly-haired, or smart or dumb or tall or
short. Those are all accidents that befall us.
As for the way our lives turn out, well it
all depends on how we play the 'accidental'
cards we were dealt.
Life isn't what happens to us. It's what we
do with the accidents of life that befall us.
It must be said that the vast majority of us
play lousy poker. We take the accidents as
they come, let them knock us down, and
spend the rest of the game shrugging or
blaming somebody else sitting at the table
for our misfortune.
Some of us, but not all of us. Archimedes
The joys of
language learning
I can say without hesitation that one of
the great joys of my life is having fluency in
a number of languages.
Someone once said (I forget who) that
each language you learn in addition to your
native one opens a thousand fascinating
doors. I agree wholeheartedly with this;
being able to go to, say, Italy, makes the stay
in that country so much more enjoyable. I
meet people that I would not under any other
circumstances have been able to meet.
On the other side of the coin is the fact
that talking to people in a foreign country in
their own language brings pleasure to them
as well as to you, with all sorts of pleasing
benefits.
People struggling with a language in
school can be excused for wondering if there
will ever come a day when they feel
reasonably fluent in the language. The
answer, unfortunately, is not as long as they
stay in school and make no effort to live
where the language is spoken. You really
have to immerse yourself in some way to get
the language absorbed properly.
It is too bad that we do not have more
student exchanges where a young person can
get involved on a daily basis with speaking
the language. That failure to develop these
contacts is one of the shortcomings of our
school system.
I frequently get asked at what point you
start thinking in a language. The answer is
that I honestly do not know. It certainly
wasn't looking for a way to determine the
volume of irregular objects when he sat
down in a bathtub in Syracuse 2300 years
ago. He was just looking for a nice, hot soak,
but when he saw how the water slopped over
the top of the tub when he got in, a light bulb
flashed and Archimedes Principle was born.
Isaac Newton, you may remember, had
much the same experience under an apple
tree. No doubt Newton was looking forward
to a cozy nap in the orchard when that apple
dropped. That 'accident' led Newton to
formulate what we know as the Law of
Gravity.
There are many other "happy accidents" in
the annals of science. Natural rubber isn't
good for much in its natural state. It turns
soft and sticky when it 'gets too warm; stiff
and brittle when it cools off. Back in the
early 19th century an American by the name
of Charles Goodyear was fooling around
with natural rubber, mixing it with various
chemicals when he happened to spill a bit of
it on a hot stove. To his surprise, the rubber
didn't burn, but only charred slightly, as a
piece of leather might.
Goodyear had 'accidentally' discovered the
process of vulcanizing rubber.
Little accidents sometimes yield grand
results. Velcro? We owe its discovery to a
walk in the woods that a Swiss inventor by
the name of George deMestral took about 40
years ago. When he got home, deMestral
noticed his pant legs were covered with
burrs. Picking them , he fell to wondering
how such a little thing could stick so
stubbornly. Under a microscope he
By Raymond Canon
doesn't happen when you get up some
morning and say to yourself that from now
on you are going to think in French or
German. It is something that just sneaks up
on you as you speak the language. You have
to react quickly to some situation and to
your surprise you give instructions or make
an explanation in the second language. You
are pleasantly surprised and so you should
be. You have made the leap!
Another question is which languages are
harder to learn. That will depend on what
your native language is. German word order,
for example, is pretty hard for an English
speaking person in spite of the similarity of
many words in the two languages, because
the way a German puts his words together in
a sentence is quite different from how an
English speaking person goes about it. This
is because Germans tend to leave the verb
until the end of the sentence and, in a
subordinate clause, to pile up the verbs at the
end of the clause.
The Romance languages, such as French,
Italian or Spanish, do it exactly the way it is
done in English so you don't have the same
difficulty.
As if the word order in German were not
enough, matters are complicated further by
the various endings which must be placed on
both adjectives and nouns. Anybody who
has studied Latin will know precisely what
this means and the Slavic languages are
afflicted with the same system. English used
to have them but has pretty well done away
with them. About the only relic of this is the
"s" which we tack on a noun in order to
show possession.
To be honest each language has its share
discovered that the bristles of the burr ended
in tiny hooks, invisible to the naked eye.
Before long, deMestral had found a way to
duplicate the burr configuration in fabric,
and Velcro fasteners were born.
Microwave ovens? In 1952, Doctor Percy
Spencer was working with radar when he
noticed that a microwave leak had melted a
chocolate bar in his pocket. He decided to
try 'rnicrowaving' popcorn. Any couch
potato knows how successful that
experiment turned out.
