English: I Think That That Language Is Screwy

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog. Put it on the big screen and gather the whole family! Or, fire it up on your phone, add earbuds, and pretend it’s a podcast!

Note: this post is not about Vladimir Nabokov or any of his works. It’s kind of inspired by his love of words, though, and there is some Russian language lore in here.

Introduction

If you’re a super-nerdy word buff like I am, this post should be right up your alley. If not, it’s an opportunity to silently mock me and feel relieved to be a normal person. Either way, read on!

The Poem

English: I Think That That Language Is Screwy

All languages are more or less complex.                            

To learn a second one is to subject                                   2

Yourself to much abuse. It does perplex                           

Me: so much stuff to get correct!

One language highly likely to abuse                      

The learner is our blasted English tongue.                     6

It’s almost like it’s tailored to confuse:

Of tangled threads it’s intricately strung.

Pronunciation rules do exist.

Exceptions, though, seem almost infinite.                   10

(To number them, much less produce a list?     

For such a project, I’m inadequate.)                    

As evidence, allow me to present                         

The heteronym, which proves without a doubt:         14

Our rules simply do not represent

An airtight way to sound our vowels out.

When I write “wind” what way have you to know           

If “moving air” is meant, or “reeling in”?                     18

Does “tear” suggest reaction to a woe,                

Or ripping something up? See? Evil twins!

Our consonants are dodgy, too. You see,

The word “refuse” can mean “debris,” although        22

The “s” can be pronounced just like a “z,”

In which case “turn down” is the sense, you know.

These heteronyms confound inflection, too.

Does “entrance” mean a way to get inside,                26

Or “put into a trance”? It’s up to you

To sort it out. It’s not well codified.

                                                                                                                           

What’s going on? There’s really no excuse         

For ambiguity to so abound.                                        30

Who authorized a system so abstruse

That letters make an arbitrary sound?

    The secret of our tongue, I think is that

    It does reward a grasp that’s intimate.                 34

Footnotes & commentary

Title: That That

No, it’s not a typo. The first “that” is a conjunction and the second is an adjective. Both are arguably necessary. More on this later.

Line 1: all languages

There has been some bickering among linguists and anthropologists about whether all languages are equally complex. As detailed here, there was a movement to assert this, perhaps driven by a desire to “reject any nationalist ideas about superiority of the languages of establishment.” I can’t see how anybody could objectively assess the complexity of this or that language, because we all have a native tongue that will make some languages easier for us to learn and others harder. Also, I don’t actually care.

Line 1: complex

Why is this word blue? And certain others? Hmmmm…

Line 3: abuse

Is “abuse” an overstatement? Perhaps, but I’ve seen and experienced some pretty disparaging behavior around the attempt to speak a foreign language. For example, a teenager I once knew, whose mom was from China, was visibly disgusted with her mom’s English and routinely said, “Learn how to talk—I can’t even understand you.” Myself, I struggled with French. A college instructor once told me, right before my oral final exam, “You should know: your pronunciation is terrible.” This didn’t exactly put me at ease. Then, halfway through the final, he stopped and said, “Before we go on, I just have to say, your accent is awful.” At the end he recapped how poor my performance had been throughout. Nice. It’s also worth noting that when I have  the classic anxiety dream of showing up to a final exam having never attended the class, the class is always French.

Line 4: so much stuff

There are so many possible errors you can commit with written communication. It occurred to me once, when reviewing my score on a college French quiz, that since the instructor is allowed to knock off half a point for any little goof, a poor student could end up with a negative score.

Incidentally, if you rightly recognized this poem as a sonnet (though it’s longer than the standard 14 lines), you may have noticed that this fourth line is missing a foot. That is, it has only four two-syllable feet instead of five. This is deliberate. With all five feet, the line sounded jarringly too long. I encountered  similar problem when I wrote my Ode to South Park. Its fourth line is technically correct (five iambic feet) but it doesn’t sound right. For eight years I’ve been considering fixing that.

Line 6: blasted English tongue

I am so glad I learned this language the easy way (i.e., from imitating my parents as a toddler). Its grammar is so much harder than that of Latin or Russian. I’m tempted to include French in this list of easier languages, but its insistence on arbitrarily assigning gender to an inanimate object, and then requiring articles and adjectives to match this gender, seems unnecessary and possibly malicious.

