Languages of the Legionnaires
Daria and Quinn:
BG posits that the Morgendorffers speak Spanish because they grew up in West Texas. I would have to disagree just by looking at the numbers because:
a) The number of Hispanics in Texas actually exceeds the number of Spanish-speaking Texans. This is because a lot of Hispanics in Texas are 2nd generation or above Texans, who tend to assimilate to the language that's most in use, English.
b) Of those Texans that speak Spanish but do not self-identify as Hispanic, the huge majority of those are the children of a Hispanic parent and a White Parent, with both languages being used in the home.
Given that, let's look at each case separately. I'll try to build my arguments in the direction of BG's theory whenever I can, but if I can't, I can't.
Daria: I can imagine that Daria might have had two years of Spanish, probably one year at Highland and another at Lawndale. I think that Daria might like languages, because most right-brained people love language as a "game/mathematical construct". Two years of high school Spanish will give you some basic phrases and present/past tense verb construction, maybe a tiny bit of future verb tenses and nothing of conditional tenses. However, she would have a hard time holding her own in a conversation and wouldn't be able to convey much beyond whatever her canned constructions allowed her to convey.
Quinn: Quinn is the opposite case of Daria.
Pre-LLH, Quinn never challenged herself intellectually, so she had no understanding of the rules of Spanish grammar. On the other hand, Quinn likes people a lot, and could have picked up some elementary Spanish from television, from the woman who cleans her house (Helen would have never cleaned it), from just about anyone she talked to. Her Spanish, however, is only slight better that Daria's - Quinn has a bigger vocabulary than Daria and that helps a lot, but she has little idea of how to put it toegether. Quinn will lapse into "Spanglish" when forced to, which is what happens when you know vocabulary but no grammar. "Could you comprar me una gaseosa, por favor?" Basically, Quinn would substitute English grammar where she doesn't know the Spanish.
As for Quinn's French, I suspect that it's high-school French, probably worse than Daria's high school Spanish. Quinn knows a lot of French vocabulary related to food and fashion but her scope is much limited.
Jane: Jane is marked by a lot of fans as being a Spanish speaker. She likes throwing around Spanish phrases. Her sister, Penny, appears to speak Spanish fluently so I suspect that either:
a) the Lanes have had lessons from childhood, or more possibly
b) the Lanes have a Hispanic background of some sort
It could be that Penny remembers all of her Spanish because she ran off to Central America. Jane knows enough to have a fairly decent conversation; it's certainly better than Daria or Quinn's Spanish. In addition, Jane knows a few phrases in Bulgarian and the thought of taking courses at a German university doesn't scare her, so I suspect that Jane has a talent for languages.
Sandi: She knows some French, certainly, but it appears that French is the language of the popular girls at Lawndale (due to the need for dates at Chez Pierre). It might be one of the classes that Sandi is actually good in, but there has been little use for French in her daily life before or after The Skunk. Sandi is probably aware of her language deficiencies and is probably addressing them with the prodding of Armalin, but would really rather learn Chinese or Arabic.
Tiffany: Tiffany's background is very unexplored. In the LLH world, I have Tiffany as half-Singaporean and half...something else. (More on that in the future.) Anyway, Tiffany speaks Chinese, English, and French (because her mother is an ex-model and shoved French down Tiffany's throat). Her written language is horrible, however; it took many "whippings" by USAES to even bring her English to an acceptable written standard.
Charles: He took French at LLH just to get close to the girls. He's in Daria's boat - great grammar, not much vocabulary retention. He's too busy academically to add another log to the boat.
Stacy: In the same boat at Sandi, but Stacy's a bit better in school and her grammar and vocabulary is better than Sandi's. Even so, Stacy retains residual shyness in how to use it.
Brittany: Her father could have paid for private French lessons, which would have explained her facility with the language. I see Steve Taylor as being nouveau riche, but he knew that he needed Brittany to be bilingual in order to have higher hopes for her education (which he gave up when it became clear that Brittany was no intellect). It probably pissed off Sandi at LHS that Big Boobs could speak French better than she could.
Tom: Tom - being the child of a wealthy family - speaks at least one foreign language - French -fluently. (Angier and Kay would have never allowed Tom and Elsie to remain monolingual.) He's also devoted serious study to Latin and can read a lot of Latin texts unaided. Has taken a Chinese class at Fielding but doesn't remember much of it.
Mack: Mack took two courses of Spanish at LHS and doesn't remember much of it. He was basically a "B" student at LHS which makes him a genius among his football playing counterparts. He regrets not paying as much attention in class as he should. (Elsie once volunteered to teach him French, which scared him.)
Julie: BG would know more about language background. If she does speak a foreign language, I suspect it's either Spanish (police work) or Russian/Chinese/Arabic (military).
Fran: I have no idea.
