For the last few years I have stood back from the frantic career scramble to expand my linguistic repertoire whilst colleagues have assaulted their grey matter with tongue-twisting arrays of Slavic consonants. In the meantime, my resistance has been worn away by a process of attrition, the irresistible itch to compete, to assert myself, my aloofness always self-conscious, never serene. I comforted myself with the stultifying repetitiveness of the process of acquisition, the tediousness, the memorising of declensions, the proper use of cases, the laboriousness behind what evolves into an intuitive grasp of word order and emphasis. The feelings of ambivalence have not dissipated, however.

I resent the treatment meted out to us as a profession within the institutional context. Our function clings to us like stale smoke on emerging from some dive; we are defined by it, hobbled by it in a manner our counterparts of identical rank within the administration proper are not; we are envied and despised by them in equal measure. I refuse to be contained, resist the suffocation of assumptions. It constitutes a means of earning a living, nothing more, my essence preserved in the written word.

Never was the experience of language learning better encapsulated than in a passage by my favourite Hungarian author Dezső Kosztolányi. His luscious prose like the juice of a ripe melon running down the chin or honey dripping from the comb, undefended by the drowsy bees. Above all stylish and carefully burnished, ornate with a hint of decadence yet forgiving of faults and all too human weaknesses. Urbane and quick-witted, sensuous and attentive to detail, his eye settling on the saltcellars with their twin shakers for ground red paprika and the accompanying receptacle for toothpicks on the restaurant table. The awe at the fluency of even the least communicative, the frustration of absorbing the patterns, the stumbling and shyness that must be overcome, the awkwardness and obsessive dedication, all captured with absolute psychological accuracy in Esti Kornél: “I didn’t go there to live, however, but to study. First and foremost to perfect my knowledge of their slightly hard and abrasive, tortuous and complex, yet exquisite and ancient tongue, which I could still only sputter in mediocre and inadequate fashion. Very often I did not understand what they said. Very often they did not understand what I said. These two deficiencies did not cancel each other out, but made each other worse. My burning ambition was to be able to speak German fluently. I hung on every word like a secret policeman. I struck up conversations with any and everyone. Living grammar books and dictionaries ran around me in circles. I endeavoured to peruse their pages. I even greeted three year old children to engage them in chat because they could speak German better than me, although I had read and understood Kant’s Prolegomena in the original. If I failed to understand a snatch of conversation on the street I was plunged into despair. I almost felt like committing suicide once when a shopkeeper noticed the foreign stress in my otherwise tolerable speech and did not answer my questions, but – I am sure in order to show consideration – gesticulated in the kind of sign language habitually used for the benefit of deaf mutes or savages. I toiled with unflagging diligence and did not let any opportunity slip by that could have aided my progress. Unfortunately, I suffered numerous setbacks. After a sumptuous dinner arranged for the students I was driven home by hansom cab late one night. I inquired of the driver how much I owed him. I probably misunderstood and did not cross his palm with enough silver. The cab driver began to roar, calling me a contemptible fellow, even flicking his whip in my direction, but all I could do was gawp with admiration at how beautifully he employed the irregular verbs, how accomplished he was at making subject and predicate agree, how rich and varied his vocabulary and I fumbled about for my pencil so that I could take careful note of his every utterance. This left the driver dumbfounded in turn. He was not astounded by the wealth of his own vocabulary, but by my capacity to endure his filthy torrent of abuse with such placid resignation. He thought I must be the founding father of a religion or stark raving mad. Whereas I was just a linguist”.

[My translation]