Line 8: tangled threads

I believe it’s pretty widely accepted that the difficulties inherent in English stem from its long and complicated history, starting with Germanic dialects that evolved over time by contact first with Vikings, then with conquering Normans, Bretons, and Frenchmen. Details here.

Line 10: exceptions … almost infinite

Other languages I’ve studied are so much more consistent than English. Sure, French has irregular verbs, but not all that many of them, and although my mouth cannot make the sounds this language requires, in principle its rules make sense, and the diacritics (accent marks etc.) are helpful. Russian is also very logical (in my experience, and according to a fluent speaker I consulted). As for Latin, my college class learned all the grammar in a single semester and spent the next term translating Cicero et al … that’s how consistent Latin is.

Line 11: number … list

I got sucked in by Heteronym web pages and ended up letting several hours of my life slip away. Existing lists on the Internet are either too short (like this one) or too long (like this one which lists 427 pairs). By “too long” I mean too generous. I don’t want to count theoretical heteronyms, like “luger” (the pistol—proper nouns shouldn’t count) or the word “as” when it’s pronounced “ass” to mean “a Roman coin.” Who’s ever heard of this coin?

Incidentally, my first attempt to list all the heteronyms lead me to the Heteronym Homepage, way back in 1996 when the Internet was pretty new to most people. In case you’re a youngster, I have to tell you that back then, websites weren’t the slick multimedia affairs we see today. They all tended to be like the Heteronym Homepage: some nerd at a university posting a little essay about heteronyms and inviting readers to contribute their own. (This was before blogs were a thing.) As you can see, I’m credited with three contributions (one of which I had to argue for and which the webmaster only begrudgingly posted, with a qualification). This was my first-ever Internet presence.

Line 14: heteronym

If the heteronym is my poster child for English being particularly hard, I suppose I should establish that it’s a mostly English phenomenon. Since there are something like six or seven thousand languages worldwide, demonstrating this would be like proving a negative, but among mainstream languages I believe this is true. More on this in the Appendix, if you’re interested.

Line 14: proves without a doubt

Of course the existence of the heteronym isn’t the only evidence we have that the English language is completely whacked. Consider the word “thought.” Why does this crazy assembly of letters, “o-u-g-h-t,” make an “ott” sound here, whereas in the word “drought” it makes an “out” sound? And how come removing the second “t” from “thought” changes the “o-u-g-h” from “ott” to “oh”?

When I lived in San Francisco, I always puzzled over the pronunciation of the street name “Gough.” It could rhyme with “bough,” “cough,” “dough,” “rough,” or “through.” The arrangement of the letters in English is so often useless. We have to learn so many pronunciations à la carte.

And what’s this business with “h” and how it affects other letters, like “s” and “c”? Why should the “c” in “ch,” which is a “k” or “s” sound, combine with “h” to produce a totally different sound than either of them makes alone? Makes no sense. You know how the Russians indicate the “ch” sound? They have a specific character for it: “ч.” For a “sh” sound they have the character “ш.” They even have a character, “ж,” for the “zh” sound we nonsensically suggest with a simple “s,” like in the word “pleasure.” And their “k” sound is indicated by a letter, “к,” that never makes an “s” sound like our two-timing “c.” (The French “c” also does double-duty, but at least when it makes an “s” sound they indicate this with a cedilla, i.e., “ç”.)

Line 18: reeling in

Yes, I acknowledge that “cranking up” (like a wind-up toy) might be a better way to convey this second sense of “wind” then “reeling in.” Call it poetic license: I had to set up the next rhyme (two lines later). I think I deserve some leeway, given how freaking hard this poem was to write. My original goal had been to pack a heteronym into every line, but that proved impossible (for me). If you count up the blue words you’ll see how far short I fell.

I’d also thought it’d be cool to use each sense of each heteronym, but you see I only managed that once.  I even wanted to rhyme two pairs so that one sense of each rhymed with the corresponding sense of the other. For example, I wanted to rhyme the noun “abuse” with noun “excuse” and the verb “abuse” with the verb “excuse.” Oh well. I don’t know why I thought I could do all this … probably I listen to too much Eminem. I have to remind myself: he’s a genius and I am not. (Plus, rhyming is easier for a rapper because he or she can warp pronunciations slightly to achieve the desired effect.)

