Sherry Thomas, author of Private Arrangements (Bantam, 25 Mar 08), is today’s Guest Author and she’s here to share several posts with TGTBTU’s readers. So read on to learn more about this amazing author…
Learning English the Passionate Way
by Sherry Thomas
Some of you might know — Sybil, for instance, though I’m not sure whether she remembers such things — that English is not my native tongue. In fact I hardly ever spoke it during the first eighteen years of my life — the first thirteen couldn’t be helped, I was living in another country; the latter five, well, let’s just say I found American teenagers to be more alien than Martians and observed them from a distance with a mixture of astonishment and alarm.
But while in my teens I did not speak English in any noticeable quantities, I read a great deal of it. My bio tends to give the exaggerated impression — as bios are wont to do — that I learned English solely from reading romances. That was, of course, not strictly true, as I had a vocabulary of about 200 English words — likely less — when I got off the jumbo jet, not enough to read anything beyond little booklets provided by my English-as-Second-Language classes.
But I disdained those little booklets as a French gourmet disdained le Big Mac. I’d read thousand-page wuxia novels for breakfast back home, and here I was, stuck trying to decipher 10-page picture books about puppies.
So as soon as I could, I moved on to bigger and better things; and by bigger and better things, I mean those books with very colorful covers depicting a man and a woman in various stages of proximity, books that were stocked in K-Mart, Wal-Mart, the grocery stores, and the university bookstore that was a ten-minute bicycle ride from my new home (the married student dorm, since Mom was a grad student then.)
I still remember trying to decipher the back blurbs on some of those books with my very limited English. One book touted an “infamous pirate”—and left me scratching my head. I knew if you put “in” in front of another word, the resulting word meant the opposite of what the original word meant. So why would anyone care about a not-famous-at-all pirate?
Another book said it featured a governess. I got excited. I knew that a governor was the head of a state. And a governess was, of course, a woman governor. As I flipped through the first few pages, however, I became more and more confused. Since when was a governor given a small room in somebody’s house and expected to look after the children?
The first romance that I bought and brought home was Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers, when I was a few months short of fifteen. I still have it. A couple of days ago I flipped through it and its tonnage of adverbs rather struck me. Characters stared dourly, interposed lazily, and exploded violently. But you know what, the lack of finesse in the writing was one of the reasons it made perfect reading material for me — all those I-hate-you’s were easy to understand for someone whose grasp of the language was still shaky at best. And the histrionics kept me turning the pages.
I went on to read Lindsey, Devereux, and McNaught, though no one else gave my dictionary quite the workout Rogers did. It wasn’t obvious to me then, but in retrospect, I see that at eighteen I possessed the vocabulary of a Victorian old lady. It was perfectly slang-free, since I never talked to the kids at school, and remarkably old fashioned.
For example, I am almost sure that I didn’t know—or at least never used—the words “pee” and “poop” until after I’d had a baby of my own. “Dweeb”, “twerp”, “nerd”, were those even words? And all the infinite variety and splendor of the words and phrases that could be made out of “fuck?” They were Greek to me until I started reading blogs in 2003.
But I knew just about every synonym of ardor that could be found in a thesaurus. I knew that a marquess was ranked higher than an earl, who was ranked higher than a viscount. And I knew a thousand and one ways not to call a penis a penis.
And so…I became a historical romance writer!
CONTEST!
Comment on any of today’s four Sherry Thomas guest posts with whatever crazy thing you’ve done for love, and you could win an ARC of Sherry’s 29 July 08 Bantam release, Delicious, and a Private Arrangements t-shirt! (Two prizes, one winner.)
Remember, only one entry per IP address is eligible for the prize, but you can comment as often as you wish. Winners will be chosen from comments entered between now and midnight tonight, 24 March, according to the blog’s timestamp (U.S. Central).
Good luck!
I put myself in a horrible marriage for love. That’s crazy right. Thankfully I got divorced and I have a wonderful son from all my heartache.
Though I’ve read this book many times, I’m so excited about the release date tomorrow!! All the best Sherry. I want to see more of these kinds of books on the bookshelves!! Oh yeah, and I want a ARC of Delicious!!!!!
Bev
Oh man, Sherry, I can sooooo see myself in you! (English not being my first language either, and learning slang online as I go 😀 )
Oh the “how not to call a penis a penis” bit :rotfl:
Hi Sherry! Looking forward to getting PA tomorrow!