Jodie: Jodie probably knows French extremely well and after she gained her powers it opened up new doors. I'd say that she can speak three languages fluently - French, German and Russian which are all major research languages. Spanish? Eh, give her a few months. She's picked up more Spanish in a few hours in Mexico City than most of us would learn in days with a textbook.
Trent: See Jane, above. He has very likely been exposed to Spanish, but since Trent isn't an achiever and follows his own muse, I suspect his retention is very poor indeed.
Jamie: Jamie crawled through Spanish with a C+/D- average. Monolingual.
Karen: I suspect that Karen's abilities are in the same class with Jamie's. However, unlike Trent or Jamie, her training has forced her to reconsider her academic deficiencies. In any case, Karen now knows that she can learn a ton of stuff; the only question is what priority she feels in learning a foreign language.
BG posits that the Morgendorffers speak Spanish because they grew up in West Texas. I would have to disagree just by looking at the numbers because:
a) The number of Hispanics in Texas actually exceeds the number of Spanish-speaking Texans. This is because a lot of Hispanics in Texas are 2nd generation or above Texans, who tend to assimilate to the language that's most in use, English.
b) Of those Texans that speak Spanish but do not self-identify as Hispanic, the huge majority of those are the children of a Hispanic parent and a White Parent, with both languages being used in the home.
Given that, let's look at each case separately. I'll try to build my arguments in the direction of BG's theory whenever I can, but if I can't, I can't.
Daria: I can imagine that Daria might have had two years of Spanish, probably one year at Highland and another at Lawndale. I think that Daria might like languages, because most right-brained people love language as a "game/mathematical construct". Two years of high school Spanish will give you some basic phrases and present/past tense verb construction, maybe a tiny bit of future verb tenses and nothing of conditional tenses. However, she would have a hard time holding her own in a conversation and wouldn't be able to convey much beyond whatever her canned constructions allowed her to convey.
Quinn: Quinn is the opposite case of Daria.
Pre-LLH, Quinn never challenged herself intellectually, so she had no understanding of the rules of Spanish grammar. On the other hand, Quinn likes people a lot, and could have picked up some elementary Spanish from television, from the woman who cleans her house (Helen would have never cleaned it), from just about anyone she talked to. Her Spanish, however, is only slight better that Daria's - Quinn has a bigger vocabulary than Daria and that helps a lot, but she has little idea of how to put it toegether. Quinn will lapse into "Spanglish" when forced to, which is what happens when you know vocabulary but no grammar. "Could you comprar me una gaseosa, por favor?" Basically, Quinn would substitute English grammar where she doesn't know the Spanish.
As for Quinn's French, I suspect that it's high-school French, probably worse than Daria's high school Spanish. Quinn knows a lot of French vocabulary related to food and fashion but her scope is much limited.
Jane: Jane is marked by a lot of fans as being a Spanish speaker. She likes throwing around Spanish phrases. Her sister, Penny, appears to speak Spanish fluently so I suspect that either:
a) the Lanes have had lessons from childhood, or more possibly
b) the Lanes have a Hispanic background of some sort
It could be that Penny remembers all of her Spanish because she ran off to Central America. Jane knows enough to have a fairly decent conversation; it's certainly better than Daria or Quinn's Spanish. In addition, Jane knows a few phrases in Bulgarian and the thought of taking courses at a German university doesn't scare her, so I suspect that Jane has a talent for languages.
Sandi: She knows some French, certainly, but it appears that French is the language of the popular girls at Lawndale (due to the need for dates at Chez Pierre). It might be one of the classes that Sandi is actually good in, but there has been little use for French in her daily life before or after The Skunk. Sandi is probably aware of her language deficiencies and is probably addressing them with the prodding of Armalin, but would really rather learn Chinese or Arabic.
Tiffany: Tiffany's background is very unexplored. In the LLH world, I have Tiffany as half-Singaporean and half...something else. (More on that in the future.) Anyway, Tiffany speaks Chinese, English, and French (because her mother is an ex-model and shoved French down Tiffany's throat). Her written language is horrible, however; it took many "whippings" by USAES to even bring her English to an acceptable written standard.
Charles: He took French at LLH just to get close to the girls. He's in Daria's boat - great grammar, not much vocabulary retention. He's too busy academically to add another log to the boat.
Stacy: In the same boat at Sandi, but Stacy's a bit better in school and her grammar and vocabulary is better than Sandi's. Even so, Stacy retains residual shyness in how to use it.
Brittany: Her father could have paid for private French lessons, which would have explained her facility with the language. I see Steve Taylor as being nouveau riche, but he knew that he needed Brittany to be bilingual in order to have higher hopes for her education (which he gave up when it became clear that Brittany was no intellect). It probably pissed off Sandi at LHS that Big Boobs could speak French better than she could.