Line 20: evil twins

This is not a reference to my brothers Bryan and Geoff, who are twins (though they were pretty evil as kids). It’s an allusion to the TV trope of a look-alike evil version of the hero. At least three episodes of the original “Star Trek” featured the evil twin concept; there was a “Magnum, P.I.” evil twin episode;  and if memory serves there were three evil twins in “Charlie’s Angels” once. I can’t think of a better way than “evil twin” to distill the heteronym concept.

Line 22: refuse

This word was a trap! Did you get it wrong the first time you read this stanza? Good, good. One characteristic of a proper sonnet is its strict adherence to iambic pentameter: you have to arrange your words carefully to naturally create the proper rhythm for the reader. As I’ve explained before in these pages, it wouldn’t do to  screw up your naturally iambic vs. trochaic words willy-nilly in a line of verse:

Right: Exquisite and expensive are her tastes

Wrong: Hot dogs are bad for foraging pit bulls

Right: The yuppie Zeitgeist sickens Uncle Ralph

Wrong: His blood pressure is getting acute now

In the first example above of incorrect verse, you’d have to put the stress on the third syllable of “foraging,” which just sounds wrong. And in the second wrong example you’d have to put the stress on the second syllable of “pressure” and the first syllable of “acute,” which is also unnatural.

It turns out this consistent, rhythmic inflection can often help the reader (subconsciously) recognize which sense of a heteronym is intended, if the word has more than one syllable. For example, in line 26, there’s not much context to suggest which meaning of “entrance” is the right one, but you probably got it right (EN-trance, a way to get inside) because the meter led you there.

So getting back to line 22, you probably read it “re-FUSE” the first time, until you got to “debris” and had to go back and revise your interpretation (perhaps subconsciously). If so, you probably noted a small snag in the rhythm of the poem. I employed this little trick to jar you a bit, to prep you for my point about inflection later on (line 25).

Line 26: entrance

Ever since I realized “entrance” was a heteronym, I’m unable to look at an “ENTRANCE” sign and think “EN-trance.” I always see “en-TRANCE,” as though there were a hypnotist on the other side of the door.

Line 31: abstruse

I deliberated about “obtuse” vs. “abstruse” here. Generally, I avoid using a fancy word where a simple word will do. But “obtuse” is just too much of a stretch for the meaning I’m looking for. It’s not just me: look how much one dictionary had to say about using “obtuse” to mean, well, abstruse:

Lunching with a colleague once, I described my entrée as insipid, and he said, “How can pasta be stupid?” I explained that insipid mainly means “lacking in flavor” even if the word is often used to mean “dull” or “generally lacking.” He refused to believe me, so I bet him $5. We stopped at a bookstore on the way back to the office to check a dictionary (this being in the pre-smartphone era). Easiest $5 I ever made. I should have tried to take $5 off my teenager today when she read this poem and asked why I didn’t use “obtuse” here.

Line 33: that

Why is this word in blue? Isn’t blue supposed to mean it’s a heteronym? Well, yes. I haven’t seen “that” listed on any of the heteronym web pages I’ve seen (though for that matter, none of them lists “misuse” either, which certainly belongs on the list). We know that for a pair of words to qualify as a heteronym pair, they have to be spelled the same, pronounced differently, and have a different meaning. For the first test, consider that at least three mainstream dictionaries (the three I’ve checked) show two different pronunciations for “that,” as shown here. 

That upside-down “e” character, ə, makes a sound something like “eh,” as in the words “about, item, edible,” etc. as shown here.

Now, you might say these are just alternative ways to pronounce the word, like we sometimes say “the” to rhyme with “thee” and sometimes to rhyme with “duh.” But I don’t think “thăt” vs. “thət” is arbitrary. When we use “that” as an adjective (to specify “the one singled out, implied, or understood”) we pronounce it “thăt” (rhymes with “hat”). But when we use “that” as a conjunction (to introduce a subordinate clause that “is joined to an adjective or a noun as a complement”), we say “thət” (rhymes with “pet”).

To test this (actually, to prove it, as I was already convinced), I wrote two sentences on Post-Its and took them around to my wife and kids to read aloud. The first read, “If you think that I’m going to put with that, you’re crazy.” All three read it as, “If you think thət I’m going to put up with thăt, you’re crazy.” No prompting was necessary: that’s how they naturally pronounced those words.

