My mother thought that learning a foreign language is important. When I was three or four years old, she bundled me off to a language school held in a local classroom after hours or on weekends (I don’t remember, exactly). I already spoke a bit of Spanish because we lived in an agricultural area and through some oversight of the arch-conservative establishment I would often mingle with the agricultural workers’ children — though when I started school I discovered that they weren’t allowed to attend the same public school I attended.
One day, at the end of class, the teacher announced that the next class we would be learning the alphabet. I was so excited! I knew from English that you could spell or write anything once you knew the alphabet, and somehow in my small, simple mind that meant that once I had learned the Spanish alphabet, I would necessarily be able to read, write, and understand the Spanish language. My language course would be done!
It was even more cool to find that I could learn the whole alphabet in a single class, as it was so similar to English.
Imagine my disappointment.
—2p