For travel to Europe I thought it would be helpful to improve my grasp of Spanish, French and German. I find that a good way to learn is listening to audio in podcast form.

One of the first surprises I encountered was in a French podcast, in which the phenomenon of “verlan” was explained. With verlan, in spoken language, the syllables of many words are sometimes reversed , for example tromé = métro) , chanmé = méchant (mean) Yes, that’s right , the French are going out of their way to make their language more difficult to understand!

There is also the subtle issue of certain words which don’t change the literal meaning of the sentence, but which are inserted into sentences , to convey the speaker’s attitude or feeling. Linguist John McWhorter says that these are referred to as “pragmatic particles”. I think that only native speakers really understand how to do this correctly.

As in for instance doch, or mal in German , which depending on the context can convey a softening of the expression, or on the other hand, a disputatious tone.

The pragmatic particles may not have any conceptual meaning in and of themselves.

French has such particles too, (enfin , quoi) and even (to give conversation a French-intellectual twist) genre.

I have found that English words can be imported into other languages in a somewhat unsteady fashion. Listening to a German conversation about an infant, I was non-plussed to hear someone comment that the “body” fits the child (how could it not?), whether they should change the body (not possible!) and even referring to a new body (well, it is an infant after all). After making these objections , I came to know that they were referring to a type of one-piece outfit for infants called a bodysuit.

In a Spanish podcast conversation I heard someone ask “What reality can you recommend?” And the person replying refers to ‘ a very famous reality’ (un reality tan famoso), and even (and this, I think is too much) her favorite reality . I tried to hold on to the normal concept of reality, and eventually gathered that they were discussing “reality show” TV programs.

I find that Spanish grammar is not hard to get your head around – with the occasional mind-boggling exception. For one, what corresponds to English “usually “, is a verb, not an adverb, with a full set of conjugations like other Spanish verbs. Thus suele tomar cafe is literally something like “he usuallys (!) to drink coffee.”

Also, it appears that centuries ago, Spanish grammarians all got together and solemnly decided 1) We will use the letter ‘h’ 2) we will use it in important words like haber and hacer which are used in every conversation and 3) we will never, ever pronounce it.

In French It is very common to use on (one) to mean nous (we, us) . For example you can hear “On va? ” (Literally, is someone going?) instead of the more direct Allons (Let’s go!)

This leads however to a pretty striking statement which I heard on a French podcast:

Aujourd’hui, sur la planète, on est très nombreux.

Today on the planet, one is very numerous.

On est entre 7 et 8 milliards …

One is between 7 and 8 billion ….

I must object to this on purely mathematical grounds!