Brain Mix Ups

Awhile back I talked about how hard it is to learn a new language. So now I have another question. Why, when I try to think of the Spanish word for something do I find a long-forgotten German word on the tip of my tongue?

 It would make sense in a way if French or some other romance language popped in my brain, if I’d studied French, and if the French and Spanish words were similar. But none of that is the case. I didn't study French, a similar word does not pop in my brain, and the German and Spanish words are nothing alike: compare “Perdon, por favor” with “Enshulegen Sie, Bitte”. Nothing alike. And yet, for some strange reason, studying Spanish is helping me recall the German I studied a lifetime ago.

It’s a lot like when I try to recall the name of an actor. Another actor’s name will pop up. Compare Gary Cooper and Cary Grant. They really only have a few things in common. They were contemporaries:  Cooper was born in 1901; Grant in 1904. Both were good actors.  

They don’t have similar names, though in a pinch one might try to rhyme their first names. Their appearances and styles were quite different. Cooper was the essential cowboy type--strong, silent, and comfortable on a horse, in the outdoors and shooting a gun. Grant was known as debonair and sophisticated. Screwball comedies, and con jobs were more his style. One thing they had in common--both shared the screen with some stunning leading ladies. Think Ingrid Bergman in "Notorious" and Grace Kelly in "High Noon".

So why do I often retrieve one of their names when I know the other actor was in a particular film. By some obscure connection I seem to have mentally filed the two names and they stick together when I reach for that mental file. 

 Or, there is a friend (let’s call her “Mary”) and the daughter (“Marie”) of another friend (“Susan”). I know Mary and Marie and never mentally confuse their names when I think of them. They are quite clearly fixed in my brain. But when I try to say either name, the other one frequently pops up and into my mouth. Their names are both linked by Susan, whose daughter is Marie and who introduced me to Mary many years ago. 

For a reason I cannot fathom I always stumble over the names Mary and Marie as they are stored in the same verbal, brain file-folder and again the mental pages  stick together.

If you’ve ever seen the kids’ movie “Donald Duck in MathMagic Land” I think it explains some of my memory issues. In Donald’s brain there are cobwebs, unfiled stacks of papers and misfiled documents. Much like the office in which I sit at this very moment typing this essay. 

My office is a little bit of a mess. Ok, a big mess. I rationalize that the clutter helps me come up with ideas. It also helps me remember what I’ve been meaning to do with various projects that I notice as they are sitting out and about. For me, out of sight is literally out of mind.

But a lot of the clutter is because I don’t know what to do with the stuff. Some of it needs to be tossed or recycled. Some of it needs to be filed. I used to try to file the detritus of the mail I receive by subject matter. That never worked very well because when I went to locate it I couldn’t remember what topic I had filed it under. 

Now I file based on chronology. (Translated:  I put it in a box in the order in which I receive it.) So if I go to look for something I sort (Translated: "dig") through the pile based on when I think it was received. Works as well as any method I've tried.

With such a mish-mash of an office and filing system is it any wonder my mental files are in disarray? Obviously, I’ve filed “foreign words” for “excuse me” all together rather than Spanish words in one file and German words in another. If I remembered, or ever knew the Latin word for “excuse me” it would be in that folder too.

People whose names begin with “M” and who have a connection with “Susan” are all in another file folder, Just like Gary Cooper and Cary Grant, forever to be pulled out when I see one or the other and try to say the name. 

I can use iTranslate, Duo Lingo and other language Apps to solve my language filing issues. If someone has invented a smart phone app that solves my mental dilemma of mixing up similar names of friends or sort-of- similar celebrities who are filed together in my brain I need it.  Maybe a facial recognition and name app that I could just download to my brain? And another that would straighten and dust my office would be nice. 

Foreign Languages and Aging Brains

My husband and I have started taking a Spanish class. Why you might ask? Several reasons. First, and most importantly, our son and his fiancé are planning a wedding in the Dominican Republic where some of her family lives. We thought it would be nice to be able to communicate with some of the bride’s family in their native language. And a little Spanish might be helpful on the trip, ordering food and drink, and so forth.

