Recently I was sitting in a cafe with Charlotte and Lukas, conversing on various political and social topics relevant to today's most notable stories on the news. (ie. the economic crises, the Arab Spring happenings, etc)
At one point, the importance, limited scope, and closed minded capacity of speaking English came up, a subject which had really become prevalent in my mind when I first ventured to Jordan.
I have no doubt in my mind that globalization has brought much good change and has opened up an overwhelming magnitude of previously non-existent opportunities to our up and coming generations of which our ancestors could never have dreamed. Conversely, there are a few downsides and pitfalls to the increasing connected nature of nations and peoples.
In this venture, one detail has become clearer and clearer: we, as a united world, need to invest in a universal language in which we can all effectively communicate - English has emerged as this language.
In Jordan, I commented in a post about the surprising capacity of anyone, from taxi drivers to professors, to speak at least basic English, or at least a foreign language, a skill which eludes most of the American population, despite large immigrant populations. The same holds true, everywhere you fill find people - men, women, children, of all ages - that speak ranging degrees of English from "Welcome to Egypt" to discussing p
olitical and social topics in Socratic-style discussions.
This phenomenon aside, Egyptians have further surprised in their lingual ambitions and sensibility. Almost all youth coming from any middle to high-class family attend French or German schools – giving birth to upcoming generations that are fluently trilingual. Even more amazing is the ability of taxi drivers, bawwabs (doormen), and store owners to speak languages from all over the world – Dutch, Russian, Spanish, and of course, English. These people have a transcendent dedication to learning the languages of other people, opening their minds and philosophies to endless advantages which elude those resistant to opportunity to learn the tongues of others. The vocabulary, speech styles, and general customs of conversation of each language do not only teach you valuable knowledge about the people of that country, but also open up your mind to thinking differently, expressing ideas and thoughts in one language that cannot be expressed in another. You grow stronger empathy, understanding, and drive to enact change.
From the small bit of Japanese and Arabic I have learned, I have unpleasantly sobered to my utter lack of advanced intelligence, my own pitfalls and inabilities to think outside of the limited English scope. I chose my languages based on my interest in their mechanics. Japanese is an extremely expressive, upbeat, and most noticeably, polite, language. The Japanese rarely use pronouns (I, you, me, he, she) and when names can be avoided they are. Elders and superiors are given a sort of self-humbling respect, but you still show respect to youth and those that we “first world” people rarely give second thought to. You can see these ideals, these significant details expressed in politics and social life, merely because it is practiced every day, just in language. Arabic, seen commonly in the media as the language of terrorists and Islamic extremists, is a beautifully rich language, giving you the ability to express the most intricate, convoluted ideas in a matter of words. It is a language of poets, storytellers, musicians, and philosophers. It brings God (no matter which you believe in) and faith (for those who choose no God, like myself) into every day conversation, and is expressed every day in life, for better or worse. Regardless of these languages’ negative capacities or positive brilliances, simply studying them gives us invaluable insight into unknown peoples across the world.
We, of the Western world, who are privileged enough to speak the tongue of the world, simultaneously lose this opportunity, this golden opportunity, to comprehend the world and its complicated twists and turns. We miss out on the most basic nuances, that people growing up in China, the Middle East, all over Africa, and South America are inversely privileged to have: the understanding that your language, while endlessly important and meaningful to yourself and those around you, is not all that significant in the grand scheme of things. In the Arab World, intellectuals and students of university are fluent in Modern Standard Arabic, the language taught to foreigners, but travelling from country to country, colloquial variations differ in significant ways, making it impossible for someone in Egypt to speak with their Lebanese neighbors unless they are open to learning the Lebanese Colloquial Arabic, making each individual proficient in at least two or three separate languages. The same for Chinese, who learn Mandarin and Cantonese, inhabitants of Latin America conscious of the varying Spanish/Portuguese dialects they must understand to communicate with their neighbors. One can even argue that those of Britain must dip their feet into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, etc to comprehend the differing nations that make up Europe. This necessity and motivation is not immediate prevalent to Americans. Growing up in California, I can travel to any of my fellow fifty states and be easily and completely understood, minus irrelevant and unimportant accentual/semantic differences.
Yet, we hold the same responsibility, if not more so, than the rest of the international community. Whether or not we agree with the actions of our country, it is a fact that we are the highest contributors of assistance, our military is spread across the map, and we have made relations, for good or for worst, with each of our neighbors, around the globe. We, as a people, to reinforce or destabilize our institutions around the world, owe it to ourselves and the rest of the world, to learn these languages, these cultural gold mines, of others, and open our minds to philosophies and ideas never before considered in our nation. Without doing so, we fall behind our fellow nations in better understanding each other, co-existing, and protecting the ideals which are universally accepted. We can stop imposing our political and social values on others with no desire to conform to our standard, and our attentions can be better focused on those in dire need of a helping hand. We can improve our reputation in the eyes of the international community. And most importantly, we can humanize people of other cultures and worlds, and build relationships that will last generation after generation.
- I hope soon I can come back and edit this muddled set of thoughts so stiffly and confusingly written, but for now I’m happy to have the contents of our conversation on a tangible surface. -
