Category Archives: Languages

A sober reflection on ‘Flowers for Algernon’

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Happy New Year, folks.

I often hear people talk about teachers who opened their minds and transformed their lives during their schooldays. This is usually in the context of extolling education in general by offering a heroic figure for everyone to admire.

Well, I had a lot of great teachers, and still do, although school is far behind me. But I’ve never been able to point to one that had that sort of “I was blind but now I see” impact on me. I do have some more modest stories about teachers who turned me on to something.

Like Mr. Kramberg, down in New Orleans when I was in the 7th grade.

I’m sorry I don’t have his full name — and maybe I’m even misspelling his surname, after all this time. I’ve tried researching him on the Web, without success. And that worries me. You see, toward the end of that year, we were told that Mr. Kramberg wouldn’t be returning to Karr Junior High School after that 1965-66 school year, because he was going into the Army, and as I remember it, he was going to Vietnam (as my Dad did the following year). I assume (possibly wrongly) that since he was a teacher he would receive a commission, and while I may not have known then about the survival chances of second lieutenants in the infantry, I know more now.

Anyway, I remember him fondly, and not just because of the novelty of him being my first teacher who was a Mister and not a “Miz.” He had that quality that you find in “Conrack” (I never read The Water is Wide, but only saw the movie) and other books and films about teachers who made an above-the-call-of-duty effort to connect with students. And here’s the example of that I remember best…

For part of that term, he spent a few minutes each day reading a short story to us. I was a fairly voracious reader as a kid, but this story was different from any written work I had ever encountered. I had a habit in those days of letting my attention wander far from what was going on in English classes. I couldn’t help it. Classes in which the teacher went over and over rules of language that were second nature to me as an avid reader practically put me in a coma. But I was riveted by every word that he read aloud from “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes.

Yes, I said “short story.” That’s all it was, initially, when it was written in 1958. I later found out about the novel version published in 1966 and read and enjoyed that, once I realized it was the story Mr. Kramberg had read us.

Aside from the story being compelling, the unique (to me at that point in my education) way in which Keyes told it was what grabbed me. It’s told in first person by a retarded man named Charlie Gordon who wants more than anything to be “smart.” He studies hard, and his motivation causes him to be singled out for experimental surgery to greatly increase his intelligence (yes, the story was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1959, and won both the Hugo and Nebula awards).

Aside from that premise, the story was decidedly down-to-earth, particularly because of Charlie’s very humble writing style. The doctors involved in the experiment have asked him to keep a journal, and he does his best, even though his grasp of spelling and composition are at best marginal. The story — in both short and novel form — is told entirely through that journal.

It’s a very compelling way to tell Charlie’s story, and that’s what grabbed me from the beginning Mr. Kramberg’s class. He did a great job of conveying Charlie’s challenges as a writer, and it really pulled us along. Or at least it did me. Since then, I have read and enjoyed the novel quite a few times.

If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.

After this, though, if you have not read it, I must give you a SPOILER ALERT. You probably shouldn’t read beyond this sentence…. Even though I suspect you would still enjoy it even if you knew how it ends. The appeal of the work is more in how the story is told than in the outcome itself.

But if you hate spoilers, read no further.

Those who have read it know the sad fact that this is, as Keyes described it, “a classic tragedy.” After the initial chapters, Charlie undergoes his “operashun,” which he assures us “dint hert.” It is a dramatic success, and the following journal entries showcase a process — gradual at first, then rapidly accelerating if I recall correctly — of a simple man becoming a genius, and discovering things about the world and himself that he had never suspected.

Those chapters are exhilarating. Unfortunately, the effect is not permanent. And once he becomes far smarter than everyone around him and has thoroughly studied and absorbed the data that underly the procedure he has undergone, Charlie is the first person to realize that he will soon return to being the way he was. The doctors who are so proud to have transformed him reject the suggestion that their project will fail, but Charlie knows. And then the journal entries start sliding down from brilliance to the stumbling level where they started.

Which is painful to endure, but it’s still a great story. In fact, if I can’t find that old paperback around the house, I might go buy myself another copy.

But if I read it again, I’m a bit worried that I might identify with those latter chapters a bit more than would be pleasant.

Everyone declines if one lives long enough. Sometimes in ways that don’t matter very much. For instance, I was a bit alarmed 20 years ago when I suddenly realized I no longer had perfect recall of every lyric the Beatles ever wrote or recorded.

Somehow, though, life went on, and in fact I still remember most of them. So what, me worry?

