Back from Beyond the English Language

I DIDN'T POST because my computer is still broken and I have spent all my time watching (rather listening to) the box set (all 5 seasons) of 6 Feet Under while marking up a notebook with every single word I do not understand from the French novel I'm reading. I've decided to better myself by reading novels and memoirs in French and German exclusively. I don't mark the books; as I said, I keep a notebook with every word I don't fully comprehend in the order it appears complete with page numbers. If a word crops up 45 times and I still don't get it, I look it up and write the definition all those times. The ONLY method of language acquisition that works is repitition.

Today I bought 3 new French novels (French literature outdoes German by a long way). They cost £2 each from a particularly eclectic charity shop with shelves and shelves of foreign crap.

I'm learning Spanish from a Linguaphone Plus course my Dad got me on ebay. It cost £35 secondhand; that's about $50. These cost about £300 new and bring you to a vocabulary of 2400 words. I know because I counted definitions per page in the glossary and multiplied up. 2400 words is about 4 times what a Teach Yourself book + 2 CDs course gives you. Plus you learn by listening. The handbook explains why it is as it is, line by line. But somehow it all goes in without much effort. Linguaphone is way better than Pimsleur. I tried Pimsleur Hebrew from the library and it's ridiculously repititious. Breaking down a simple sentence into constituent parts over and over on CD because it's designed for people who fear a simple textbook will make them feel like they're at school. I heard Pimsleur gives you a vocab of only 400 words; that wouldn't surprise me. Also Rosetta Stone level 3 gives only 1500 words ~ their customer services had to phone me back with that figure. I got the impression that neither the school-leaver who took my original call nor the supervisor who answered my enquiry had ever learned a foreign languge, let alone actually used Rosetta Stone.

Last week I was in a good mood but now I'm depressed. I decided that it's unnatural to live on psyche meds. Not to mention the fact that I want my meds CHANGED to quetiapine which has a more acceptable side-effects profile. Ever since I took risperidone I had episodic severe anxiety which I will NOT put up with. Surprise surprise anxiety is a side-effect afflicting more than one person in ten on that drug. I want quetiapine instant release. It might stop me needing to take zopiclone, which I mostly buy on the street as my doctor is too prissy to give a regular supply. I only take zopiclone as required. Every so often I go through a period, usually when I'm going manic, where I sleep 3 hours a day or less. Or just cannot sleep at night and sleep randomly during the day.

Now I feel down and out and pretty pointless. But I'm determined to be able to read these pretentious French novels in the original. Why not? They're not really pretentious. French literature is parallel to English literature. There's a huge international contingent in France, the language is used widely accross Africa. So French books are very cosmopolitan. My current one is about the last emperor of China and an ancient manuscript; the next one is called Le nègre du Palais by Thierry Pfister. Something to do with a rich man dying in a big house (wouldn't he be liable to dreaded French wealth tax?) and politics. Well it looks a lot better than it sounds. I haven't taken a dictionary to it yet so it's all a blur.

Isn't 6 Feet Under just about the best thing that's ever been on telly? I was wondering why Ruth, the mother, annoys me so much. That's because she's just like me: a mixture of prissy and adventurous. Meek yet not meek-willed. Just like me. I'm also like Phoebe from Friends. Hippy dippy on the outside; hard as nails on the inside. It's other people who call me hard. I don't think I'm hard. But when they say that I answer: well if I were as soft on the inside as I appear on the outside I'd be a fucking lump of jelly wouldn't I??

I hope y'all are OK. I didn't mean to worry anyone by not posting. If I ever do get to die I'll be a very lucky man. I know that will never happen to me. I am a born survivor. Don't want to be. But I am. Least I won't be a fucking monoglot when I do die. That would be WELL beyond the pale!

Vive le Romance

DON'T WORRY about my over-ernest post yesterday. I was getting a bit over the top, psyching myself up to write write write. The writing is going, but slowly. Strangely I write almost the same for children as for adults. This is fiction I'm talking about; not blogging. Children don't like or relate to abstracts and neither do I. I hate latinate nouns in English; I like things concrete.

