Remembering words, not languages
Like you, I wouldn’t have believed that in June, we would be waiting for this year to be over. We are reevaluating all our choices, our governments, our work lives and our children’s education.
Some things are changing more permanently than others. Our ideas about schooling and how we learn is changing dynamically in a few months. I spent a little time teaching my child, rather unsuccessfully as most parents. It doesn’t do much else, except convince me about how unprepared I am for any future.
Most studies suggest that before a child turns the age of 5, their ability to pick up languages is at its peak. In India, most of us are bilingual at a minimum. Our ability to continue learning languages diminishes over time and the reality is, we don’t really care. I did a very basic poll on LinkedIn, and it surprised me a little bit. It is not perfect by any means, and as a marketer by profession, I am a little immune to most feedback on the poll options. I am sure it can be better.
Here is what it was:
Over 50% suggested that they have the basic fluency to read and write, which was a surprisingly good outcome from my network that responded. This group indicates that people perhaps, studied where their native language was taught in schools before migrating for higher studies or for work. Or they could have also been learning at home, with parents focused on teaching them though my experience as a parent tells me this is a small number. Those who read and write only: this is also because there are limited opportunities to continue speaking and keep that practice going, if they have moved cities or countries.
For the speak-only, I fall in this category. I am 2nd generation where I currently live, as my parents moved here from their native-speaking city within the same country. They continued to speak the language at home, which is how I know it and quiet fluently. I cannot understand the pure language and have a better grasp on colloquial usage, as I suspect everyone else that voted. I am guessing for most, like me, they are no longer in those cities or countries.
Some are dialects which means the script is of another or there isn’t one. This 30% didn’t have the opportunity to read and write in any form, which I will presume for the sake of this opinion, most of this generation would have loved to.
If you can read and speak, but cannot write, that is unique. But like most of us, we are thinking in another language and then we translate in our heads. That is never the same.
This brings me to where I was, learning languages as a child. My child at this moment, speaks only English. I speak 4 languages and can understand one more. Although written form is losing its importance, our ability to continue speaking with our kids is immense. He now knows the word ‘water’, in 3 languages and he knows them as just words. It gnaws at me daily, but I am lazy since it is easy to continue in English.
I am writing this, when we rethink education and schools. Our ability to offer different languages is limited by where we are located and it is not easy to find language teachers. What stops us now? In schools, why not offer more languages (Indian and international) now that we are no longer limited by geo. It is impossible to imagine a future when this becomes relevant because we have been okay so far without doing much better. But it makes us more diverse in thinking and far more receptive, when we open ourselves to languages. That’s how we experience deeper culture and stories. We cannot solve the same problems, with the old solutions. We never learnt more languages because it wasn’t important for our careers or for what we are studying. Let’s not make the same mistakes with the next generation. Our stories live through languages and it is not our place to make that choice for our children to never give them a chance to learn, choose, or reject.
Ideas evolve from knowing more and knowing deeply. We are beginning to restrict ourselves with the same set of thoughts and ideologies. We are also quick to dismiss those that are different from us. Nothing more than 2020 to remind us of that.
I have no formal way to solve this other than nudging my child’s school to add languages. Some schools already offer. This is also on me, if I want to consciously solve this. It probably won’t matter in the short run, but in 20 years, I am hoping he is in the 16%, with the ability to write a book in 2 languages.
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This was originally published on my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/remembering-words-languages-srividya-gopani/