I got somewhat more alarmed this week. Remember how I theorized awhile back that studying Dutch had sharpened my language skills, even in English? As I wrote in early November:

Also… back when I was doing 10 and more [Duolingo] lessons a day, before the Europe trip, an interesting thing happened. I suddenly was really, really good at the NYT word games I play — Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections. I mean crazy good. There was one week when I got Wordle in two tries three days in a row, and also hit the “genius” level — which means I “won” — three days in a row [on Spelling Bee].

It was a bit like experiencing in real life what Charlie went through in the period after his “operashun.” I was still digging that, even though I had stopped doing the 10 Duolingo lessons a day, and was only completing one or two, to avoid breaking my streak (which now stands at 297 days).

Well… today I decided to step up the pace to three or four lessons, and may do more before the day is out.

That’s because suddenly, I’ve hit a wall on Wordle. I did not complete the puzzle on Tuesday. But that’s OK, right? It was just because I forgot to go back and complete it. That happens occasionally — it happened one day when we were in Europe over the summer. And on Wednesday, I got through it just fine.

But then on Thursday, I failed entirely. Six tries, and no cigar. It had been awhile since that had happened.

Then today, it happened again.

Two failures in a row? I don’t think that has ever happened to me before. Sure, these were both of the kind of puzzle I hate — the kind in which it’s not at all hard to come up with a five-letter word using the letters that are still available. The problem is that it’s too easy — there are far too many possibilities, so it’s more about guesswork. Luck comes into play.

But enough excuses. I’m looking toward Saturday with some degree of dread. And I’m thinking I not only need to do more Duolingo lessons each day, but maybe it would be more mentally stimulating to start tackling a whole new language. Italian might be fun. And Russian would be challenging…

Anyway, I just thought I’d give y’all a warning in case, as I start posting on the blog more with the holidays behind us, my posts start to read like the later chapters in Flowers for Algernon.

I don’t think that will happen, but you never know. Meanwhile, I thought it would be nice, for any of you who have not read it, to turn you on to that book, so many years after Mr. Kramberg did me that same favor.

And more importantly, if anyone who reads this knows Mr. Kramberg and where he can be found, I’d like to send him a nice “thank-you” note…

 

 

 

 

Nee, ik ben geen Duitser

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We enjoyed the Museum of the Canals, just before my big screwup.

While I’m on the Dutch kick…

You may wonder why I’m still doing the lessons daily, since our trip to Amsterdam and other places where the language is spoken was over months ago.

Well, I enjoy studying it, in spite of the compound nouns and sometimes weird sentence structures. And I don’t want to break my streak, which now stands at 231 days.

Also… back when I was doing 10 and more lessons a day, before the Europe trip, an interesting thing happened. I suddenly was really, really good at the NYT word games I play — Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections. I mean crazy good. There was one week when I got Wordle in two tries three days in a row, and also hit the “genius” level — which means I “won” — three days in a row.

I could really feel the difference during those months. Obviously, exercising the part of the brain that learns new languages helps with intuiting words in my own language as well. And that’s a good thing to be doing at my age. That’s the good news. The bad news is that since I got back and have only been doing a lesson or two a day, I’ve been doing much worse at the word games. So I’ve started the last couple of days stepping it back up a bit.

Anyway, I’ve several good reasons for continuing my studies.

Which is good, because my studies were almost no help at all to me in Belgium and Amsterdam.

Which I suppose shows that the wisdom that comes with age is of limited value. We were in Amsterdam because one of my granddaughters was doing a summer intensive with the Dutch National Ballet Academy. Once we decided to follow her there, I started studying — and urged her to do the same. She said no way. She had heard that everyone there spoke English, especially at the ballet school.

Well, sure, I said, but don’t you want to be prepared for the unexpected? Admittedly, my frame of reference was perhaps outdated. I kept thinking about that time in “Band of Brothers” when Bull caught some shrapnel in his shoulder, and was separated from Easy Company when it was forced to retreat by an unexpectedly strong German counterattack. This was way out in the country near Eindhoven, and he had to spend the night alone in a barn. Eventually, after killing one of the enemy in a hand-to-hand fight, he managed to survive, barely, and even got some first aid from the farmer. But wouldn’t the situation have been a little easier if he had spoken Dutch?

I thought so. And we were planning some forays away from urban centers, where — in my imagination — people might not be so thoroughly educated in the current international lingua franca.