Anyway talking of Romance languages I got so bored of German ~ which quite frankly is NOT doing it for me ~ I went out and purchased a Collins Robert French dictionary for £6.50 (second hand) and a selection of books. One about a Burmese monk called Par une nuit où la lune ne s'est pas levée a guide to rocks and minerals: Roches, cristaux, minéraux by the way I do think it's vulgar when in English people pluralize "bureau" with an S! The proper spelling is BUREAUX. You eat gâteaux in bureaux on plateux of vast mountains! My final French book is a murder mystery by J P Manchette titled Fatale. It's only 139 pages so I'm looking forward to that. Plus someone has helpfully biro'd in notes of their own to save my time at that Collins Robert!

I should hopefully have a Linguaphone SPANISH COURSE. 4 books and 8 CDs winging its way to me. I got it on ebay for £35! So I'm very much into romance languages at the moment. Remember, before y'all tut tut on how fickle I am that my goal is to speak French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. I just got temporarily tired of Chinese and German isn't inspiring me these days. French literature is just so stately. Some of the best books in the world were written in French. I'd love to be able to read Victor Hugo and Emile Zola in the original. Not to mention Flaubert's Madame Bovary ~ which I've only ever seen on television. Amazingly well adapted, it has to be said.

I always thought Madame Bovary was a junkie who just happened to live in an era before the proliferation of hard drugs. In today's world a woman with a taste for things beyond her reach would tend to seek solace in chemicals. In her day, even as wife of a country doctor, the only things available to her would have been laudanum and possibly cocaine. Strange to think of Madame Bovary nosing up a line off her posh rosewood dining table, but there you go.

Now I must off. I got a box set of Six Feet Under, one of my favourite television programmes of all time. I like the bit with the bipolar brother weeping and wailing in the kitchen and Rachel Griffiths says "if you're looking for the olives, honey, they're right here"....

Loose End

I'M AT A VERY LOOSE END. Feeling depressed. I don't get the buzz out of things that I expect to get. Example: I went into town and bought Chinese books and Paris Match and Stern magazines in French and German. I got all this stuff home and felt distinctly flat. Not depressed. Not angry. Nothing negative; just nothing very positive.

My life goals are to speak and write German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese to as near mother tongue standard as possible. To this end I am using every language course I can get my hands on. It's good to have one in German, even if it is "too easy". Really I need a teacher to correct my writing, because I know it's unidiomatic. Someone once asked in all seriousness whether my German blog was the product of Google Translate ~ which just about says everything about my writing. My vocabulary is pretty good now ~ though nowhere near as good as someone's who has put proper effort in. The Perfect Your German CDs and book promises an active vocab of 5000 words. Using a dictionary and multiplying the number of words familiar with per page by the number of pages I calculated I had a passive vocabulary (that is, I read a word and understand it) of eight to ten thousand words.

I've started my book in ernest. I'm only after a name for my central character but I think I've found one. I googled it and it's not been used. That is the big high jump for all children's characters' names. The more unique they are the less allowable it is for them to have featured in previous books, films, cartoons etc. Mine seemed to check out OK.

I've only written about a page of story but it's a children's book. Not a picture book, as my mother assumed, but a children's book like the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter are children's books. Totally unreliant on illustrations. A tale spun in spellbinding language. I know I'm not the best writer alive. But I'm unique: I do believe I'm best at being me. I am not writing in the style or genre of anybody else. I hope to bring a breath of mountain-fresh air to the fetid wizard and lesbian-single-parent-obsessed world of children's publishing. Apart from this I'll say nothing until my book is done. I wouldn't say my story is so much amazingly unique as something that's magical for the way it's told. We see the world through the eyes of our little character, who is an amazing character. So it's a magical world to see. And that's all I'm saying about it.