The next Post-It read, “I think that that that that man said is a lie.” All four read it, “I think thət thăt thət thăt man said is a lie.” By sounding the conjunctions with the “ə” sound, they were able to easily utter (and understand) the sentence, odd though it is. But when challenged to pronounce “that” to rhyme with “hat” in all four instances, they got tripped up. So: we have established a different pronunciation that tracks with the different meaning. Voilà! Heteronym!

(If it seems like I’m making an inordinately thorough case for “that” being a heteronym, it’s because my daughter drew me in to a spirited debate on the topic and got me all excited.)

Line 34: grasp that’s intimate

This really is the glory of English: by being hard to learn, it gives an unfair advantage to native speakers. All languages do this, of course, but to the extent that English is particularly difficult, the advantage is magnified. Moreover, English is a particularly good language to be utterly fluent in if you’re trying to a) be upwardly mobile in the global economy, or b) rest on your laurels. When I mention to people that I was an English major in college, I like to add, “It was a really easy major for me because I grew up speaking English at home.”

Another reason I contrived to end this poem with the word intimate? It rhymes perfectly with “thət” (as used in the previous line).

Postscript

I have just discovered another heteronym pair: poke (to prod) and poke (pronounced poe-KAY), the Hawaiian dish of marinated raw fish or seafood. This isn’t on any heteronym list I can find. Score!

Appendix

Is it truly the case that the heteronym is mainly an English thing? Well, I studied French for six years and never came across a pair in that language. According to this article, “French has relatively few heteronyms, and the ones they do have, they often put a gratuitous accent mark on one of the meanings to differentiate them. (For example, où meaning ‘where’ and ou meaning ‘or.’ The accent grave makes no pronunciation difference for the letter ‘u’; it's added so that ‘where’ and  ‘or’ are not spelled the same.)” Wikipedia lists 21 French heteronyms, and points out that a heteronym pair is usually the case of a noun being spelled the same as one conjugation of a verb (particularly third person plural), for example “couvent” meaning either “convent” or “they brood” (as in eggs). Since the French don’t really pronounce “ent,” the verb form sounds quite different. But this is certainly more obscure than English heteronyms.

I never encountered heteronyms in Russian and can’t imagine them because every letter in that language so consistently makes a discrete sound. As for Italian, Wikipedia is ambiguous about heteronyms in that tongue. It states, “Italian spelling is largely unambiguous, with a few exceptions” but then lists 35 examples. I plugged half a dozen of these examples into Google Translate to try to hear the difference, and they all sound identical to me, certainly nowhere nearly as different as “tear” (the liquid) and “tear” (the verb). As for German heteronyms, Wikipedia says that language has “few.” Ditto Dutch. No other languages are mentioned, for what it’s worth.

Further reading

The Heteronym Page

The Heteronym Homepage

The Bass Swam Around the Bass Drum On the Ocean Floor (Smithsonian)

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From the Archives - Studying French at UC Santa Barbara

Introduction

My older daughter has been accepted by a number of colleges, among them UC Santa Barbara. I’m tempted to say, in a grave tone, “Don’t do it, kid. You don’t have to go down the same road I did.” But actually, I’d be stoked if she followed in my footsteps. Then I could lord it over her—you know, “I paved the way, I got their first,” etc. (Yes, of course I’m still joking.) Anyway, in honor of this opportunity, and of my (first) alma mater, here’s another UCSB essay from my archives.

French class at UCSB - November 14, 1988

I’m always ranting and raving about UCSB. Does that mean it’s the greatest? It could … though it could also just mean I’m just insecure about my life and am boasting about my circumstances to shore up my fragile ego. (Perhaps the real truth lies somewhere in between.)

I have a friend who would kill to attend UCSB, based solely on the abundance of gorgeous girls here, but he can’t get in because he has never taken, and in fact refused to take, a foreign language class. All the schools in the UC system require like three years of a foreign language, so he’d have to take care of this at a community college and transfer in.

I wish I could get through to this guy. Foreign languages classes are actually kind of a hoot, especially at college. You get some of the wackiest, most behaviorally bizarre instructors. A trained student can spot a foreign language instructor a mile off. First of all, they never wear normal looking clothes. I think they do all their shopping in Europe, or maybe at a special foreign language instructor boutique. It’s hard to describe these outfits. Let’s just say if every garment could be a beret, that’s what these clothes would be.

This sartorial oddness goes back, I believe, to a secret longing of each foreign language teacher to either be elsewhere, or be thought to have come from elsewhere. They’ve all cultivated this aura of longing, like they’re in exile or something. I’m not like some wild-eyed patriot or anything, but I’m sometimes tempted to say something rash, like: “America: love it or leave it!”

