“Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character
and growth of its speakers.” CESAR CHAVEZ
“Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and the imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.” MICHAEL GOVE
“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.” CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
“Yankees don’t understand that the Southern way of talking is a language of nuance. What we can do in the South is we can take a word and change it just a little bit and make it mean something altogether different.” LEWIS GRIZZARD
“Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say ‘I love you’ to each other - we don’t really know what we’re saying, because language isn’t equal to the complexity of human emotions.” DUANE MICHALS
“Welsh is my mother tongue, and my children speak it. If you come and live in this community you’ll work out pretty quickly that it’s beneficial to learn the language, because if you’re going to the pub or a cafe you need to be a part of the local life.” BRYN TERFEL
“We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.” MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI
When traveling throughout Italy, I found it to be a curious matter that English was not as universal throughout the country as I thought it would be, even in larger cities such as Rome and in particular, Naples. For me, this was a welcome challenge - a thorn on the rose stem, so-to- speak - as I navigated my way down the meandering pathways one takes to explore the diverse gardens of foreign language. At times it is uncomfortable and even tiresome, but it is mostly rewarding.
My quest to become proficient in several tongues apart from my native one began years ago when I had a Canadian tutor, Ms. Agnes Manbourdon, who taught me French. I would meet with her at her apartment near the water at the Ross Barnett Reservoir in Jackson, Mississippi and over café au laits we would conjugate French verbs and exchange common French expressions for approximately an hour. Afterwards, I would go to my second job at St. Dominic Hospital to transcribe radiology reports - medical terminology is a language to learn in itself.
“Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and the imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.” MICHAEL GOVE
“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.” CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
“Yankees don’t understand that the Southern way of talking is a language of nuance. What we can do in the South is we can take a word and change it just a little bit and make it mean something altogether different.” LEWIS GRIZZARD
“Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say ‘I love you’ to each other - we don’t really know what we’re saying, because language isn’t equal to the complexity of human emotions.” DUANE MICHALS
“Welsh is my mother tongue, and my children speak it. If you come and live in this community you’ll work out pretty quickly that it’s beneficial to learn the language, because if you’re going to the pub or a cafe you need to be a part of the local life.” BRYN TERFEL
“We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.” MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI
When traveling throughout Italy, I found it to be a curious matter that English was not as universal throughout the country as I thought it would be, even in larger cities such as Rome and in particular, Naples. For me, this was a welcome challenge - a thorn on the rose stem, so-to- speak - as I navigated my way down the meandering pathways one takes to explore the diverse gardens of foreign language. At times it is uncomfortable and even tiresome, but it is mostly rewarding.
My quest to become proficient in several tongues apart from my native one began years ago when I had a Canadian tutor, Ms. Agnes Manbourdon, who taught me French. I would meet with her at her apartment near the water at the Ross Barnett Reservoir in Jackson, Mississippi and over café au laits we would conjugate French verbs and exchange common French expressions for approximately an hour. Afterwards, I would go to my second job at St. Dominic Hospital to transcribe radiology reports - medical terminology is a language to learn in itself.
Before meeting with her, I had an early morning job at the Jackson International Airport working
as a ticket agent, and it should be mentioned that at this time I had begun to take pilot lessons, so
I was also learning the language of aviation. After some time, Ms. Manbourdon went on her
annual trip back to Canada for a month or so, and we lost track. I never saw her again. Later that
same year, I began taking Japanese lessons with Ms. Eiko Tashiro, who became my sensei for a
little while. We would meet at her house for a lesson in Japanese language and a Japanese tea
ceremony. Sometimes we would practice origami. Along with learning her language, I was
learning her culture. Again, due to certain circumstances which I do not remember, we also lost
track, and I never saw her again either.
Two years ago, I began taking French lessons formally at the university level. I have since traveled to France to study abroad for several weeks and am most likely going to pursue French for my college minor. While in France, I discovered that there is more to learning a language than memorizing vocabulary and verbal conjugations, and it is not enough to merely practice vowel sounds. There is a cadence and a rhythm to being French that is sensed in more than the language and speech itself; it is embodied in the culture of France, and the sooner one picks up on that rhythm, the easier it will go for them to learn the language.
I found this to be the case also while I was in Italy for several months and because of the lessons that were ingrained while learning French and being in France, I found that picking up Italian came much swifter to me. I embraced the nuances of the language and the cultural rhythm of Italian daily life which varies throughout Italy. The fact that the majority of my ancestry is French and Italian motivates my enthusiasm to learn both of these languages the most, because I want them to be considered part of my identity.