It's my parents I credit for kicking me up the backside and saying YOU CAN WRITE, WRITE THIS TALE. So I am doing. I'm not entirely convinced self-publishing is the way to go forward. Considering half a billion people in the world speak English well enough to enjoy a novel and many of these hundreds of millions have children. How can I hope to market my production to them. I know nothing about promoting children's literature. The way I see it, writing is an art; publishing is a business. Experience as well as everything I have read about my mental situation has told me stress is bad for me. True I find it exhilarating. But that exhilaration can trip into mania very easily. I've told myself I was being hypochondriac so many times before. Only to look back and see I really was manic. When you're up at four in the morning, TV and stereo blaring at top volume, bouncing balls on the floor you're not just "a bit excited" you're manic. Mania has left me in a real mess every time it's come. It's not that mania itself is so terrible; it's the disinhibition, the feiriness of spirit (ie uninhibited agression), and hyperkinetic distractability that cause problems. Ratchet it up a notch or two and agression turns into outright paranoia, the beautiful enhanced sensory pereception trips into hallucinations. When I was truly manic I saw spirals on the walls and ceiling. I heard voices speaking to and about me. I could not tell what was and was not real. Then of course there's the depression. Less than a month ago I felt my life was so useless that lying down in front of an express train was the best favour I could do my family and friends. I was intensely paranoid and very depressed. Then I started popping my pills again and literally by the next morning two thirds of my depression and half the paranoia had dissipated. Isn't life strange.

This is why I seek a career in writing. Not only is it exceedingly trendy to be bipolar and artistic but I know from experience that rare extremes aside, I'm capable of writing almost no matter how high or low or sideways I go.

I intend to take these languges of mine far enough to qualify as a translator at least in German to English. If you calculate languges as GDP and number of speakers; German is number two in the world after English. Chinese is number three. Japanese is number four. So if you wonder why my German obsession: that's it. German is by far the biggest business language in the European Union after English. I phoned around some agecies specializing in placing bilingual temps and headhunting bilingual administrators, secretaries etc. What language had the most openings? I asked. German German German I was told. Every time.

So that's what I'm doing. Writing my intellectual story book, improving my German. Chinese is quite frankly doing my head in at the moment but I'm still slogging away. I'd like to apply my talents to Spanish if I can.

So here's the news. I hope this isn't too much of a tangle. I'm not lost but I'm trying to break free of the inertia and lassitude and apathy that has hemmed me in like a dancer frozen in a paperweight for years and years and years. Like a cage-nibbling hamster I desire escape. I'd like to go on a City Break to Berlin. And I can't wait to finish my Amazing Tale of Adventure and Wonder!

And how was YOUR weekend?

Clipped Wings (Still)

I'M still feeling like a bird with clipped wings, who should be soaring on a manic high and now, bar the vaguest tinges and little flashes of it, is reduced to sheer drudging normality and laboured workaday ordinariness. This is quite beyond the pale. I know now why I threw my antipsychotics out the window (metaphorically; the only thing that literally went sailing out of my window in mania was a PORK flavoured pizza ~ ukh. Only thing it was any good for was frisbeeing...)

The reason why is I enjoy being primary coloured, bright and brilliant ~ and that's how the manic state makes me not merely feel but be. You have to bear in mind the TWENTY YEARS I spent in various grades of depression (mostly mild). I was so accustomed to feeling depressed that people who "knew" me thought my depressed self was my real self. Which it most definitely is NOT. If anything I'm far more myself as a maniac than a depressive. Which might not say much nice about me, considering how inconsiderate, irritable and overblown I am in that state ~ but it is TRUE.

Of course I don't really think sick and disabled people should be shot. I only believed I should be shot for being a drain on my country and a disgrace to my family. I'm surprised they even want to talk to me. Then I get letters off my Mum saying I appear to have no goals in life at all. This is SO untrue. I am a serious student of Mandarin Chinese and intend to speak Japanese as well as French German and Spanish. All to mother tongue fluency. French is a really good language for those into reading books. German is superior in every way. Spanish is useful. Japanese is famously whacky. And if you don't speak Chinese you're not a citizen of the 21st century world, let's face it.