Another instant sign of a foreign language teacher is his or her tendency to speak English with a foreign accent. Surely some of these people are native born, or have at least been here long enough to adapt, but I can’t help but think they’re clinging to this accent as some sign of authenticity. Kind of hypocritical, isn’t it, when they lower our grades for lacking a perfect accent in the foreign tongue they’re teaching us?

Here’s another weirdness: all the foreign language instructors smoke. Every last one of them. Just cruise by Phelps Hall, where they hang out between classes, and you’ll see them, standing around puffing away. They can’t help but to look self conscious, because they know that besides your occasional “social smoker” (i.e., who only smokes when getting wasted at a party), they are the only smokers at UCSB. They are also the only instructors whose hanging out we can witness, because other instructors, who don’t have to worry about stinking up their classrooms and offices, hang out indoors where the students can’t get at them.

The foreign language curriculum is a curiosity too, well worth observing. My French textbook, for example, teaches more than grammar and conversation: it gives us insights into the differences between these cultures, and particularly into how France is basically better. My textbook, oddly, is the Teacher’s Annotated Edition, which offers some interesting insight into the pedagogical process. For example, in the section of the book teaching the comparative structure in French, using physical appearance as a model, the book offers this advice to the teacher: “In order to avoid sensitive areas of weight and height, such questions have been omitted. If students feel comfortable about it, they could also describe these aspects.”

This seems like a minefield for the instructor. Sure, he or she could try to go by body type, on the theory that if nobody in the class is overweight, they’ll all be comfortable being compared. But of course that’s absurd; distorted self-images are rampant among the college set. And it’s not like the instructor can just ask us. Who’s going to raise a hand and say, “That subject is strictly off-limits for me owing to my poor self-esteem”? Nobody, that’s who. Surprisingly, my instructor ignored the textbook’s advice and went right ahead with calling students up to the front of the room to be compared. To my great relief, nobody seemed uncomfortable. The only problem was that all the girls in my class are about the same height and weight, making comparative statements impossible. Maybe that’s why so many of us bombed the last test.

Building on my original point of the French air of superiority, the book feels safe telling the teacher how to promote French supremacy, since it knows the teacher is a French supremacist anyway. For example, next to the French translation of Cinderella is this note: “Suggestion: Point out that “Cendrillon” is from Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye by Charles Perrault (as are “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge [Little Red Riding Hood], “L’Histoire de Tom Pouce” [Tom Thumb], “Barbe Bleue” [Bluebeard], etc.).” Now this seems harmless enough at first, until you look at the “etc.” What’s that supposed to mean? Literally, it means “and the others.” As in, “Not only these three stories, but just about every other good kid’s story as well, are originally French.”

Let me interject at this point: the English version of “Little Red Riding Hood” is a lot better than the French, since in our tale both the grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood get eaten, and then the wolf gets killed, instead of the boring ending where the girl simply kills the wolf. Meanwhile, the publisher knows this note is far from innocuous, because it’s only in the Teacher’s Annotated edition. (I checked Molly’s standard edition to make sure.)  I’ll tell you what’s going on here: the publisher knows it has a receptive audience in the instructor … and it’s his or her job to figure out how to subtly inculcate the Americans.

The French supremacy theme is further promoted by the never-ending menagerie of intelligent, charming, and nice people you see in these textbooks. You’ll never get a statement like, “C’est Pierre. Pierre est un perdant [loser].” This is true across the board. I can remember a dialogue from my junior high French 1A book: “Est-ce qu’elle est intelligente? Oui! Et est-ce qu’elle est charmante? Oui! Est-ce qu’elle est belle? Mais bien sure, elle est Francaise!” [Is she smart? Yes! And is she charming? Yes! Is she pretty? But of course, she is French!] You never get, “Est-ce qu’il va mourir d’une mort horrible d’un cancer du poumon?” [Will he die a horrible death from lung cancer?] even though it’s highly likely more French people smoke than are intelligent and charming.

But cultural oddities aside, foreign language classes at the college level are actually very hi-tech. The pride and joy of the department is the Foreign Language Learning Lab. Let me take you on a tour of this outstanding facility.