One last happy accident of science. This
one happened in the august kitchens of the
Savoy Hotel in London around the turn of
the century. A famous opera star was staying
at the Savoy, and like many opera divas, she
was striving mightily not to look like a
battleship. The prima donna was dieting.
Seriously. Living largely on a diet of toast
and black tea.
She was such a star that the master chef
was assigned to cook all her meals, even if it
was only toast. But the prima donna came
down early one morning, the master chef
had not arrived and a culinary underling
prepared her breakfast.
Disaster. The toast came out skinny and
crustless. It looked like poached playing
cards. As the Great Diva laid her divine
choppers on the thin, emaciated slabs of
bread, the master chef slunk out to her table
ready to apologize. Before he could speak,
the lady burst out "Cesar, how clever of you.
I have never eat such lovely toast."
The lady's name was Nellie Melba.
And that's how the world got Melba Toast.
of linguistic road blocks but, if you go at
learning a language with' determination and a
good sense of humour, you will sail through
to a good command of any language you are
learning.
You need a sense of humour because you
are going to make funny mistakes which
make people laugh and you have to learn to
laugh along with them. I have split people up
any number of times with things that I have
said incorrectly. You laugh and listen
carefully to how you should have said it.
I often hear complaints that people speak
too quickly in a foreign language which
makes it difficult to comprehend. I'll tell
you a little secret; the more you understand a
language, the more slowly people speak. It
sounds fast only because you don't
understand too well. Actually languages
such as German, Spanish and Italian are
spoken -quite distinctly which makes them
easier in this respect than, say, French or
Portuguese.
If you speak three or four languages,
people wonder if you mix them up. I have to
admit that it does happen occasionally, but
your brain does an excellent job of keeping
them apart. When I am talking Spanish, it is
understandable that now and again an Italian
word will slip in, especially if the word in
question is similar in both languages. I have
eight languages in all and I have never
gotten a headache from trying to keep them
separate.
If you have the urge to learn a foreign
language, go to it. Take classes in it and,
above all, find someone with whom you can
practise. It will all be worth it when the day
arrives that you get the chance to use it.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
A sure romance
Valentine's Day. A time to remind an old
love or entice a new one.
A quote in the 1995 Old Farmer's
Almanac states, "It's as difficult to win love
as to wrap salt in pine needles."
One thing I found out relatively early in
life is that sending a romantic, albeit
hopeful, missive, won't convince the object
of your affections either. It was in Grade 5 I
believe, that this hard lesson was learned. I
had a huge crush on a boy in my class, and
with the impending approach of Valentine's
Day I felt it a good opportunity to open my
heart.
He on the other hand, managed instead, to
break it. My paintstakingly selected card,
which I felt had carried the right balance of
flippancy and sincerity, was glanced at, and
as I watched anxiously, he laughed then
tossed it aside.
Though I was certain that day that I would
die of mortification and grief, thanks to the
flexibility of the youthful heart I found
myself pretty much recovered in... oh, about
a day. However, I learned, and never forgot,
that announcing you are fond of someone,
doesn't neccessarily attract, but may actually
repel. Romance is really only a fun gift when
it's given to a willing recipient.
Perhaps it was this discovery that
prompted me to be a bit of a romance twit
when I first met my warrior. After all, he
was staying around, so I felt pretty safe in
assuming he wouldn't tear up my card and it
just wouldn't be right if we didn't take
advantage of Cupid's day to let each other
know how we felt,
Now, I believe that with rare exception,
men and women perceive this whole
romance thing differently. Men seem to
think the more bizarre the idea or approach
the' more we will like it, yet according to a
survey by the American Floral Marketing
Council, 70 per cent of women prefer getting
flowers to any other gesture of affection.
Anyway I worked diligently for years
trying to convince my guy, that this was
important to me, just a card, just a rose,
would keep me from whining on Valentine's
Day. He was learning and everything went
well for a time, until the year he was
working a long night shift coupled with a
two-hour drive to and from the job. Arriving
home on the morning of this particular Feb.
14 he realized he had forgotten my
Valentine's card, so ran downtown to buy it
before turning in for the day.
As I opened the card I becanie aware that
my exhausted, bleary eyed soulmate had not
exactly taken the time to read it before
purchasing it.
Happy Valentine's Day
To the man / love.
The first thing to cross my mind was that
if it's true that it's the thought that counts, I
was in big trouble. Then as my rational mind
took over, I realized that even though he
hadn't exactly hunted until he got the ideal
verse for me, he knew how important it was
to me that the day be acknowledged, and
made an effort. He also gave us a sweetly
funny memory. And saved me a bit of
money as well, because I kept the card and
gave it to him the following year. He
laughed and didn't toss it aside.
Valentine's Day can be a time to fmd new
romance, but I definitely prefer the sure thing.
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