Languages and food – how passion can inspire learning
Monday, 22nd March 2010
There are hundreds of different reasons why people become passionate about learning a certain language, but one of them relates to one of life’s greatest enjoyments – food.
In the world that we live in today, where even the smallest of towns have shops that stock food from all corners of the world, there is great opportunity for food lovers to experiment with the most exotic of dishes and ingredients.
For many people, cooking is a passion. It‘s what they do to relax, unwind and to be happy. The great thing is, people who feel like this about cuisine often develop an interest in where their favourite foods originate from, and in the people who created and developed the tried and tested recipes that have become so well-known globally.
Learning about the food from these countries will automatically give you a great insight into the way of life in these places. Gastronomy and eating form a huge part of a country’s culture, particularly in Mediterranean countries like Italy and France for example, where people attach a huge amount of importance to eating and mealtimes.
Of course, visiting the country where your favourite dish originated from will give you a mouthwateringly authentic experience of how it’s ‘meant’ to be cooked, but to learn as much as you can, and perhaps pick up some lesser –known, possibly regional recipes, the key is to learn some of the local language. Books with these types of recipes may well only exist in the local language, and are unlikely to have been translated for general consumption.
A recent DVD release is ‘Julie and Julia’ - a film which tells the story of Julia Child, the celebrated American chef who introduced America to the delights of French food. Through her years in Paris, where she took lessons at Le Cordon Bleu, she developed a wealth of French recipes that she was able to translate and pass on to an American audience. She was largely hailed as someone who ‘changed’ the way the American people viewed and ate food – her passion for the French and for their cooking became infectious, and inspired what had been until then, food-wise, a very conservative America.
The film serves as a great example of how a passion for a certain type of food can nurture a great interest in the country and people from where it originates, and can inspire aspiring chefs to learn the language of that place to gain as much knowledge as they can.
There are lots of language courses available abroad that combine language learning with cookery lessons (in the local language) to learn how to cook local, traditional recipes. Included amongst these locations are:
Canada – Quebec City
Colombia - Bogota
France – Aix en Provence, Montpellier, Nice, Rouen, Toulouse
Italy – Bologna, Cagliari, Florence, Rome, Siena, Taormina
Mexico – Playa del Carmen
Spain – Cordoba, Malaga, Valencia
Take a language and cookery course abroad, and your perfect accent, your authentic cooking skills (and some dim lighting!) will have your friends thinking they’ve walked right into a southern Mediterranean eatery…
Tags: language learning, language course, course, language, location, mexico, italy, france, spain, italian, learning, culture, food, french, spanish
Posted by Laura Harrison under Experience Cultures,
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