William Makepeace
My Struggle to Learn English Reaches Another Level
Native English speakers will hardly realise that correct pronunciation can be so tricky and treacherous. For example words like: archangel, archbishop, Illinois, Connecticut, can fox even an advanced learner.
In the meantime, I was reading Hindi translation of great world literature: Names like Ivan Turgenev, Lev Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mikhail Sholokhov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Nabokov were available in our school/college library. English literature though was often un-translated. Names like Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea), John Steinbeck (Red Pony), the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)-these books took many months to read. Most difficult, however was James Joyce, his Ulysses (it took four months to finish) andA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man were the most difficult read.
At more mundane level James Hadley Chase novels were great everyday slang vocabulary builder;John le Carr was another big influence. This list is only indicative and not exhaustive, as my narrative is jumping back and forth by many years, and sometimes by decades to emphasise that how much mental callisthenics one had to resort to in the absence of regular courses now so easily available, and how a lack of resources can lengthen the acquisition of required skill.
Thus reading part had been taken care of; speaking part was equally difficult to negotiate. In 1977 I found a partner who had a great desire to speak in English language. We made a beginning by striking a meaningful conversation behind closed doors. We had to overcome a lot fear and hesitation as we gradually spoke outdoors. It took us six months to speak a smattering of English interspersed with Hindi, a strange patois of both the languages. Then gradually I shifted gears and gave up the crutches of Hindi words. The gearshift was not smooth in the beginning but later on I would segue effortlessly back and forth, from English to Hindi and vice-versa. I had effectively become bi-lingual.
Adding more words to my armoury gave me more confidence and more nuanced conversation style. More reading built better war chest of vocabulary that gave a shot in the arm to still better conversation skill. Reading had become an engine that pulled speaking.
About the Author
Audio Book Classic- William Makepeace Thackeray 1847
Tags: ebooks, literature, thackeray, vanity, victnovel07, william makepeace thackeray, william makepeace thackeray backwash, william makepeace thackeray biography, william makepeace thackeray mother is the name for god, william makepeace thackeray quotes
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 at 11:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.