“I had just come from the lowlands, where a New Guinea friend had told me how five different local languages were spoken within a few miles of his village, how he had picked up those five languages as a child just by playing with other children, and how he had learned three more languages after he began school. And so, out of curiosity that evening, I went around the campfire circle and asked each man to name each language that he “spoke,” i.e., knew well enough to converse in.
Among those 20 New Guineans, the smallest number of languages that anyone spoke was 5. Several men spoke from 8 to 12 languages, and the champion was a man who spoke 15. Except for English, which New Guineans often learn at school by studying books, everyone had all acquired all of his other languages socially without books. Just to anticipate your likely question – yes, those local languages enumerated that evening really were mutually unintelligible languages, not merely dialects. Some were tonal like Chinese, others were non-tonal, and they belonged to several different language families.
In the United States, on the other hand, most native-born Americans are monolingual. Educated Europeans commonly know two or three languages, sometimes more, having learned in school the languages other than their mother tongue. The linguistic contrast between that New Guinea campfire and modern American or European experience illustrates widespread differences between language use in small-scale societies and in modern state societies – differences that will increase in coming decades. In our traditional past, as is still true in modern New Guinea, each language had far fewer speakers than do languages of modern states; probably a higher proportion of the population was multilingual; and second languages were learned socially beginning in childhood, rather than by formal study later in schools.
Each language is the vehicle for a unique way of thinking and talking, a unique literature, and a unique view of the world. Hence looming over us today is the tragedy of the impending loss of most of our cultural heritage, linked with the loss of most of our languages. Many of you readers may presently disagree with what I just said, about language loss being a tragedy. Perhaps you instead think that diverse languages promote civil war and impede education, that the world would be better off with far fewer languages, and that high language diversity is one of those features of the world of yesterday that we should be glad to be rid of – like chronic tribal warfare, infanticide, abandonment of the elderly, and frequent starvation.
For each of us as individuals, does it do us good or harm to learn multiple languages? Will this chapter convince you to bring up your next child to be bilingual, or will it instead convince you that the whole world should switch to speaking English as quickly as possible?”
When I came across this chapter from the book “The World Until Yesterday” by Jared Diamond, I must have read the beginning twice or even three times. I have always been passionate about multilingualism because the world retains its sparkle when different cultures are represented by people speaking the languages they grew up with. How else can one learn more from another about how different we are, and yet how very similar we are, if not by speaking their mother tongue? The irony is that I’ve been an English teacher to Asian children (predominantly young Chinese learners) for a few years now; even so, I tend to advocate for phenomena such as multilingualism, interracial and intercultural communication, and general cultural sensitivity.
Multilingualism can be defined as the ability of societies, institutions, groups and individuals to engage, on a regular basis, with more than one language in their day-to-day lives (European Commission, 2007: 6).
For many parents and school going children in modern day living standards, the fact that classes have had to become linguistically diverse than in the past, especially in big cities in a few African countries, in Europe, and North America, is something they have had to get used to.
Migration aside, and children having to learn the language of the host country, which is usually different from the language spoken at home, learning a different language from the one that you are exposed to at home or in your local community has, for the most part usually been about trying to understand a different kowture. Some people say we are better off when we are not being so tied up to our kowtures because they evolve anyway. They argue that it takes us a longer time to understand each other, unlike if we all just used one language, English to be frank. English speakers (native and non-native) also face many instances where meanings and interpretations are lost in translation, in nuances, and definitely in some accents being nearly unintelligible. For people like myself who can be rather pedantic, the origin of a word matters, intonation matters, fluency, vocabulary, using the correct tense, and using words in the correct context. Further in the chapter of the same book, the writer states, “My north German friends can’t make heads or tails of the talk of rural Bavarians, and my north Italian friends are equally at a loss in Sicily.” Dialect versus language is an interesting area of research. Chinese people clash because some say that Cantonese is a dialect, not a language. Those living in Hong Kong may disagree. Does diversity cause friction and eventually violence?
The writer seems not to have studied Afrocentric ideas, African heritage, and African languages. If he had, he would have written another book titled “The World Until Yesterday: Exploring African traditional kowtures (cultures)” as a possible title. In his research, it would have been uncovered that when people in Zambia speak siLozi, Setswana speakers from South Africa and Botswana can understand them to a degree. Those who do speak the same language, but are from the DRC or Zimbabwe pronounce words differently than Zambians. It’s true that whenever we move from one area to the next we may hear the same language spoken, but differently. Still on South Africans; they insist, to those who do not understand, that Afrikaans is spoken differently by Afrikaners and by coloured people in the country. More to the point, there is a difference in the way Cape Coloureds from Cape Town speak Afrikaans compared to how coloureds from Kimberly, Kroonstad, Vryburg, and Danville (Mafikeng) also speak Afrikaans. There are other areas in the country where people speak Afrikaans, but those are a few of them. Afrikaans is also widely spoken in Namibia, and some people may be able to prove that Namibians have their own flair. There are many people in the world who acquired languages and appreciated them just as much as they do the language(s) they are connected to by heritage, like someone studying Spanish in primary school, picking up Italian in university, French when they moved to France for work – all the while also communicating in English, born in the United Kingdom. If they were brought up in the United Kingdom, they may have also studied Latin. Learning a new language does not mean much if it will not be used. I have met a German girl who speaks fluent German, English, Mandarin, and Russian. Languages are interconnected. Germanic and Aramaic, African (Nguni and Bantu languages both have clicking phonemes). There is somefing about being able to communicate with locals wherever you visit that makes the trip a richer experience.
Denice Frohman’s opening line in her poem titled “Accents” is, “My mum holds her accent like a shotgun; with two good hands.” Frohman’s cultural heritage is Latin American (Puerto Rican). In her artistic performances, she usually addresses issues around racial diversity, sexuality and unity. This particular poem is the kind that stays with you and that you remember even long after hearing it for the first time. Societal stereotypes made people ashamed of their mother tongue seeping into their English speaking, but in truth, without your mother tongue making some appearance into your English speaking life, how would people know where it is you call home, or the people you call family? Accents can represent traditional cultures. Frohman jokingly continues saying “kitchen, key chain, chicken all sound the same” sometimes to many people with Latin roots, especially the elderly when they learn the English language. The beautiful takeaway is the conclusion, “Her accent is a stubborn compass always pointing her to its home.”
In an interview with Sofía Félix Poggi a few years ago, when asked what she thinks about Latinas born in the United States of America compared to others who may be living in Argentina or elsewhere for instance and their use of language in literature and in the arts (English and Spanish); feeling that English is not a language they can fully express themselves in, and also feeling a disconnect with Spanish, if they even know Spanish as some may not, she answered, “I cannot speak for all Latinas because Latinas in the United States are a very diverse group, but there are some who are bilingual, being very comfortable with using English and Spanish, and then there are others who are less fluent in Spanish because of the pressures of assimilation. To me, my relationship with English and Spanish is complicated and fraught. I’m a language worker; language is my toolkit. For me, it is also about mapping my relationship with language, and trying to re-imagine it.”
She is an artist who inspires others in how she uses words. I particularly admire the way in which she expresses the power of language; she thinks that words have temperature, and inflection, and the way in which they are delivered makes us feel.
In conclusion, the debate surrounding multilingualism, bilingualism, and monolingualism is multifaceted because each linguistic approach offers different benefits. Multilingualism and bilingualism can enhance cognitive abilities and create career opportunities in an interconnected world. At the end of the day, whether someone prefers to be multilingual or remain monolingual comes down to personal circumstances, educational goals and other achievements and aspirations they might have.
culture and cultures appear as kowture and kowtures
something appears as somefing
