Students, staff polish conversational skills at language tables

“Où est le café?” Although this phrasing may seem out of place in the Union’s Rathskeller, it’s actually quite appropriate for conversation at the Table Française, one of more than 20 “language tables” that resumed meeting this fall on and around campus.

The idea is to stop by, sit down and chat a bit in the language of a table – or even learn to do so just by attending frequently, according to one regular of four language tables, two in Russian and two in German.

Members of the German Stammtisch language table meet at the Union’s Rathskeller Thursday evenings to discuss the day’s events – in German. Photo: Brian Moore

Eric Fisher, a postdoctoral fellow in physiology, tries to keep up his Russian and German skills by carrying on conversations at the four tables during the week, two in each tongue. “I studied Russian in college and then after that it was kind of hard to find conversation,” he explains.

When he sets up the USSSR table -which stands for Union of Social Scientists Struggling to Speak Russian – he carries a copy of Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, “August 1914,” which he’s slowly making his way through in Russian, a Russian newspaper and a Russian dictionary, of course. A former table member used to hoist a Russian flag on the table, but Fisher’s still working on getting another flag.

The German Lunch Stammtisch on Thursdays usually draws 10 to 15 people, mostly faculty and staff members, according to Fisher. The Thursday evening German Stammtisch attracts mostly students, both graduate and undergraduate, from the department. But others in the group, which ranges from 10 to 40 on any night, place their majors in engineering, computer science, history or comparative literature, he says.

“People come to the German table with pretty much every story you can imagine” for how they learned the language, he says. Some even learned German while based in

Germany with the military, he notes.

“We have a lot of relatives and friends who show up and in a lot of cases they become speakers, too,” by eventually taking a class or learning from others, he says.

Proficiency is not required, Fisher emphasizes: “I think the main thing is you need to lose your sense of shame.”

Lack of fluency should not be a deterrent. “You fit right in even if you’re just in the first few weeks of Language 101,” he says. “You’ll be asked questions that you can handle.”

The tables encompass more than just language skills, he adds. “You meet such a diverse population of people. … I have learned quite a bit at the language tables – and not just about the language.”

The Irish Language Table is just one semester old. Dineen Grow, a library services supervisor at Memorial Library and Gaelic instructor, organized the table for her students, who are at all levels of learning this Celtic tongue.

She started the table “since there are very few places in Madison to speak Gaelic and have anyone understand you,” says Grow, who learned the language from a friend in Madison many years ago.

She was inspired to learn the language of her ancestors after hearing Celtic music, she says. “We were listening to the music and didn’t have a clue what they were saying,” she recalls. Now Grow teaches three classes, from beginning to advanced, through the Celtic Cultural Center in Madison. And she just returned from two weeks in “Gaeltacht,” the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland where no English is spoken, “to try to keep my skills up.”

A handful of devotees attended the table last semester, but Grow expects about 10 people each week as classes begin again this fall. She describes the table as having a social atmosphere where people can come just to hear the language while others discuss what happened during the week as well as other topics.

Between 20 and 30 people, mostly students, showed up at the first Chinese language table of this semester, according to Hongming Zhang, assistant professor of East Asian Languages and Literature. “Most of the participants are language students who study Chinese at different levels in this department,” he says. “It’s like a brown-bag language table,” where everyone brings a lunch. “We prepare some kind of snack or tea sometimes … (and) we chat about the language, learning, cultural differences, cultural interests and other stuff – all in Chinese.”

The table was established years ago and runs at noon on Fridays in 1351 Van Hise. Several TAs and faculty members also joined the first table of this semester, he notes. And with such a large group, several smaller groups emerged to talk about different topics.

If you are planning to visit a table, keep in mind Fisher’s advice for visiting any one of them: “Just basically arm yourself with sentences like ‘I am sorry, I just don’t understand,’ or ‘Could you speak more slowly, please?'”