This past winter, I wrote about the trials and tribulations of having to lie in an introductory language course. I even wrote an apology letter to my Albanian teachers because I had, like a sociopath, lied to them regarding the inane. My complaint, as with any introductory language course, was: don’t ask me questions about my favorite furniture or how many balconies my apartment has if you don’t want to get lied to. I just wanted a class that was going to put me on a path towards useful Albanian.
Forsaking the inane for the unknown, I jumped back into the world of introductory Albanian, but with a new teacher. This new teacher is a solo act working out of an extra room in her apartment. She teaches in the local dialect (Gheg), she does not ask us inane questions, and every simple mistake we make is a “katastrofë”. I love this new teacher.
Forsaking the inane for the unknown, I jumped back into the world of introductory Albanian, but with a new teacher. This new teacher is a solo act working out of an extra room in her apartment. She teaches in the local dialect (Gheg), she does not ask us inane questions, and every simple mistake we make is a “katastrofë”. I love this new teacher.
I joined the class in the middle of the term. Topic one: the past tense. We started past tense in my previous course that ended this past February. However, unlike the previous teachers who wanted to know what I ate last night or what happened last Tuesday, this new teacher delved deeper. She showed us the flowchart of simple past tense sentence structure made out of colorful construction paper on the wall, and then asked us what rights women didn’t have in the U.S. in the year 1960. I didn’t know how to respond; my four months of inane Albanian never got me to the social-political. What’s Albanian for “equal-pay-for-equal-work”?
Katastrofë.
Come to find out, no one else in the class knew how to respond either, and it was more of a portal for her to explain the plight of women in Kosovo in 1960 than it was for the class to practice our past participles. That being the case, she made it quite clear that while American women were liberating themselves via bra burning, women in Kosovo weren’t allowed to watch television. Beyond the fact that I’m not sure either of those things are true, it undoubtedly set a much different tone than my old, blasé lessons.
These new classes incorporate the linguistic and the social in a way that I’ve always wanted, but never knew existed. Our lesson continued: “’Artani ka kalu me Zanën’ (‘Artin dated Zane’). But to ask someone out on a date in Kosovo, you ask them to coffee . . . how many coffees until you are officially dating someone in your country?”
Not only can I not lie like in my previous class, I don’t even know what’s happening. “Trick question,” she said, “In Kosovo you are dating after you kiss.” Thank god that is clear, I was worried I owed my girlfriend of three years a lot of coffee. A debt she would make good on.
Katastrofë averted.
In this morass of social pedagogy, we moved to passive and active voice using the reflexive. If you don’t know what that means, it doesn’t matter. Our teacher proceeded to draw two stick figures on the board; one had a triangle around its waist to indicate femininity. “Which is right? Artin kissed Zanë or Artin and Zanë had kissed?” Um . . . both? Can we get more context? “The former means Artin and Zanë kissed, the latter means they are cheating on each other. Know your active and passive voice!”
Katasrofë for Artin and Zanë. After all, they were Kosovo's dream couple.
Things continued to escalate when we got to grammar’s den of vice: prepositions. We were discussing the nuances of te (at) and në (in) when she started down a new path of examples. Like English, it’s the difference between asking the taxi to drop you at the restaurant or to have the taxi drive through the store front and drop you off somewhere near table five. Our teacher goes on, “Say you want to go to Sonia’s. You can’t be in Sonia” she motions to Sonia who already senses where this train wreck is headed, “ . . . well I guess you can . . . but you shouldn’t . . . umm . . . I’m going to use a mall as an example now.” The lesson continued as embarrassment crept across (not in or at) Sonia’s face.
Shumë katastrofë.
These gems of cross-cultural communication took no less than two hours to materialize. Unlike before, I’m excited to be going to Albanian to see what social cause will teach me the future tense or what graceless faux pas will bring the dative case to life. I also admire the fact that she is committed to us learning the language, and that she isn’t OK with us just floating aimlessly through class. That means I’ve got to put a lot more into my Albanian studies or else she’s going to shame me publically. Anything else would be Katastrofë.
Katastrofë.
Come to find out, no one else in the class knew how to respond either, and it was more of a portal for her to explain the plight of women in Kosovo in 1960 than it was for the class to practice our past participles. That being the case, she made it quite clear that while American women were liberating themselves via bra burning, women in Kosovo weren’t allowed to watch television. Beyond the fact that I’m not sure either of those things are true, it undoubtedly set a much different tone than my old, blasé lessons.
These new classes incorporate the linguistic and the social in a way that I’ve always wanted, but never knew existed. Our lesson continued: “’Artani ka kalu me Zanën’ (‘Artin dated Zane’). But to ask someone out on a date in Kosovo, you ask them to coffee . . . how many coffees until you are officially dating someone in your country?”
Not only can I not lie like in my previous class, I don’t even know what’s happening. “Trick question,” she said, “In Kosovo you are dating after you kiss.” Thank god that is clear, I was worried I owed my girlfriend of three years a lot of coffee. A debt she would make good on.
Katastrofë averted.
In this morass of social pedagogy, we moved to passive and active voice using the reflexive. If you don’t know what that means, it doesn’t matter. Our teacher proceeded to draw two stick figures on the board; one had a triangle around its waist to indicate femininity. “Which is right? Artin kissed Zanë or Artin and Zanë had kissed?” Um . . . both? Can we get more context? “The former means Artin and Zanë kissed, the latter means they are cheating on each other. Know your active and passive voice!”
Katasrofë for Artin and Zanë. After all, they were Kosovo's dream couple.
Things continued to escalate when we got to grammar’s den of vice: prepositions. We were discussing the nuances of te (at) and në (in) when she started down a new path of examples. Like English, it’s the difference between asking the taxi to drop you at the restaurant or to have the taxi drive through the store front and drop you off somewhere near table five. Our teacher goes on, “Say you want to go to Sonia’s. You can’t be in Sonia” she motions to Sonia who already senses where this train wreck is headed, “ . . . well I guess you can . . . but you shouldn’t . . . umm . . . I’m going to use a mall as an example now.” The lesson continued as embarrassment crept across (not in or at) Sonia’s face.
Shumë katastrofë.
These gems of cross-cultural communication took no less than two hours to materialize. Unlike before, I’m excited to be going to Albanian to see what social cause will teach me the future tense or what graceless faux pas will bring the dative case to life. I also admire the fact that she is committed to us learning the language, and that she isn’t OK with us just floating aimlessly through class. That means I’ve got to put a lot more into my Albanian studies or else she’s going to shame me publically. Anything else would be Katastrofë.
