“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.”
‒Flora Lewis
I have often wondered at fairness of language learning and the socially accepted hierarchy assigned to different languages. As a home language English speaker who comes from a fairly homogeneous English suburb I always struggled to grasp my second language which is Afrikaans. After leaving this community I have realised the benefits of being bilingual, if not multilingual and as such I have attempted to make a greater effort to learn new languages. It is through this journey that I discovered the implicit prejudices that I held, which I believe are present in many English speakers.
One of the key principles of learning a new language is that one should become immersed in the language. This is an amazing experience as you cannot help learning a bit about the culture as well. It was through immersing myself in the Afrikaans culture of Stellenbosch that I realised just how narrow- minded I was. I would always expect Afrikaans speakers to speak English around me, even though almost everyone explains their views better in their own language.
Even now, when I attempt to speak to an Afrikaans individual they will automatically switch over to English because they hear I am I am struggling with their language. As much as I appreciate this, it shows a deep seated problem where non-English speakers are expected to be bilingual and yet English speakers may remain lazy because most people can understand them.
Many people will agree with this idea, arguing that Afrikaans people naturally speak English better than English people speak Afrikaans. My response is that it was not always this way. Each and every Afrikaans speaking person who is now fluent in English had to put in a lot of hard work to learn a new language. It is the same for any person whose mother tongue is not English, they had to struggle to learn at one point or another. The difference is that they were implicitly forced by societal expectations. Should English speaking people not be expected to do the same?
Whilst at university, I also started to learn isiXhosa. I must admit that I have fallen in love with the language, even though it is vastly different from English and thus even more challenging than Afrikaans. The saddest thing for me is how shocked amaXhosa people get when they hear me attempt to pronounce the name of their language with a click. Why should attempting to pronounce the name correctly be something that is out of the ordinary? It should be something that we attempt to do naturally. After all, non-English speakers don't go around telling everyone they are learning to speak 'Anglish'. This further shows me the laziness of myself and other individuals who refuse to make the effort to learn a few words in a new language, especially the name of that language.
A quote that is arguably overused, but repeated for its aptness are the words quoted from Nelson Mandela when he says that "if you talk to a man in a language he understands that, goes to his head. If you talk to a man in his own language, that goes to his heart."
This captures the true spirit of learning a new language; of learning to acknowledge the differences between yourself and your fellow individuals and yet show them that you are willing to make the effort to acknowledge and accept those differences.
For this reason I think it is imperative that we start to learn the language of those we interact with. This is especially true for teachers in South Africa, who will most likely be interacting with learners from many different language groups. I realise that it is impossible for teachers to become fluent in the eleven official languages of South Africa, but I do believe that if we can attempt to learn even a few words of each of our learners' languages it will go a long way towards showing our learners that we care for them and are willing to do what ever it takes to help and understand them.