There was a young man I met from Ghana, Africa in my last few weeks of being in Siena, Italy named Mr. Nartey. He specialized in International Relations and Language and was working on getting his Master’s Degree while in Tuscany. He shared a paper with me that he had written about Pidgin English, which is commonly spoken in Ghana. He explained to me that Pidgin English lacks inflection but is a more efficient language. Where standard grammatical structure and inflection for past tense in a verb has been dropped, it has evolved to become a more simplified language to get the point across. For instance, instead of one saying “I went there,” they might say “I go there.” This has been found to be a growing trend particularly in schools in Ghana. In order to avoid grammatical errors, students will resort to using Pidgin. It is a more straightforward English. I inquired as to how Pidgin English was developed and why it started to be used in Ghana. He explained to me that “those who write the books” - or the history of Africa - threw out tradition when Africa was colonized. The colonial masters decided to document certain things down. They claimed that the language was simplified. This is the way he put it to me: “The person doing the writing will write it in a way that you expect it to be written.” Over the years, it was almost as though there were two languages in Ghana: the language that was taught, and the one that was acquired. The first language is the one you use to reflect certain ways you were influenced (British colonialism). Pidgin was acquired to reflect a language that is closer to the native tongue. During a military regime, students also observed soldiers in the streets using Pidgin English and therefore they began assigning machoism, aggression, and power to the usage of Pidgin. Therefore, the trend of students in Ghana using Pidgin began to grow and increase as a means of adopting an identity and also to defy the performance pressures put on them to use proper English.
Two years ago, I began taking French lessons formally at the university level. I have since traveled to France to study abroad for several weeks and am most likely going to pursue French for my college minor. While in France, I discovered that there is more to learning a language than memorizing vocabulary and verbal conjugations, and it is not enough to merely practice vowel sounds. There is a cadence and a rhythm to being French that is sensed in more than the language and speech itself; it is embodied in the culture of France, and the sooner one picks up on that rhythm, the easier it will go for them to learn the language.
I found this to be the case also while I was in Italy for several months and because of the lessons that were ingrained while learning French and being in France, I found that picking up Italian came much swifter to me. I embraced the nuances of the language and the cultural rhythm of Italian daily life which varies throughout Italy. The fact that the majority of my ancestry is French and Italian motivates my enthusiasm to learn both of these languages the most, because I want them to be considered part of my identity.
There was a young man I met from Ghana, Africa in my last few weeks of being in Siena, Italy named Mr. Nartey. He specialized in International Relations and Language and was working on getting his Master’s Degree while in Tuscany. He shared a paper with me that he had written about Pidgin English, which is commonly spoken in Ghana. He explained to me that Pidgin English lacks inflection but is a more efficient language. Where standard grammatical structure and inflection for past tense in a verb has been dropped, it has evolved to become a more simplified language to get the point across. For instance, instead of one saying “I went there,” they might say “I go there.” This has been found to be a growing trend particularly in schools in Ghana. In order to avoid grammatical errors, students will resort to using Pidgin. It is a more straightforward English. I inquired as to how Pidgin English was developed and why it started to be used in Ghana. He explained to me that “those who write the books” - or the history of Africa - threw out tradition when Africa was colonized. The colonial masters decided to document certain things down. They claimed that the language was simplified. This is the way he put it to me: “The person doing the writing will write it in a way that you expect it to be written.” Over the years, it was almost as though there were two languages in Ghana: the language that was taught, and the one that was acquired. The first language is the one you use to reflect certain ways you were influenced (British colonialism). Pidgin was acquired to reflect a language that is closer to the native tongue. During a military regime, students also observed soldiers in the streets using Pidgin English and therefore they began assigning machoism, aggression, and power to the usage of Pidgin. Therefore, the trend of students in Ghana using Pidgin began to grow and increase as a means of adopting an identity and also to defy the performance pressures put on them to use proper English.
In the United States, there are similar debates and differing opinions on what is or should be considered proper standard English and what has evolved into deviated versions of it. I recall reading a passage of critical theory written by Lois Tyson regarding Black Vernacular English (BVE, also called Ebonics or African American English), which fulfills all the grammatical criteria of a genuine language but is still dismissed by many white and some black Americans as substandard or incorrect English rather than recognized as a language in its own right; a language that may have evolved due to what is known as double consciousness or double vision, the awareness of belonging to two conflicting cultures: the African culture, which grew from African roots and was transformed by its own unique history on American soil, and the European culture imposed by white America.
It has occurred to me that a regional or local language can evolve into more than mere vocabulary from the root words it shares with the original language. For example, even though each region in Italy has its own pride and claim to what is “the best” - “Napoli has the best coffee and pizza,” “Liguria has the best pesto and anchovies,” etc. - it is common opinion that Tuscany boasts the usage of the pure Italian language. Whereas a native Tuscan might use the formally taught phrase “Sono di Firenze,” a Roman would shorten the phrase a bit to a more efficient “So di Roma” to express where he or she is from. Recently, I grappled with the choice of whether to use the spelling of “favourite,” which is the proper English way to spell the word to express my preferred flavor, versus “favorite” which is the more popular American spelling. Although I was tempted to use “favourite” as my preferred spelling of choice, I instead went with “favorite” so as to not falsely identify myself as British when I am, in fact, American. So language - by way of spelling, inflection, gesture, nuance, rhythm, and pronunciation - is the foremost way of identifying oneself and, in some ways, his or her worldview.
In a way, it almost seems as though Pidgin is used in some measures in Ghana to defy the colonial influences and to reclaim their native tongue and therefore their culture. Mr. Nartey’s opinion is that though Ghanians speak Pidgin, English is their official language, and it should not be compromised. At the same time, he reflected that someone else’s point of view might be that Pidgin English is part of a Ghanian’s identity and that they need to be proud. Indeed, after I said goodbye to this intelligent young man, I observed him walk to his bus stop with a quick long stride as efficient, straightforward, and proud as the hybrid makeshift English language he had described.
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