I just can't believe how LAZY I have been ~ to be NEARLY 40 and not even fluent in Chinese, let alone Japanese or Spanish. I really have been a wastrel. Of course heroin had a large part to play. First thing that put me against heroin was that it made me so incredibly lazy. But what was good about it was that heroin made life, for the very first time, make sense. Then again it made me weak and cowardly. I used to be very strong. Considering how strong-willed I used to be against my weirdo self. Everybody who knew me knew I was a weirdo. And you wonder why I talk about suicide!! Heroin was the only thing that made my warped personality fit. Even my psychiatrist said this when personality disorders were mooted.

Unfortunately I it no personality disorder except Cyclothymic Personality (ie bipolar lite). I have bipolar lite whenever I don't have bipolar heavy. That is I have a mood swing of some degree almost all the time. I only speak to my family between them, which means waiting weeks to call, sometimes.

My mother, who has "major depression" says she never feels fully 100%. This is called "dysthymia" (a mildly low mood). I heard that first degree relatives of someone with unipolar depression have a 25% chance of having a major mood disorder 50:50 recurrent major depression or type 1 bipolar. I would be type 1 bipolar (if I'm not schizoaffective). Schizoaffective disorder and type 1 bipolar are almost identical and the treatments for them are the same. So there's not very much in the name. Anna Grace has bipolar I and her symptoms and mine are nearly the same. Maybe I get a bit more manic than her, but she's on more medication damping that mania down...

Schizoaffective just means I meet full diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia when I'm severely manic. It means I have Kraepelin's "delusional mania" (which is actually marked by vivid hallucinations, not delusions, but that's what it's called). I've been reading Emil Kraepelin's Manic-Depressive Insanity And Paranoia to find myself. And I don't like what I found. He diagnoses me as a moody so-and-so with manic and hypomanic attacks on top. I don't think I ever get depression, not by the standards of the early 1900s. My depression is only a mild case. And suicidality can be a rational act of someone with nothing left to live for ~ even psychiatrists acknowledge that.

Note I'm not saying I want to commit suicide. My moritorium is on. I feel about 5% manic and not depressed. I was quite manic last night but the risperidone blanked that out, when I took it. I get the daily Risperidone Mood Swing where I feel it wearing off each evening, going higher and higher until I bosh it back and am damped down like a Sucker Loach in a community fish tank. Sucking on that glass, bored out of my brainbox (don't loaches and catfish get bored? Skulking about the community tank as they do...?)

If you're reading this blog and still wondering about my personality I'd say I'm like Phoebe from Friends. Hippy Dippy on the outside, hard as nails on the inside (if you think Phoebe isn't hard, watch Friends again and more carefully...) I've been told a few times that I'm hard. Always by people who didn't know me so well, now know me better. Always with a note of disappointment. I say if I were as soft on the inside as on the outside I'd be a fucking lump of jelly. Better to be a wolf in sheep's clothing than vice versa. Anyway there's nothing wrong with being hard. We live in a hard world.

I had a yen to test my alcohol resolve yesterday. So I had a can of weak cherry flavour cyder. The one I used to knock back because it was "mandy drink". Dear reader: it took me THREE HOURS to finish the lousy stuff and I still don't enjoy drink. It reminds me too much of sad-sacks street drinkers. I met one yesterday. A woman who was too vulgar for words and thought "I used to be like that". Ukh. I LOATHE the image of alcohol and drinkers it's untennably vulgar. The big reason I preferred drugs was that I hated alcohol and needed SOME recreational substance. Ecstasy was infinitely superior in my book. E made me feel like Buddha on a transcendental cloud of peace and love. Drink never did that for me. And I was never one of those psycho people who has a complete personality change after one drink and suddenly insists on drinking the bar dry. That's my big quarm with NA; they believe any drug of any description sets off the entire disease process again and I don't. I took drugs to feel better. Not to be off my head. Only terminal junkies are so far gone they want nothing short of general anaesthesia. Heroin gave me what I believed to be an enhanced ability to cope with life. Of course I ended up not coping at all. So heroin goes out the window too... I can't believe I'm dumping heroin. You have to be truly mad or desperate or both to give up a drug as efficacious as heroin. So maybe I have finally lost it. My dr does after all believe I'm schizo...