Tom: Tom - being the child of a wealthy family - speaks at least one foreign language - French -fluently. (Angier and Kay would have never allowed Tom and Elsie to remain monolingual.) He's also devoted serious study to Latin and can read a lot of Latin texts unaided. Has taken a Chinese class at Fielding but doesn't remember much of it.
Mack: Mack took two courses of Spanish at LHS and doesn't remember much of it. He was basically a "B" student at LHS which makes him a genius among his football playing counterparts. He regrets not paying as much attention in class as he should. (Elsie once volunteered to teach him French, which scared him.)
Julie: BG would know more about language background. If she does speak a foreign language, I suspect it's either Spanish (police work) or Russian/Chinese/Arabic (military).
Fran: I have no idea.
Jodie: Jodie probably knows French extremely well and after she gained her powers it opened up new doors. I'd say that she can speak three languages fluently - French, German and Russian which are all major research languages. Spanish? Eh, give her a few months. She's picked up more Spanish in a few hours in Mexico City than most of us would learn in days with a textbook.
Trent: See Jane, above. He has very likely been exposed to Spanish, but since Trent isn't an achiever and follows his own muse, I suspect his retention is very poor indeed.
Jamie: Jamie crawled through Spanish with a C+/D- average. Monolingual.
Karen: I suspect that Karen's abilities are in the same class with Jamie's. However, unlike Trent or Jamie, her training has forced her to reconsider her academic deficiencies. In any case, Karen now knows that she can learn a ton of stuff; the only question is what priority she feels in learning a foreign language.
Daria and Quinn:
ReplyDeleteI see your points on the sisters, but you’re missing a critical facet of their personalities that all but ensure that Quinn is at least conversationally fluent in Spanish and Daria is a step or two from a natural speaker: a need for superiority. Daria has always felt a need to be seen as better than those around her - a defensive mechanism, perhaps - and as her ability to speak (and thus, project her intellectual superiority out upon others) would be enhanced by her being able to speak in another language.
Quinn, on the other hand, would enjoy being able to annoy Daria by not only understanding what she’s saying, but give it right back to her - and by speaking in a language that neither parent understood, they would be able to snipe at one another to their heart’s content. There’s also the fact that Quinn (always the social butterfly) would be able to charm and ingratiate herself with yet another group of people in general by having fluency in another language. Of course, Quinn would downplay that fluency whenever possible; unlike Daria, she would know to weaponize her language skill, and be able to follow conversations and pick up information when people would think that ‘the cute White girl’ is too stupid and ignorant to understand anything beyond a few basic words.
There’s also the fact that Helen would eagerly support bilingual ability in her girls - it’s yet another point in their favor for college and later life.
Sandi:
Julia and Zoey could help her along those lines, as part of The Alliance’s ‘special training protocols’ that Professor Blumenburg put them through over their eleven years as cadets, each female Alliance member was taught Arabic through years of psi/sleep-teaching methods. (The male members were taught Spanish in the same manner.) They now can all read and speak in those as a second language, with conversational speech levels in their languages.
Also, yes - Sandi is quite proficient in French. Knowing how Quinn was a Spanish-speaker and knowing that she’d never be able to compete there, she probably buckled down and is one of the best French-speakers there.
Armalin would probably like for her to get some background in Russian (hey, he was a Cold Warrior, and it looks as if those skills may not be so unnecessary after all), but if she does Arabic, won’t complain.
Tiffany:
Everything you said, I'd say, and so much so for Tiffany. The people in her cadre were firm but helpful in this regard, and really pulled her forward.
Charles:
With his father (the guy is Charles Ruttheimer II, not ‘Junior’, so you know that he’s a stickler for appearances), Charles probably is fluent simply because he wanted to keep his father off his back. Think of a Season One Helen, but more forceful, more chauvinistic and just the type to expect the right answer in French when demanded, As we saw in ‘The Big Piece of Chicken’, Charles II is an a-hole, and while Charles is fluent, he doesn’t use it much because of what it represents to him.
Julia:
As befitting a future 'High Chief of the Clan Carlyle', Julia speaks Gaelic (and for ceremonial and formal purposes of the clan, Middle Irish). She also speaks German (and sounds like a native of Hanover; this was something that her great-grandmother forcibly insisted upon when she was a toddler), has conversational skill in Arabic and Spanish (because of her friendship with Zoey, who sounds like she’s a native of Columbia, due to her nanny).
Fran:
I’d say that Fran almost certainly has some language skill. William Appleton wouldn’t have given her the training to make her a world-class thief and left out at least conversational skills in at least one other language. He doesn't make those types of oversights in planning.
Jodie:
It was established in Chapter Thirteen that due to her powers, she can pick up languages VERY easily. Frighteningly easy.
Trent:
I think that he’s a bit more talented in Spanish than we think - but not by much. He’s talented, but lazy - and singing in Spanish would get a few more girls.