Last weekend I went to Prague for a teaching conference. Ironically, the most inspirational input found me in the hall of Kino Lucerna, before a film screening at a festival I just dropped by. As I was waiting for the film to start in a packed auditorium, a guy sat down next to me. He arrived alone, so he decided to socalize with whoever fate brought next to him; and it was me. He asked me, in English, the supposed common language of ours, where I was from, and when he got to know I came from Hungary, he changed to a broken but cute Hungarian. Hungarian! We, Hungarians, tend to consider our language to be a secret code that few know about and even less manage to master. This guy, a Sicilian, born in Argentina, now living in Prague, is one of those. The funny part, in addition to the serendipitous fact that he was meant to sit down right there next to me in an audience of mostly Czechs, was when he shared the reason that had pushed him to master our language. As he recalled, he decided to learn Hungarian when his Hungarian penfriend sent him a song that left him mesmerized.
"Nagy utazás" (Big Journey), from Gábor Presser, has never been any special for me. Apparently, for someone else it was. Although the success of learning a language doesn't depend solely on liking a song connected to that culture, the initial spark ignited by any such experience can serve as an impetus strong enough to help overcome the inevitable obstacles on the road to acquiring the language.
So don't stop searching and sharing inspiration!
No comments:
Post a Comment