But here’s the sad truth: There was not a single instance, that I could tell, in which I used my new skill and it helped in any practical way. Oh, I would try. I’d walk up to people and greet them in Dutch, either to say good morning or something more urgent like waar is de wc?

I thought I was doing it pretty well, but they responded with neither appreciation nor scorn. They didn’t react in any way, except to answer me — in English.

I had tried this multiple times as we made stops on the way to Amsterdam in Ghent and Antwerp. No success. Probably my greatest triumph was a humble one. Speaking of the wc, when I got off the train in Antwerp, I went looking for one urgently. Finding it, I was happy the pay the standard euro to get in, but then found myself standing staring at the closed doors of the full stalls.

Next to me stood an even older man, a little guy who looked nothing like a tourist, who seemed more displeased than I was. He muttered something I didn’t quite make out (more because of my hearing problem than lack of understanding the language). I just shrugged and said, sort of the way a Russian might say nichevo (or so I imagined):

“We wachten…”

I think he nodded or something. Anyway, I took his response as agreement. At least he didn’t answer me in English. He probably thought I was a complete idiot and didn’t want to talk to this guy, but I congratulated myself for saying something way existential under less than noble circumstances. I was so pleased that when a stall opened, I let him go before me, even though I had been there first.

But then we got to Amsterdam, and on our first full day, I screwed up royally, and after that largely gave up on trying to engage the locals in their own language.

We had spent much of the morning visiting the Museum of the Canals, which was pretty cool. It explained how the canals and much of the city was laid out in the 17th century, with some pretty impressive 3D, multimedia displays.

We had gone there by tram, but were in a hurry to get back to the hostel, and called an Uber. Being the careful kind of guy who learns a language before visiting a new country, I checked to make sure this was our driver as we got in: “Pat?” I asked. He responded in the affirmative and asked, “Brad?”

Filled with confidence from the previous day in Antwerp, I answered:

Ja, ik ben Brad.

Except I didn’t. What I said was,

Ja, ich bin Brad.

I heard it as I said it, and thought, Oh, no! I actually did it. Having had that tiny bit of German at an impressionable age — in high school — during my months of study, I had repeated pronounced similar Dutch words as their German counterparts. I blamed my teacher, Helga. (I never liked her much.) But that just made me practice harder as I prepared for the trip, determined it would never happen in real life.

The Uber driver could have let it go. But he didn’t. In a deadpan tone, he asked, “Are you German?” In English, of course, because he knew the answer to that was nein.

But I forgave him, because he was actually a nice guy, and we had a nice conversation on the way back to the Oost area where we were staying. In English, of course, because he spoke that very well. He wasn’t Dutch, but African. It was the same with all those Middle Eastern people who lived and worked in the area we were staying. You’d think they’d speak accented Dutch to European-looking strangers. But no, they went with English, mostly.

So I kind of gave up on the trying-to-pass-as-a-local thing. Obviously, it was completely futile, and unnecessary, even outside the international ballet crowd. I later learned why. We had an Uber driver who was actually Dutch — a lady named Saskia who had kids past high school age. She explained that so many of their school courses are in English that just before graduation, they have to deliberately take some classes to bone up on Dutch so they can pass their finals.

So that explains the natives, if not the immigrants from elsewhere.

But I was still discouraged, after all that work. Even now. Whenever the “Are you German?” incident comes up, my wife tries to cheer me up by noting that at least I could read all those signs. And yes, I could. I had enjoyed that from the moment we boarded our first train into Belgium from Northern France.

But still…

Antwerp had a nice station, but it could have used more wc stalls.

I didn’t break Duolingo? If not, it wasn’t for lack of trying…

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I was afraid for a moment I had worn the app out. I had been pounding away at my lessons, day after day, for weeks, doing all I could to learn Dutch.

Then suddenly one day — early April, I think — the icon for the app went from this:

To this:

Screenshot of my iPad screen on April 6.

Had I broken it? It seemed to be the most obvious answer, given my relentless activity. But it turns out just to be something Duolingo does to attract attention from time to time. And it appears to work.

The icon soon returned to normal, and I continued my efforts, sometimes doing as many as 20 lessons a day.

Why? Because one of my granddaughters is doing a summer ballet intensive in Amsterdam. Her mother will be there with her for the start of the program, but then my wife and I will be there for her for the rest of it, and accompany her back to the States. That’s where we’ll be based in the latter half of our upcoming trip.

But we’re doing more than that. As a celebration of our upcoming 50th anniversary, we’re flying first to London, and we’ll stay there a couple of days. We haven’t been to town in some time (since the beginning of 2011), and one must go occasionally.