I've swapped alcohol for Morrisons' own cloudy lemonade; 54p for 2 litres ie 27p a litre or just over 10p a can. Very good value.



Notice no Barbra Streisand!



Video version:

I love techno choirs!

Sorry if this is yet another boring post saying nothing new; my life is boring and samey, but I do like this techno track..........

I get to see Deshane tomorrow. He's getting me a pensioner's bus pass. Wahey!!
OK it's a Disabled Bus pass but I hate saying I'm disabled. It means I'm scrounging off the state. Even though I found out I've been "disabled" for years. It's that fucking mania that disables me. Makes me too lazy for words. Schizo gives me avolition. Depression makes me not bothered. Add those 3 together and you have a wreck of a person who can blog about life yet never lives it. And that's that!

Oui, oui... c'est le French keyboard!

I HQD q go on ,y nezly instqllled French keyboqrd; just for the fun of it qnd found it ,ore inconvenient by fqr thqn the Ger,qn; zhich is the sq,e qs the English but zith Y qnd Z szqpped round:///

Enough of this. Have a close look at the letter placings above and you'll see that QWERTY has gone out the window in favour of AZERTY(!) Numbers cannot be imputted without the shift key as the top row is partially devoted to accented characters: éèçà; the keys to the right of P when tapped before a vowel adds a circumflex: âêîôû; M sits where our semicolon usually resides and the @/' key is ù/% in French.

Très confusante!

And all I have to ask you after hacking your way through this is:

Comment ça va?

I still want a tiny terrier

I STILL WANT A tiny Norwich or cairn terrier, but I don't know when it's ever going to happen...

I'm trying to get my life in focus by brushing up these languages to university-entrance standard.

I tell myself that if I don't do it the weeks will fly past anyhow and nothing will be done.

The trick is to use the time wisely and constructively. So I've had to construct a course of my own where I find Youtube reports in German and French, watch through them. Usually I have a good gist of what was said. I listen again, sentence by sentence, word by word. Every word I am not 100% sure of ~ or that I understand (passive vocabulary) yet would not think of using (active vocabulary) I add it to my list... Next I have to watch the video through once more, the new words fall in place. Ideally I would compose some sort of essay using this new vocabulary. This is how most language courses work. I'm just going to have to be disciplined enough to push myself through.

I've been floating over French and German blogs, but, in German especially, haven't the confidence to comment...

It's a shame the "civilized" regulations of modern society mean it would be difficult to take a doggie to college ... I thin I'm going to have to sacrifice the furry swine ~ not an OSPCA-type animal sacrifice... well y'know what I mean.

As it is I'm depressed. I'm tired. It's dark already. The day has flown past. Close to midnight already. I have learning to do...

NORWICH TERRIER CARE:
Look at the poor little swine enduring all this:

Grooming the head

How to Groom the Head - Norwich Terrier

Stripping the coat

How to Strip the Coat - Norwich Terrier

Picture of the day: tiny Norwich terrier hiding between two breasts ...

How do you say Fishfingers in French?

... das Fischstäbchen, de visstick ~ I think they're known as fishsticks in America, too.

I have been practising these languages in the most practical way I know how ~ by writing out trilingual shopping lists: die Milch/le lait/de melk (and just for good measure, Esperanto: lakto)... deze vissticken of mine come in cod ~ der Kabeljau/la morue/de kabeljauw/moruo and haddock ~ der Schellfisch/un aiglefin/de schelvis/eglefino ~ I bought both (special offer/Sonderangebot/promotion spéciale/speciale aanbieding/o Esperanto can go hang it's late... it seems to have taken all evening just researching 20 words, with much continental Wikipedia comparison... driving me round the twist. I really need printed information.

