New Blog

Hello, dear readers.

You may have noticed that this blog has fallen fairly silent.

Please do follow me over to the new one, about traveling around the world and learning a new language each month.

It's called 12 Moons 12 Tongues.

Yeah, Canada

Two stories:

My Polish tutoring client always goes to the same bank branch and speaks to the same teller. Why? Because this teller, an Anglo-Canadian, always remembers Mariusz. Every time, the teller tries to pronounce Mariusz's name better. "It's not easy," admits Mariusz, "for people... who live here." The teller tries his best, and laughs at his own failings.

Today a friendly man with a thick beard came into my ESL classroom to ask for a cup. He needed it to carry water to the Islamic centre in the building next door. "We're supposed to wash before we pray," he explained. Something was wrong with the taps next door. There was an extra Styrofoam cup next to the kettle, and I motioned to it. The kettle is used every day by the Chinese women in the class, who make tea, and also by the woman who came as a refugee from Kazakhstan. These lovely people appeared in my mind as the man walked for the cup. He offered to wash it and bring it back, but I waved away his concern.

Sometimes I hate on globalization, or, if not hate, wonder how on earth we put up with the shit of it. The living away from our "own" languages and cultures (however you want to define those), the constant need to mentally adjust and adapt to new situations or new people, the struggle. But there are good stories, too, of mutual effort, mutual appreciation, and acceptance.

The "one country, one language" myth

I dragged my mother to the first annual Vancouver Turkish Film Festival to see this documentary. On the way into the make-shift theatre, a man asked why we had chosen this particular movie.

The synopsis, I said, reminded me of Bahcesaray, a village in Eastern Turkey that I had visited for the sake of its name ("Garden Palace"). In this beautifully named village, I had learned a startling truth: Not all Turks speak Turkish, at least not as a first language.

The documentary reminds us of this truth. The pale-skinned, silver watch-wearing, Turkish-speaking teacher from the West is confronted with it when he arrives for his two-year posting at a primary school in the East. Many of his students only speak Kurdish. At once, his task shifts from teaching mathematics and social studies to teaching Turkish.

"He's a language teacher with no language training!" I whispered to my mother partway through.

The title is Iki Dil Bir Bavul ("Two Languages One Suitcase"), but the English title was given as On the Way to School.

Yes, I don't

"Joe? Do you understand?"

[Joe--Chinese name unknown to me--looks me in the eye. Rests his hands on his round belly, on the belt that encircles the belly perfectly, like the equator. Joe smiles. He is confident.]

"Yes, I don't."

Nobody captures Level One like Joe.

Have/Don't have

Eventually the adults in my ESL class form two lines, facing one another. I like to start with conversation, and away from desks. The further people are from paper and pens, the more they tend to focus on each other.

"Does everyone have a partner? ... Heidi, do you have a partner?"

Heidi--this is her English name--smiles, adorably, and kind of pokes into one of the lines.

"Mei you," she jokingly complains.

"Mei you?" I joke back. "Here, here, Senem is your partner."

Half the students in the class speak Mandarin, and they laugh. Even the others--the Turkish women, the Kurdish man, and the women from Iraq and Afghanistan--laugh. Mei you means "don't have." You means "have." The grammar and the pronunciation for these are easy, right? It's strange, I think, that I don't know more Mandarin. Or any Cantonese. So many people speak these languages in Vancouver. It would be nice to be able to make more jokes, to get more laughs.