[Sca-cooks] globetrotting

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
Ana, your scout in Outremer, said:
>  > Right, Philippa! I am always thinking in three languages actually :(
>  > Spanish, my first one, Swedish  my second one and English, the third
>  > language I use...
>
>Wow. Do you actually think in these languages? Or do you translate them
>to Spanish?

When i lived in France, i not only thought in French, i dreamed in
French. I couldn't carry on a conversation in English with a French
friend's American dad (i'd speak French, he'd speak English). And
even now when i tell people about the time i lived in France, i
remember the number of the year in French and have to translate the
term into English - it just comes out in French before i can think of
it in English.

When i lived in French, i had only studied French for about 2-1/2
years in high school and i was in France 6 years after i had
graduated from high school, so i had studied French neither a lot nor
recently when i went to France in 1973.

I had studied Mandarin Chinese the first semester of my first year in
college - then i dropped out - it was, after all, 1967. But i still
remember a few phrases and how to count.

I began to dream in a mixture of French and English when i was
travelling in Morocco with my daughter last year, even though my
French is not what it had been, after not speaking it for almost 30
years.

I never got like that in Bahasa Indonesia. I think that was largely
because my Indonesian ex-husband spoke to me in English at home and
he liked hanging out with ex-pats. Of course i had to speak
Indonesian every day to bargain in the markets and with the betjak
and bemo drivers, to talk to my neighbors and street vendors, when i
went to concerts and theater performances and movies, etc.

Anahita