Learning a Foreign Language
A Work in Progress started off by John Graham
to be joined & added to by other Hitch-hikers
in the Language Galaxy
September 2002
Not knowing what’s been said
Can feel like being dead
In the company of people who are living
In the knowing of the language that’s foreign to me
Taking and giving words in talk and writing
to one another
In a code they understand
And I do not.
From their speaking
I do hear sounds I seem to know
…sometimes
This much is true
But these sounds get drowned out by sounds I do not know
Radio ‘gah gah’ incomprehensibility.
From their writing
I do see words I seem to know
…sometimes
This much is true
But the words I do know are surrounded by other words I do not know
Looking like ants running maddeningly.
Feeling outside looking in
Resenting this as an exclusion of my own self
There’s anger, too,
Fluorescent envy flashes green into blasts of blazing red
Hatred
Well, almost,
Of those who can do with apparent ease
What I get to feel I can never do
Made worse when the teacher is kind
And never says
“But this is easy!”
Shit! Do I hate it when they say that!!
And so inside I get to feel I’m burning
With shame at doing this English language learning
With feeling an alien in my own land
Forced to learn a foreign language I do not understand
This because of global market forces coming from another land
Where English is spoken.
So, what am I going to do?
Where’s the reason to take me through
My fear of sounding stupid
My shame of being wrong?
The reason is that I’m choosing
To do this foreign language
For reasons of my own
Noone is forcing me to do this foreign language
There’s no point then to moan and groan
And I’m doing it with friends
So I am not alone.
Knowing this somehow makes it easier
We can work on it together
I don’t have to feel in competition with the rest,
We can help each other to do our best
And in co-operation with the teacher
Make language learning fun
For myself and everyone.
We can have a love affair with the verb “to be”
Make pronouns dance
The ‘her’ with the ‘him’
The ‘he’ with the ‘she’
Salsa, Rock, the Waltz
Any beat at all.
Make sonic syncopation out of lessons on pronunciation
And
Whenever puzzling over the past, present & future tenses
We can see ourselves as galloping horses jumping fences
Riding over hill and dale
Or as building a boat that we can sail
Across the English language oceans of the world
We could start an English Language Club here at UCM
Make plays, songs and video clips
Organize to set up a radio station
Liberation through Education for the pueblo of the Mexican nation
Keep a diary, write poetry
Get it printed for other incoming students to see
The range of ways English language learning is done at this university
We could get better jobs with English
Use English to advance our own careers
Train our eyes and mouths and tongues and ears
To see and speak and hear this language
And find that it’s got many patterns like our own
We might want to compose some songs in English
Make video clips
Start up our own tourist company
For English speaking visitors who come to Mexico
About what to see and where to go on their trips
And provide information about how this place used to be
Before the Europeans came for land and gold
Before Spanish was made the official langage
When, so we’re told,
More than fifty languages were spoken here
A time, that is, when it was clear
Well, clearer than it might seem to be today,
That the limits of our language are not the limits of our world
That there is such a thing as nature’s language
And that it is common to us all
Whatever the color of our skin
Whether we be short or fat or tall or thin
Or female, male
Protestant, Muslim, Catholic, Budhist, Atheist or Hindu
It is this natural language that makes all living things
And so made me and you.
.
This language is not made of words like the others human beings have made
This language is made of energy and takes the form of DNA and RNA
And it is their work in combination that made the bodies in which we live today.
Whatever else those bodies hold
Like concepts and beliefs,
like prejudice, intolerance, fear of failure,
and the grief that can come from learning languages
All come from places other than the natural language of our making.
This is natural language
Is less like how we know a thought
And more as we experience an intelligencing feeling
Expressing itself from the inside out
As when we get moved to shout
By the rocking and the reeling
Of Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry
Or sense the seasons pass through us when listening to Vivaldi
The Harmonics of the Universe
is one of the ways this natural language has been described
That we are ALL really part of it
Why put yourself through so much pain
Of being excluded from the game
When you can learn to play it too
Some rules
Some practice
And someone kind
With the experience of knowing
A lot more about this pain than you might think?
Someone who is prepared to share his/her pain with you
And make this the link in the connection
Between you and the personal satisfaction
Of being able to know enough about the game
To join in
Without being ignored
Getting full attention
From the one you’re talking to
Who’ll be doing their very best to understand what you are trying to say
Suggest a less fractured way
Of getting your message across
In another language
Your own way.
Having this experience will change the way you feel
About the Second Language Acquisition Game
The link in the connection will change from pain to pleasure
The Second Language you’re acquiring will no longer appear as an impenetrable forest
Where the feeling might be that you’re completely lost.
In such kindly company
That experience of panic every time you’re asked to speak or write will pass
You won’t have to quake with the fear of knowing you won’t get it right
Even before you open your mouth
And before you use the pen
The Second Language you’re acquiring will then no longer look like a Bench of Judges
About to Condemn you to Death
Pointing with their fingers to the Gallows of Stupidity
That stand waiting for you outside the room you’ve come into
Where the little that you do know about the Second Language
Will be quickly pointed out to you
And once more you will have the choice of feeling many things
Some of them belonging with fear and pain
The effort of trying to understand
And so the strain, the strain, the strain
Of taking in the meanings being made with that Second Language
By someone, often several people, talking at what seems like supersonic speed
Or by words on pages you are asked to read aloud
Without knowing what half of them are about
And mispronouncing the rest
The frustration of having feelings and thoughts to express
But not the words
Nor an understanding of the code that best gets your message to the other one.
There is the feeling, too,
That when learning a Second Language
You are being asked to become another person
That you are no longer your true self
This can be a reason for not doing what you need to do
If ever you can feel the pleasure
Of viewing the Second Language as a treasure
Another string to your bow
Another way to go
Through the Galaxy of Language.
At the beginning and for a lot longer than you might like
You’ll be a Hitchhiker in that Galaxy
Traveling in what will seem to be
And could be made to seem
By the persons you thumb down for a lift
The Property of that other Person
Their Native Language being given as a gift
For which you must be truly grateful
Or else pay them for the ride
Suffer the indignity of not knowing as much as them
Wrestle with the feeling of competition
Or get to feel you’re being rejected by the group
As you can whenever in a minority of one
The one who can choose silence
Rather than take the chance to speak
Something you’re more inclined to do when never asked a question
Never actually ever seen
The one the eyes of the other speakers look over
Once you’ve shown your Second Language inadequacy
Or, what can be worse,
Have the fact that you do not understand
Become the subject of a chat
About your need to learn the Second Language
And the problems you might be having at doing that
A discussion never involving you
And which does not take consideration
Of the attempts you did make to start or join a conversation.
The sort of experience many pregnant women and cancer patients
Get to feel with doctors in hospitals.
It’s you they’re talking about
You know enough of this Second Language
To be aware of that
But not enough
They’ve made clear
To be invited to join a talk about you
Without you being asked to participate
As if you are invisible
Not even there!
You could participate with your own language
And with borrowings from their’s
But you know that your own language
Is about as strange to them as their’s is to you
And they are in the majority
So, to use your own
Would not be the “proper” thing to do
Afterall, there is a rule:
“When in Rome do what the Romans do”.
So, you can suffer the indignity
And could even see an intentional slight
In being told to learn their language
So that the next time that you met
As at the party the other night
You can have a conversation
Even though you’d tried to do just that
But obviously wasn’t good enough
For them to keep it going
And anyway there were the other guests
And with them the talk was much more interesting.
All this is true
So, what do you do?
Come with me into the Mist
Come with me into the Night
Talk to the Spirit
Talk to the Wind.
TO BE CONTINUED BY YOU….
spiraljohn 