Second, we thought learning another language could be good for our brains.  And finally, how hard can it be? Everyone says Spanish is one of the easier languages to learn and we already know a lot of Spanish words: “queso”, “vino” and “gracias”. Food, drink, and thanks—I’m thinking all we need to know is how do you say, “Check, please?”

So why is it so hard to learn the rest of the language? Regular and irregular verbs, matching the genders and number of adjectives and nouns.  And what’s with all the inanimate objects having to be masculine or feminine? Seems in English we are removing gender even from words that refer to people. Police officer instead of policeman or woman. How gauche to call a flight attendant a steward or stewardess. So why in Spanish do I have to learn whether the table and chairs are masculine or feminine? No one answers that question.

I suppose my disgruntlement with the difficulties of learning another language stems in part from the fact that I was never very good at learning another language, at least not a spoken language. I was never all that good at memorizing anything. Maybe I should just acknowledge I’m happy to be sort of fluent in English.  

Studying Spanish verbs at my age is at least as hard as when I was trying to memorize spelling words and multiplication tables back when I was in grammar school. I was so slow to memorize those things my mother in her exasperation would hit me in the head with the vocabulary and multiplication cards. It didn’t help me to remember but it did make me dislike studying.

In four years of high school Latin, I eventually learned to translate the written word. Not too surprisingly, there wasn’t much call for speaking Latin, a dead language. And to top it off, the nuns who taught us Latin, taught us to speak based on what some expert believed was Cicero’s pronunciation. Incidentally, this Ciceronian pronunciation does not correspond with Church Latin, legal Latin or any other known pronunciation. Whatever the pronunciation, I did not excel at spoken Latin. And I remember very little of it now. Thank goodness, I haven’t run into Cicero and had to try to say whatever the Latin equivalent is for “Hola”. 

In college I studied two years of German. By my second year I could read Herman Hesse in the original German without needing to translate. Not too surprising since again my language classes had focused on the written rather than the spoken word.

My verbal skills in German lagged far behind. This was despite the fact my grandparents and my father were native German speakers. Probably though, hearing German at a young age resulted in my ability to reproduce German sounds fairly easily. But other than a very few memorized words and phrases, (“Guten Tag, mein herr” for example) which sound fairly authentic, I am clueless in German. When push comes to shove, I’m quickly revealed as a Deutsche-fraud.

On a European trip when we changed planes in Munich I said a few words in German to a TSA-type official who was digging through the gestalt-like mess in my luggage. The Frau-in-Charge, unlike her French counterpart in Paris, did not politely switch to English as I mangled her language. Instead, the Frau-meister gave me a stern lecture in German about German grammar. At least that’s what I think she was doing. I didn’t really understand anything she said.

So what folly is it to think that now, as a senior citizen by most calculations, I will be successful in understanding and learning to speak Spanish? I’m tempted to engage in a slight digression as to whether I’m actually a senior citizen. But I will try to save that detour in our journey to Spanish language land for another post.

Maybe my problem in memorizing is I take too many mental side- trips down the discount aisles. So, anyway, back to learning Spanish with an old brain. We all believe what we’ve been told, that learning a second language is a good challenge to the brain as you get older. Just as we’ve been told lifting weights and running is good for an older person’s physical well being.  Unless you drop dead of a heart attack first.

And no one talks about how damn hard it is to learn new words in a language you’d never even heard until you were middle aged. Or how painful it is to walk around the track, let alone run, when you’re in your 60’s and have bursitis in your hips and arthritis in your knees. I must be in the senior citizen category and entitled to some of those discounts if the exercise, mental or physical, is that painful.

Now that I’m sort of a senior citizen, everything makes my brain hurt. I’ve long since solved the problem of not remembering spelling words and multiplication tables with Spellcheck and a calculator on my cell phone. So now I’ve also downloaded iTranslate. Who needs a smart, young brain when you have a smart phone? Too bad there isn’t a smart phone App that replaces exercise.