Then, we’ll have a couple of days in Canterbury, to see what the Anglicans have done with the place since Becket’s day. Then on to Dover, and then we’ll look over our shoulders at the white cliffs while we cross to Calais. That’s what the Germans expected the Allies to do in 1944, but we faked them out and went to Normandy. I’d like to go there and visit the beaches, but it will be in the wrong direction. After Calais, we’ll go to Dunkirk, Lille, Ghent and on to Amsterdam.

We’ll mostly stay there until we fly back, but will take the odd day trip to places like Bruges and Nijmegen. While in Nijmegen, I hope to catch an Uber or something into Germany, just so I can say I’ve been there, too.

You see, I’ve never been to Europe before. Ever. There’s been no occasion to do so in my 70 years. I’ve done South America, the Caribbean, Asia, Hawaii. And as y’all know, I’ve been to England and Ireland. But never crossed the channel to the continent.

My wife’s been. She and her friend Mary backpacked across the continent for a month or so just before she met me in August 1973. They had a great time. But she hasn’t been since then, and she is taking preparations for this invasion very seriously. I mentioned 1944. Well, my wife is very organized — there has to be somebody like that in every organization, and she is definitely the one in this outfit. Ike would have approved of the way she has sought to effectively deploy our finite resources upon each objective at the right time, with maximum effectiveness.

And while I have been able to make strong contributions to the planning (contributions that consist of saying, “I wanna see this! I wanna see that!”), most of my effort has gone into learning Dutch — as much as I can, anyway, in these short months of preparation. Yeah, I know most people in Nederland speak English. But I figure I’m bound to run into someone, somewhere — perhaps out in the country — who does not, and I want to be ready. My wife will handle the French — she’s been there and she studied it before that, and she’s brushing up. I’m learning Dutch, from scratch.

Fortunately, Engels is moeilijk, maar Nederlands is gemakkelijk. Or so Duolingo keeps telling me. But it’s a bit of a slog nonetheless. Becoming fluent in Spanish was as easy as falling off a log when I was 9 years old. I think I read once that that’s pretty much the end of the period of life when learning a second language is as easy as learning the first one. My brother was only 3, and I’m not sure he noticed there was a difference between the two tongues.

My Spanish (most of which I’ve forgotten, anyway, to my sorrow) is of no help here. Of course, English is a help with this one. I certainly know right away what is meant by such Dutch words as “park,” “fruit,” “week,” “weekend,” and such — although they’re pronounced quite differently. The tiny bits of German I remember from high school are sort of a mixed bag. Sure, much of the language obviously comes from common roots, but that frequently tricks me into using the German version instead, and getting the word wrong.

The hardest is the article “een” — meaning “a” or “an” — and for many weeks I had trouble stopping myself from saying “ein” instead. Also, when an S comes before a T or a P, I want to pronounce it “SH,” which I think is the way it’s done in German — at least, I got it from somewhere (we have a one or two German speakers here; maybe y’all can tell me whether I remember that right), and I think it was German. But if the readers on Duolingo have it right, that’s not the way it’s done in Dutch.

Of course, Dutch people are as likely to speak German as English, and are likely to understand. But I want to get it right.

And I’ve made a good bit of progress. One sign of that is that recently, I’ve cut back on using the button that slows down what is being said to me, as I’ve gotten impatient, and often get the faster sentence the first time. To me, that means more than having a tremendous vocabulary. It means I’m starting to grok the language (or at least, the simple bits I’ve been taught) holistically. And to me, being an intuitive sort, that is pleasing.

I don’t expect to carry on any deep conversations. But maybe I can order food (something that is a huge minefield for me with my allergies), handle simple transactions, and the like.

Besides, it’s fun to learn something new. Anyway, I’ll keep tackling the lessons for the next few days, and hope for the best. And enjoy the cooler weather. Today, the high in Amsterdam is 68 and the low is 56. In London, it won’t get above 62. I’m looking forward to that.

If it gets hot, I’ll just sit down and order een glas bier. And of course, if I forget and say, ein Glas Bier, they’ll probably bring it to me anyway.

Which reminds me. I won’t be interested in Dutch cheese or Dutch chocolate. They’re poison to me. But I do want to sample the beers, and I don’t know squat about them, beyond Heineken and Amstel. And I don’t want to order those, because then they might think I’m a tourist or something.

So if you have any advice on that front, now would be the time to share…