Growing Up Multilingual
I love this entry from Meri Williams talking about growing up multilingual.
“Growing up in the Western Cape, there were a number of interesting effects of the majority of people speaking multiple languages. For a start, if someone seemed to be struggling in one language, the polite thing for the other person to do was just to swap into their native tongue, where possible. Equally, you quickly learnt that there were some concepts that were just more powerfully described in one language over another. As a result, you’d just use the best terms from the best language available — resulting in a hybrid mish-mash of the different languages.”
I grew up speaking the same language at home as the rest of the area spoke, English. It wasn’t until 7th grade that I took a Spanish class so I would get a jump on the college entrance requirements. It had nothing to do with being more of a world citizen. It strictly had to do with getting ahead in the world.
Someone told me that college would get me ahead in the world, lying bastard…
Ironically, being able to freely converse in other languages is more of an aid than a college degree. My only use for Spanish lately has been eavesdropping on conversations. Non-English speakers in Utah assume that they live in a private world where their words are unheard by everyone else, which gives me the opportunity to listen in on the mundane and intimate.