Have you ever gotten so excited about learning a new language that you went out and decided to plunge in immersion style? You really wanted to learn Chinese so you went to China-town and sat in a sushi bar for hours trying to make some sense of what people are saying (not knowing if they were actually speaking Chinese or Japanese or something else)… but it didn’t work because you couldn’t tell when their words stopped and when they started. Language is such a fluid art that it amazes me when people can pick up languages like it is nothing. I met this girl in Slovakia once who knew 7 languages. 7! “Which language do you think in? Which do you revert to when you are angry? Do you code-switch constantly?” All these questions were on the tip of my tongue.
So when I jumped feet first into my German language training in college, I was determined to succeed. I listened and listened harder. As an aside-let me just say that summer breaks are a fire-breathing dragon that scorch your brain of all foreign language cells, so it takes a while to get it all together. Eventually, I didn’t have to listen quite so hard or ask for something to be repeated as much and I thought I had broken the barrier. Except I was only in year two. So to help myself for future literature courses, I went and decided to get a kid’s book in German to work myself up to reading German fluently as well. It’s only a small excitement damper when you have to look up every other word to understand the story.
I picked Harry Potter.
Biggest mistake.
Something very important to remember is that when learning a language you usually learn words that relate to the world in the context that your teachers deem important. Also, another important fact is that Harry Potter is not set in this world we call home. It’s in a world of its own. J.K. Rowling invented new terms and places and ideas–essentially, a whole new world (to quote the esteemed philosopher, Aladdin.) I failed to take either of these very important points into consideration and thus gave up my quest to read Harry Potter in German while on page 1 of book 1.
I say it loud and with great conviction, “Harry Potter is not for juvenile readers, especially those who are so elementary in a language that they struggle to read small children’s book much less Young Adult fiction.”
What have you read that you gave up on upon reading the first page?