I've continued researching educational opportunities, but feel my old chasing rabbits in two directions syndrome threatening to reappear.

I am referring to that Chinese proverb I've mentioned before:
he who chases two rabbits goes home empty-handed
and it has been the story of my life. Full of interest in too many different things I'm unable to focus and very little comes of the efforts I do put in. Well now I'm too old, and will have to sit down and do something constructive (and profitable) before I die. I now realize that an undergraduate degree does not have to, and indeed is not meant to, encapsulate your interests in every academic subject going. It is quite OK to be well into one thing but to do a degree in another. When I was younger I was also against vocational degrees. At the more intellectual end of academia they were unfashionable and only the "new universities" (that is: the former polytechnics") tended to offer them. I was all into penning great intellectual critiques on classic works of literature (which I was good at, when I gave myself a chance). The idea of business German, to me seemed soulless.

Anyway I've had a peruse around the subjects that interest me. For the record these are basically European and Asian languages: German with one or more of: Japanese, Dutch, French, Chinese, Italian or Spanish. These are the languages I want to speak. Those are my goals. Obviously there are three or more BAs there so I'll have to be selective...

London Birkbeck do a part time German and Japanese BA.
Now German and Japanese is what I wish I'd done first time round...

Oxford do what sounds like a very good FIVE YEAR course in BA Japanese ~ which includes one year abroad. In five years' intensive study I would expect a very high level of fluency to be attained.

There are several universities in Germany offering Germanistik/Japanologie at BA. To get on one of these courses I would need a very high level of German proficiency as (unlike the translator's degree in Mainz) they are squarely aimed at mother-tongue German speakers and any language exercises would refer back to German...

Perhaps studying a third language through the medium of a second sounds very high-falluting ~ but students with English as foreign language study in British universities all the time, so I don't think it would be that unusual for me to do the equivalent in Germany...

Now I do really want to learn Japanese and I love the subject and when I pore over my kanji books I feel centred in a way that only heroin and novel-writing could ever compete with...

But I have to bear in mind, the point of any degree would be to get me as near as possible to QUALIFIED to do something, namely to translate. And I think at my age I really need to focus energies where they are best spent... Common sense tells me that for a translator, a course in translation would obviously be the way to go. I already have French and German to A level, which represents five years' study (seven years in the case of French)....

Bearing in mind that Birkbeck's Japanese promises to take students from ab initio to "one year post A-level" and you see how much further I could take German and French. The course I'm looking at promises "near mother tongue fluency" ~ which is considerably further along.

Whatever I decide to do I am going to have to focus my energies economically. If I want to do a European D language on top of the other two I need to start that now. Three languages at once isn't quite as confusing as it sounds ~ remember I'm pretty much at book-reading level in the other two, so my hellos, how are you? ~ please would you be so kind as to direct me to the railway stations... shouldn't get into too many tangles.

Here's Mainz's gloss on their options:

In the BA programme, as a native speaker of English you can either study German as your only foreign language (B language, excellent active competence), or you can choose a second foreign language (C language, excellent passive competence), which can be Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish. (Please note that there are admission restrictions for French and Spanish.) Ab initio courses are not offered in all C languages. However, you can attend introductory courses in Finnish and Turkish (D language).

(Every language offered as a C-language can be studied as a D-language also.)

