I've been thinking a lot about languages lately. Everywhere I've gone, I've tried to learn some key words in that language to help navigate around and to make an effort to show an interest in the culture that I'm visiting. Everyday here I'm surrounded by languages I don't know and, for the most part, don't understand, and it just makes me think how much more I wish I knew. I know what I know, and I know what I don't know. But there's so many languages out there that I don't even know I don't know.
On our trip to Switzerland, I went with two people from Spain, one from Italy and one from Brazil. Within the group there were people who knew English, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German. For the entirety of the trip, we were trying to teach each other new words and phrases in our native languages. It seemed like we were constantly switching back and forth between languages and we all learned something new. Obviously though, our interactions were about 95% in English.
The funny thing was, my Italian friend told me at one point that she understood me better when I was speaking in Spanish than when I was speaking in English. I wasn't sure if this was a compliment of my Spanish or an insult of my English. But it does kind of make sense: my Spanish is a lot more basic than my English, thus easier to understand.
Last night, that same friend from Italy was teaching me a bunch of new words and phrases in Italian to use when I go to Rome tomorrow on a class trip. I was surprised how similar a lot of the words sound to Spanish, but it's still its own unique language. I really hope to learn more of it.
The reason that I'm telling you all of this is because, this semester has really made me wish that I wasn't a native English speaker. I know that sounds stupid and I should feel lucky that I naturally speak one of the most dominant languages in the world, but I really wish I would have had to work to learn it. That way I'd be forced to be fluent in at least two languages. Of course, my friends from other countries have said that they want to speak English to their kids when they're growing up so their kids don't have as hard of a time learning English as they did. I understand that, but I think that having English as a native language is almost an excuse for not bothering to learn other languages of the world.
We decided that we're going to have a child exchange program when we grow up. We're going to send our kids to each others' houses during the summers to learn new languages. They did make me promise that I wouldn't feed their kids too much peanut butter in the US and they promised to take it easy on the Nutella so my kids don't get spoiled. Really though, I think we all agreed the best way to learn a new is to be immersed in it. What you learn in a classroom, typically from non-native speakers of that language, cannot hold a candle to the real experience.
The thing about English, though, is that it brought us all together. To study in the Netherlands, we all had to know English. To communicate with each other, we all had to know English. And I think it's really special that we all have something like that that bonds us together. It doesn't have to be English, that fact is merely a product of history and society, but it's nice that there is some language we can do it in. Having a mutual language allows countries to preserve their culture, heritage and national languages, but still allows people from all nationalities to bridge gaps. It would be virtually impossible to be able to speak in the natural language of everybody that we meet here, but we have found common ground because we have the link of a language, in this case English. There's no way we could get to know each other, learn from each other, and form everlasting friendships without this imperative link.
Having this link of language also catalyzes the expansion of our knowledge base into other languages. While I'm helping other learn to say the phrase they want to say and helping them words their essays in ways that make more sense, they're teaching me bits of their languages so that I can expand my vocabulary too. I mentioned a month or so ago about the phenomenon of "minglish." That's still true, my English has warped a little. But I would trade that any day for all of the new things that I've learned along the way. I'd say it's a fair compensation.
