In this morning’s dream I was part of a small group of Americans chosen to help foreigners learn to speak English. The method of doing that was to assign us a very small cabin-type room in which we were to complete a project as a group. We had a few foreigners assigned to us and we began work on our project with everyone making an effort to speak clear English while doing so. As we proceeded, one by one more foreigners were added to our group making the room very crowded. Eventually, they began speaking among themselves in other languages which none of us Americans understood. Finally, I became exasperated and demanded to know if they had not come to this project to learn to speak English. “No,” one replied. “We already know how to speak English. We came here to learn to speak American.” Finally, the overcrowding of our room became unbearable and we decided to break into two smaller groups. We intended that some of the Americans should be part of each group but several of the foreigners decided to stay together to become their own group without the interference of the Americans.
That dream set me to thinking about language and it’s impact on belonging. We belong to many groups. Our primary group speaks RVing. The members of the group we met with last night speak railroading. When we meet with Dave’s former coworkers they speak computers. I know a few diabetics and, when together, we speak carbs. My newest group is Weight Watchers and they speak points. What groups do you belong to? What languages do they speak?
TTYL,
Linda
I apologize for the paragraphs being run together. I did an update to my blogging software this morning and it is ignoring my attempts to put spaces in between paragraphs. Since I didn’t know before I posted this that it would do that, it will take me some time to figure out how to fix it.
Isn’t that the truth! You could even take that farther. When with my “old” girlfriends, we speak high school. When with my “old” fellow workers, we speak airline and travel. When with family, we speak family. I never thought of it as another language but it most definitely is. It actually defines who we are when we’re talking about the languages we speak. We also learn not to speak certainly languages with other groups. We are definitely at home with those we can speak freely with …. definitely something I’ve learned over the last few years.
Interesting that you talk about foreign language: I’m reading this entry and writing this response in a hotel in Seoul, South Korea, and I was just making a list of things that expats must have to contend with. I certainly don’t speak Korean but you’re totally surrounded by it. I rode the subway from the hotel to the city hall area as there’s a historic palace there I wanted to see. The announcements on the subway did end with English but mostly it was Korean. I towered over most Koreans so it was hard NOT to stand out. Just keep your cool and don’t panic. It’s been an experience!
tweet! tweet! warble! warble! 🙂