As many of you who know me know: I spend a great deal of time on learning and teaching languages. I am fascinated by the process, especially in young children (my own, most of all) and measure personal success by days when all the effort seems well-rewarded. I continue to be surprised by the degree to which I am held emotionally hostage by this endeavour: it is after all more than just words, it is a cultural connection and a comfort level that I work towards.
I see my own anxiety mirrored in many, many of the parents I come across: especially those that like myself were raised bi- or multi-lingual effortlessly, where floating in and out of dialects is the norm. The most common observation I hear is ‘my children understand but do not speak back’: how well I know that frustration! My response: I do not give up. I will carve out a time and call it Urdu-time when no English is allowed. Or with the youngest one (belligerent enough at two, but belligerence that I can match with persistence), I will patiently repeat until he repeats my words. I realized also what I mistook as stubborn denial, was often just apprehension: a fear of sounding silly, making mistakes or not-knowing. I find that offering to help construct a thought (‘tell me what you want to say and I’ll help find the words”) took us further in the process.
I had the chance to speak with a brilliant educator friend of mine yesterday: she does wonderful, immensely valuable work in preserving indigenous languages. Her work takes her the world over, meeting communities and cultures threatened by extinction. She spoke of a tribe she met in Canada, of which only six remaining members speak the language, all of them over the age of sixty. Children in the communities are learning only English, and the eventual goal is to revitalize the traditions and words of their forefathers. The beauty of what she does is that it takes learning language from the realm of pure education and the mechanics of grammar and syntax to the spiritual. Success, she explained, in the process comes from explaining to the children and the youth, the history of their language and understanding it as a nation, as heritage, as land, as identity. With respect for the language, and love for it, comes ease and encouragement.
I have had to re-configure my ultimate goal many times, as I spend more time working with my children. I understand that their learning, even supplemented by multi-media resources, classes, travel abroad, will probably be fractured by the absence of a true immersion environment. But, what I would like for them is a sense of ownership: that the space they inhabit within each language, the real estate that comes with entering each lingual culture, is theirs. That they have the confidence to articulate words, and make them their own.
My older one asked me last week if he could take a French class, driven I suspect by a classmate that learns it. This morning we made our way to the Alliance for a Mom, Tot and Youngster immersion class. I fumbled and kept resorting to English while he, laughed, mimicked and repeated diligently. While fluency may not happen, at least he’ll be enthusiastic. The lack of self consciousness in learning is a wonderful thing.
More on language development later!
Where not a parent – I am a somewhat involved aunt of a 17 month old and have been curious about how my sister is going to handle this. It’s a good thought – and certainly one to pursue.
Even as an adult – I can speak basic Italian but could easily improve that if I wasn’t so “afraid” of sounding stupid.