Language and the Borne Identity

I overheard a conversation between 2 parents at E1's Spanish class this week about foreign language and the issues associated with beginning to teach a foreign language as late as 7th or 8th grade, or even high school which is typical in many American schools. Because of the way our brains develop, they are hard-wired to learning language as such a young age. Young children learn naturally language structure like learning how to walk. Young adults attempting to learn a foreign language must memorize grammar and sentence structure. I defiantly struggled in this regard while learning Amharic for our trip as you can read in my previous posts. I must admit though to aspiring to be the Jason Borne of international travel. To be able to be dropped in any country in the world and speak the language perfectly.

Language has always been important to me in our travels. In all of the countries we have visited, I always felt it was important to learn at least a few pleasantries and not travel assuming everyone will speak my language. Over time, I have noticed that we are received differently when we meet people and try our best to use their native language. I was particularly amazed by this in Ethiopia. There is a sort of kinship that evolves when someone speaks your language. As we waited for our 3:00 am ride to the airport from our Addis hotel, I stepped into a conversation between the desk clerk and a gentleman who was having trouble with his key. Having had a few drinks, he was having a heck of a time translating Swedish to English and the desk clerk who spoke Amharic was having a heck of a time understanding his broken English. The gentleman told me he was from Sweden and that his English wasn't very good. After being the go-between to help them understand each other I turned to him and said in Swedish "My Swedish isn't very good". I think his look of shock echoed my shock of the Swedish words coming out of my mouth (I really pulled that one out of the archives!). I would have never imagined I would be making use of my Swedish in Ethiopia. After he recovered from his shock (I think he was wondering how drunk he really was!) he complimented me on my Swedish. We spoke a bit about the areas we had traveled to in Sweden and then he was off to try a new room key.

While I am certainly no linguist and couldn't have spoken more than a few phrases to this gentleman, the power of language was very clear that night, and even though I am working with a 35 year old brain that is presently have enough trouble remembering the grocery list, I will keep learning, cause frankly, you never can tell when a few words of Quiche will come in handy! (Yes, I do know how to say, "come quickly, it's raining" in Quiche if you were curious!)