Foreign Languages

In the Latin countries, grace and facility of speech is an object of lifelong cultivation—and no one is considered an educated person who can not speak several languages well. Those who speak many fluently, by the way, are seldom those who constantly interlard their own tongue with words from another.

Not to understand any foreign languages would be a decided handicap in European society, where conversation is very apt to turn polyglot, beginning in one tongue and going on in a second and ending in a third. So that one who knows only English is often in the position of a deaf person, even though Europeans are invariably polite and never let a conversation run long in a language which all those present do not understand. It might easily happen that a French lady and an American, neither understanding the tongue of the other, meet at the house of an Italian, where there is also an Italian monolinguist, so that the hostess has to talk in three languages at once.

It is unreasonable to expect the average American to be a linguist; we are too far removed from foreign countries. As a matter of fact, if you would make yourself agreeable, it is much better (unless your facility was acquired as a child or you have a talent amounting to genius for accent and construction), to make it a rule when you lunch or dine with Europeans to talk English, since all Latins acutely suffer at hearing their language distorted. English, on the other hand, is not beautiful in sound to the foreign ear; it is a series of esses and shushes, lumped with consonants like an iron-wheeled cart bumping over a cobble-stoned street. The Latin's accent in English is annoying even to us at times, but the English accent in French, Italian or Spanish is murderous! Furthermore, the Latin passionately loves his language in the way the Westerner loves his city; he simply can not endure to have it abused, and execrates the person who does so. And, proportionately, he loves the few who prove they share his love by speaking it creditably.

To Improve One's Accent

If you want to improve your accent, nothing can so help you as going to the theater abroad until your ears literally absorb the sounds! All people are imitative. There are few who do not gradually lose the purity of a good foreign accent when long away from Europe, and all speak more fluently when their ears become accustomed to the sound.

The theater is not only the best possible place to hear correctly enunciated speech, but a play of contemporary life is equally valuable as a study in manners. There is also a suavity of grace in the way Europeans bow and stand and sit, and in the way they speak, that is unconsciously imitated. These " manners" need not—in fact, should not—be gushing or mincing, but you gradually perceive that jerking ramrod motions and stalking into a drawing-room like a grenadier are less impressive than awkward.