What a joke my one Portuguese class was! Taught by revered Prof. Enrique C. de las Casas at the University of Utah, who was from Madrid. He didn't know Portuguese but offered a beginning course in response to demand. All we did was read
Cenas do Sertão (Scenes of the Plains) by Guimarães Rosa in class (no outside assignments) and that was it. A great text for a beginning class! No lessons on pronunciation. I still think of Portuguese as a melodic way to speak Spanish.
I have the custom of reading the Bible in a different language every week—Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, and occasionally in English. It can be quite illuminating. New insights. I've taught all of these except Portuguese, including English as a Second Language. This was when I taught at smaller colleges. At BYU I had to specialize in Spanish, though teaching Spanish Literature and Culture classes as well as Linguistics.
I spent two weeks in Italy during spring break at the Universität zu Wien (Univ. of Vienna, to which I had received a Fulbright scholarship) and also took a course in Italian there, taught by an Austrian native speaker of Italian from the Tirol—fought over by Italy and Austria for centuries. (Milan was once a great Austrian city.) He was ethnically Austrian, as are most of the northern Tirolese, who are bilingual in Italian and German.
Note: It was thanks to my knowing German as well as Spanish that I got my first full-time job as a professor. Northland College, Ashland, WI, needed such a prof. I applied and was immediately accepted. How great and memorable were the two years spent there! John and Marjean may remember this, though quite young at the time.
I'll never forget that class. The old grammar-translation method. Oh, fun, translating from German to Italian and vice versa. It was the only class I had, though, that wasn't of the straight lecture type. In English we say "lecture" (from Latin
legere, to read; like Spanish
lectura—a reading), and that's what the professors did. They would stand behind the
Lesepult (lectern—also from "to read") and read. No questions, no discussion. "Lecture" in German is
Vorlesung—to read in front of, or read aloud.
We say "lecture" in the U.S.A., but reading—no part of one except occasionally from notes—is frowned upon. In German, a lecture room or hall is called a
Hörsaal (a listening room), and that's exactly what it is. You don't speak unless spoken to... and that's never. Perchance a
Morgen... Guten Morgen...? (Morning... Good morning...) Not likely. You must be seated before the
Herr Doktor Professor enters, so you're not about to meet and greet him on arriving together at the door.
I furiously tried to take notes for the first two weeks, though noticing that the Austrian students didn't bother. In fact, after the first few days relatively few of them even showed up. They had only come to get their
Studienbuch signed. No transcript of credits, as in the U.S. You only had your
Studienbuch, with courses listed and signed by the prof.
Of course, I didn't miss a single lecture. Great practice for improving my German. Also, because observing student behavior was so interesting. Hard to believe: Initials, hearts, etc. carved in desk tops (long narrow tables with long narrow benches behind them and an aisle in the center). These Austrians! Not very Germanic of them. What a way to carve your way to lasting fame.
Dang it! I resisted temptation. On returning years later with my wife and children, I could have proudly showed them the easily verified exact spot where I sat. (All of my courses in German and Austrian Literature were in the same
Hörsaal.) So much for "When in Rome do as the Romans do."
When the professor enters, all students respectfully stand. He takes off his hat, scarf, coat, hangs them up, together with his umbrella, goes to the
Lesepult, gestures gracefully with his hand and we sit. A pretty girl, quite often, then approaches the
Lesepult and presents the prof with a bouquet of flowers. Wow! As a professor in the U.S. of A., I would have lived forever for such a day!
If the prof says something impressive, students rap on the desk with their knuckles. If it's superior, they also slap the desk with the flat of their hands. If it's out of this world, they add to this the stomping and shuffling of their feet on the floor. Darn! I never saw (or heard) such a day in a single one of my superior, superb, excellent classes, and I guess no U.S. professor ever will. I did get a groan, occasionally, from one of my witticisms.
"How will I ever pass the exams?" I desperately asked myself. (No textbook. No outside reading list.) Then mimeographed copies of the professors' lectures appeared, run off by the student association and very inexpensive. That answered one question: Why come to class, when all the profs did was read? Except for old professor Benda, that is. He always lectured from memory. Never read a thing! What kind of a
Vorlesung was that? As I recall, when we got copies of his lectures, they were identical to the vocal ones. What a memory! I loved that old guy. He even condescended to converse with me from time to time.
He would just stand there looking out the windows (a full wall of them) as he spoke. At times, after the lecture was over, I'd look out those second story windows to see what was so all-fired interesting.
Nichts! Nada (Spanish), Nada (Portuguese), Niente, Rien—despite the fact that the Universität was right on Vienna's fabulous Ring and the Votiv Kirche, Ratshaus and Burgtheater were close by and other renowned structures and beautiful parks only a short walk away.
The Ring is crowded from dawn to dusk and dark with passers-by and bystanders, at whom the Viennese enjoy gawking, if I may be permitted the expression. They don't miss a thing. Little Johnny's shoe lace has come untied? It will be brought to your attention and you had better get it properly laced up.
The problem of the exams was answered when I realized that I was classified as an "ausserordentlicher Student." That could be translated as "extraordinary" (sounds great) or "special" (not bad!), but meant, in effect, "not regular," and, to my great relief, was told that taking the final tests (that's all there was—one final test per class) wasn't required of me. I still sort of feel I cheated, but don't feel cheated at all. What great experiences I had! And whoa... How much I learned!
So, when at Weber State, a group at Hill Air Force Base of Italian descent requested an evening school course in Italian, as chairman of the Foreign Language Department, I appointed myself (the only possibility). That was more fun! Got through it by having the class sing
O Sole Mio, Torna a Sorrento, Santa Lucia, etc. (which I often still loudly sing in the shower). Amazingly, no complaints from neighbors so far! Well, sure, my voice has that special timbre... like an old log.
Only one student knew any Italian and she would catch me up occasionally. "Oh," I would tell her. "Yes, in Venetian (her parents were from Venice), but we are teaching Toscano, the standard language, in this class." The textbooks, surprisingly, did not include excerpts from Dante's
Divina Commedia or Manzoni's
I Promessi Sposi.