Without any school certificates in Spanish, it doesn't sound like I'd be able to take that (the most obvious practical choice of D-language) anyhow. Another factor to bear in mind is the competition: loads of professionals can offer Spanish. As far as I know it is now the number one most popular choice of foreign language in British schools (being easier than French and, people suppose, more useful, though I'd dispute that (the number of speakers might be lower, but French is extremely widely spoken)). German is least popular of the big three ~ and yet, so I hear, there is more work for professional linguists in German than every other EU language combined! Perhaps Italian would be the most "sensible" choice. Finnish appeals because it is non-Indo-European (related to Lappish, language of the mysterious reindeer-herding Saami) ~ hence difficult and exotic ~ from a land of lonely pines, ice-lakes, snow-capped crags and the midnight sun... Italian: best food in Europe, easier than French (and much more crisply pronounced)... classical ruins, great literature and poetry and opera... high fash in Milan, porn stars in parliament. Yeah: Italian is cool. But none of those others really grabs me. To learn any language it's essential to be exceedingly highly motivated and the fire isn't there.

As for Dutch, I've already prattled on about that before: Mainz is only a couple of hours from Dutch-speaking territory, I already have studied the basics of Dutch grammar and it's easy. As you can see from the examples I gave, most vocabulary echoes both English and German. And when I studied Dutch I felt centred, in the zone... like I do with Japanese and heroin (strange but true).

I need to make up my mind soon... and now it's a quarter to midnight, nothing has been done. I am drowning in word lists for fish, bread rolls and tomato sauce... How do I come up with a programme, by myself, to focus the skills I need to build up? (Without wasting time or running round in circles..?)

I have lost one decade solid of my life to heroin and mental ill-health. The decade before that was pretty much scuppered by health concerns, too ~ though I wasn't a full-on addict (it's difficult to date precisely when which problem began because they're so interwoven and in the beginning I was extremely cautious with heroin. I had no intention of getting addicted and so continuously "picked it up" (as NA say) ~ loved it, but forced myself to renounce it. This happened again and again over a period of years. Somehow the occasions when I used crept closer and closer together until I found myself withdrawing without even knowing it!... And THAT is a long story...

Now I must go. Has anyone any advice on what I should do? And how??

Links:
Mainz Translation, Language and Culture BA: www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/deutsch/261.php#balct
Birkbeck: Modern Languages with two of: German, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish www.bbk.ac.uk/study/ug/spanishstudies/UBAFRGEM.html

Here's an some interesting stats:
TOP 10 INTERNET LANGUAGES by number of users: www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm
English is number one with just under 500 million, Chinese number two with just over 400 million. German comes just ahead of Arabic ~ about 72 million... French is 57 million...

MUSIC:
KAREL FIALKA: HEY MATTHEW
Produced for just £200 from the singer's Bradford & Bingley account, this got to #2 in the UK chart, it's called "New Wave" and that's it really

OK I'll try and be polyglot:
Deze hier is een £200 productie van het engelse sangschrijver Karel Fialka. Het is wel goed. Och! It moet nu gaan! Ik heb niet maar toe zeggen!
OK, tot later

google.fr, google.de, google.nl

IF I'M GOING for this uni course in French/German/Dutch translation in Mainz I'm going to have to refresh my rusty French (no study in 18 years) on top of my German. I did study some Dutch when I was enamoured with the idea of moving to Amsterdam and completed half a Linguaphone course, which means in theory I would have had a vocabulary of about 700 words... but THAT was 18 years ago too!

So I decided the thing to do is give up entirely googling anything in English and migrate exclusively to their French, German and Dutch portals. I have just been reading up on blue roses and la situation linquistique en suisse (Switzerland) on French Wikipedia.

Looking back I can see I have been extremely lazy in my attitude. But I also see that my attitude has been nothing unusual for an English-speaker. In many parts of the world it is quite ordinary to have to read books, conduct business and look up information in one's second, third or even fourth languages. I think if I can pick up this attitude, instead of grumbling to myself that this is "like looking at a beautiful view through a dirty window" (which is pretty much what it's like having to read a text in an idiom where not every word is familiar and a few are downright incomprehensible) and remind myself that I'm killing four birds with three stones (or whatever I'm doing: what is the metaphor? I'm killing two birds with one stone three times then.)... If I can do this then maybe I will qualify to get on that course, maybe I'll actually get on it, maybe I'll go and do it and graduate with flying colours and everything will change for the good.

I can but try (!!)