I should never have mentioned learning Cornish. Quick as something quicker than a flash, Martha had found an online course through Exeter University, with the added bonus that as an alumni I got a discount. In a decidedly rash moment I enrolled.

Some background here. I am not daft. I will put it out there, because I need encouragement, that I managed to get a first class honours in the recently completed Experimental Archaeology post-grad certificate. So, despite advancing years, I can still learn something new. I’ve had books published, so I guess that make me reasonably literate. I enjoyed school and did fairly well, apart from PE. The only thing related to PE that I was any good at was ‘losing’ my PE kit. Oh, and languages; I was rubbish at languages. Latin gave me up after two years. I do have a French O level. It took me six years and two attempts to achieve this. I ended up with a middle level pass, mainly because grades were calculated on a curve of natural distribution and I resat with everyone else who had failed the first time. So basically I was slightly better than some other people who are no good at French. There’s no way that I would claim to be able to speak French. I can still remember some vocabulary. There was that incident while I was in French-speaking Canada when I correctly translated a road sign that said ‘Danger of…’.  The trouble was I had no idea what the second part of the phrase meant (turned out it was deer). Basically, if there’s a word to describe an inability to learn languages other than one’s own, the equivalent of dyslexia or dyscalculia, that’s me. If there isn’t a word maybe there should be.

We have had one Cornish lesson so far. I am definitely the oldest in the group; most are twenty-somethings. ‘Let’s introduce ourselves and say why we want to learn Cornish’, says the tutor. The other introductions were along the lines of, ‘I am a professional translator’ and ‘I already speak (insert several other languages here)’. By this time, I am wondering if I do actually want to learn Cornish at all.

Anyway, we went through a few of the standard phrases you cover when you first start learning a language. ‘Hello, how are you, my name is ……’.   Does anyone actually ever say ‘my name is’? Surely you just say ‘I’m’. So after an hour everyone is prattling away and I’m still on ‘Dydh da, fatala genes’ (and I’ve just had to check the spelling for that). I’ve not mastered ‘my name is’.

I’ve tried all the revision techniques I passed on to pupils when I was teaching. I’ve made some flash cards. I think I am up to seven phrases now. I can go from Cornish to English much more easily than the other way round. At the rate of one phrase/word a day I may be some time. I’ve listened to a recommended online course that relies purely on listening and repeating. There are strict instructions not to write anything down. After ten minutes of that I have confirmed that I do not learn by listening. I need to see things. It wasn’t helped because they didn’t start with the whole ‘Hello, my name is…’ thing but a load of different phrases none of which have stuck, despite the constant repetition. Arggh. It CANNOT be this hard. I know it is good for me to be challenged and probably good for me to find something that isn’t relatively easy but there are challenges and there is the impossible. I will persevere but don’t expect too much of me. I am supposed to know what goodbye is. I can manage nos da (goodnight). That’s going to be right for some of my international audience right?