Kerr Hall, home of the Learning Lab, is one of the most modern buildings on campus. I’m surprised it doesn’t have one of those scrolling digital signs. Instead there’s just this printed one: “Learning Lab upstairs.” Interestingly, the Learning Lab is the only place on the whole campus that offers signage of any kind. Up the stairs, there’s another sign: “Learning Lab down the hall.” Down the hall, there’s yet another: “Learning Lab across from this room.” Why all the signs? Well, I have my own theory: this lab is so different from anything we students have ever seen before, we wouldn’t even know what to look for!

First, you have to punch the clock, just like at a factory. Unlike me, most UCSB students have probably never been near a factory, so this is surely quite novel for them. I guess the faculty somehow doubts that we students will avail ourselves of this cutting edge learning technology on our own volition, so they have to monitor, and thus enforce, our use of the Lab. And how much usage is that? Let’s have a look at these timecards. Hmmm, Leigh Malone only put in three minutes during her last session. Must have been called away. And the one before that was similarly brief. How much can you really get done in three minutes? And look at this, Rebecca Martin forgot to punch out last week. And Don Stannage forgot to punch in, so he just wrote in the time. Oh yeah, I believe that.

What’s that? You’re wondering why I’m punching Leigh’s and Molly’s timecards in addition to my own? Well, we kind of have a deal going. We look after each other. I don’t suppose this is a purely ethical behavior, no, but the Language Lab is 10% of our grade, and we’re just trying to survive.

See that redheaded kid over there reading a magazine? Well, his name is Christopher, and I’ve seen him here before; he’s in my class. Let’s check out his card: yep! he’s on the clock! Now, this guy is a veteran of the Language Lab, and has discovered a little loophole: it doesn’t actually matter what you do in here. You could practice French, you could do your math homework … heck, you could theoretically read a comic book or even sleep. It’s kind of along the lines of a t-shirt I saw recently: “They can send me to college, but they can’t make me think!”

So here’s what you do when you’re actually learning French here. You talk into the recorder, and it tapes your voice. Then, by using the repeat feature, you can listen to your own voice spoken back to you (as long as you keep straight the “Drill” button vs. the “Play” button … that does stymie some of the students). It’s a fascinating experience because not only does your own played-back voice sound high-pitched, nasally, and weird—like your recorded voice always does—but you can tell how bad your accent is, without the instructor having to complain to you in class. That’s the beauty of this technology.

Just look out over that sea of heads, all hung low as their eyes scan their workbooks. Well, not a sea, I guess … more of a puddle. But anyway, you are looking at some seriously voracious students. Wait, that guy is bobbing his head around! He’s really getting into it! Look, his foot’s tapping, this guy’s having a great time! Let’s see what language he’s taking: oh, right. Led Zepplin … right there on his tape case. And his workbook seems to be an issue of Rolling Stone. See, at college there are a lot more languages to take than just French, German, and Spanish!

I love all the posters in this lab, locked in a bitter struggle for dominance. One arrogant French instructor probably put up the first “France” poster, and then a German instructor felt compelled to represent his country, and on down the line. That’s why there’re about fifty posters on that one wall. And they don’t go unnoticed, either; just look at the students gazing at them. Well, okay, fair enough, they’re actually gazing off into space. But what do you expect? This is college.

Over there is the Operations Desk. If you ask the clerk there how to operate the machinery, he’ll give you a tape with all the instructions recorded on it. But it’s a Catch-22, isn’t it? If you can’t work the machine, you can’t play the tape, so you won’t hear the instructions. That’s why you have to bring your Walkman the first time here. What do you mean, “What if you don’t own a Walkman?” This is California, man! Everybody owns a Walkman!

This is my favorite poster: “Learning, culture, and friendship at the Learning Lab.” Well, obviously you can learn here, and in the foreign language department, culture always comes with the learning. But friendship? I’ve never made any friends here. Is that because everybody’s plugged into a set of headphones and can’t talk? No, it must mean I’m just not outgoing enough. Standing in line at the cassette library, for example, is a great place to strike up a conversation. If only a line would ever develop.

Well, I’ve got some learning to do here, so I’ll have to leave you alone for a while. You can listen to any tapes you want. Just ask the clerk to get you started. I’ll be over here covering Chapter 13, Simon & Garfunkel.

In summary, the foreign language department is a reason why you should attend UCSB, not a reason not to. French class gives me a chance to diversify my college experience, make friends, and broaden my horizons culturally. Plus, it’s an easy “C.”

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