The craziest thing I did for love was leave my family. I was 18 and selfish and was with Mr. Wrong (though I didn’t know that at the time). Luckily, it took me less than a year to realize how stupid I was and I moved back home. LOL Now I hope and pray that my daughter never does that to me!
Craziest thing I did for love? I left home to attend college 400 miles away because I was in lurve. After I was there 6 months, in a strange city (but at least I could speak the language!), still trying to figure out college, he dumped me. Yeah, he dumped me. I wasn’t the Super Librarian yet, but geez, I got dumped! On the bright side, I stayed in that city, stayed at that college and earned two degrees in the process. Oh, and met the man I’ve been with for the last 10 years – so it wasn’t a total wash.
Looking forward to reading PA soon! I’m hoping this week!
That’s brilliant. Perhaps I should use that to improve my Spanish! ^_~
Hi Sherryl,
English is not my first language, too. I am German and for more than 10 years I have been reading romances solely in English. Slang is sometimes difficult for me, but I learn through books. The funniest was a book by LuAnn Mclane with lots of Southern slang.
I just realized… after heavy duty coffee… that I didn’t even comment on the actual topic.
Yeah, not the brightest visiting duckie over here.
The craziest thing I’ve done for love: got married at 19 and left my country a bit over a year later with my then-husband. That lasted ten years, give or take a week 😉 and I have two wonderful-when-they-aren’t-driving-me-insane kidlets to show for it.
Oh, and I never went back home to live–you have no idea the wonders distance has brought to my family relationships! 😀
I don’t know about craziest, but I’ve done some snooping to see if the relationship was in trouble. Checking cell phone logs and emails were the standard procedure.
This here blog be run by nuts. The question should be what crazy thing you’ve done to learn English and how you are still struggling with subject-verb agreement. 🙂
When I was seventeen, I once walked two miles at close to midnight, by myself, across the campus of LSU, to harass a boyfriend who’d dumped me but I couldn’t believe that he’d dumped me. Of course later he wanted to get back with me. Of course.
But then I tossed my hair and said “A good horse does not eat the grass behind it”–a really awesome Chinese phrase that totally loses all its punch in translation.
You know, I was reading historical and regency romances in high school for the extra vocabulary words and even convinced some of the macho guys to study that way for SATs. We had great fun.
I left home to visit Europe intending to be away for about 3 months. Met the man of my dreams and married there.
I really admire people who learn and can publish novels in a second language. The bit about the governess is hilarious to me because that is something I would be thinking too.
You know I just thought about the fact we didn’t do a Q&A!
ACK
I went away for the weekend with my (then boyfriend) husband and didn’t tell my mom until i called her long distance from the hotel. it was a collect call and she wouldn’t say “yes” to accept the charges as she was to busy yelling me out! I think the operator was glad to get off the line when my mom finally threw in a yes at some point!
I don’t know if I’ve done anything crazy for love. But I did do something brave for love. (Well, I think it was brave.) I was disowned by my family for refusing to break up with my college boyfriend because he was a different race as me. We’ve been married for over fourteen years now. 🙂
Even though English is my first language, I was raised in Indonesia because my parents worked there. I read tons and tons of books, whatever I could get my hands on, and loved romance novels when I could find them. When we came back to live in the States and I was at the tender young age of 16, I had several occasions where my strange vocabulary made me the brunt of laughs amongst my schoolmates. Even more hilarious to them was my complete lack of knowledge when it came to slang. I remember innocently asking what was the meaning of “blowjob” and after the incredulous laughing stopped, being informed in very explicit language exactly what it entailed. lol. Oh the blushing that involved. *sigh*
I have a very high level of respect for anyone that can not only master another language but also write creative works in that language. Big hats off to you. 🙂
I don’t think I’ve done anything too crazy for love yet – but then, I’m young ;). This post was great – I’m definitely impressed, Sherry!
Technically, English is my third language… but it doesn’t really count, because I basically learned all my languages at the same time, and was mixing them while trying to sort them out at age 2. [Poor parents, only not really, because they’re the ones who were practicing language dumping on me…] However, I somehow learned English on my own. Yes, I was born in the US and went through the school system – but I can truthfully say it’s not technically my first language- it’s just my best ;-).
This here blog be run by nuts.
The extra crunchy kind but you likeseseses us you really really likes us 😉