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I grew in a home in which the spoken language, English, was broken and misused. My father barely finished high school and my mother completed her high school diploma through correspondence. The language I learned was the language of small towns, farmers, homemakers and of those less educated. They spoke their own version of English which I adopted. It wasn’t until college that I learned that the language I had acquired was crude and riddled with errors. In college, I remember the embarrassment of learning that the word ‘speciment’ didn’t have a ‘t’ in it. Slowly a transformation occurred through undergraduate and graduate school where I learned to write and speak English, Spanish and German.
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| Grammar, grammar, grammar... |
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| Market Words. |
Now, years later I find myself in a Kiswahili class with mostly younger classmates who pick up this beautiful language with ease and grace. I admire and envy their ability to grasp the language and speak without embarrassment. I, on the other hand, struggle with the words and grammar, embarrassed and hesitant. ‘Did the word end in o or an a?’ I grossly mangle and mispronounce words, creatively making up words that exist only in my own version of Kiswahili. Subtle differences in pronunciation are missed by me and words that differ by a letter or two are hopelessly confused. I intend to say “see you later” in Kiswahili and instead say “we will marry”. Or instead of saying “I don’t understand”, I say “I am not drunk”!
Language acquisition is surely easier as a young person! As a ‘mature learner’, I struggle with new words, grammar and pronunciation. Listening is especially difficult as I confuse words and struggle to differentiate words in the babble of sounds. I try to understand why the teacher is talking about chickens (kuku) when in fact she is talking about a Tanzanian holiday (sikukuu). When my brain finally realizes the error, the teacher has moved beyond this point on to another. When I add a new word to my ubongo (brain) another one falls out. Will I ever get the hang of this stuff?
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| Learning is more fun with games! |
Like many things in life, quitting is easier than persisting. But quitting is not an option for me and I will doggedly persist to master enough Kiswahili to communicate in my own fashion. I am reminded of my own students’ struggles to acquire the language of biology; a language I know and love and one that comes more naturally to me. Now, I try to apply the techniques I recommend to my students for remembering the language of biology to Kiswahili.
Struggling to master new ideas, big and small, is part of the growth of being a dynamic human being . It doesn’t matter if one is struggling to learn the language of Kiswahili, biology or sorting out one’s own personal growth. These all require an acceptance of who we are as learners. It requires us to see our strengths, weakness and goals. We continually access what we have learned, our progress and the position where we want to be. Small steps allow us to make steady progress. Every day we are required to re-imagine ourselves in a changing context of life. What was, is no longer and we must learn new. Do we face the challenge with slow steady steps or throw our hands up in despair?
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| Memory game... now where was that card? |
Pole pole (slowly) I will get the hang of Kiswahili. In the meanwhile I have provided ample merriment and laughter to all those who have walked a few steps with me on this journey. After all, when was the last time a biology professor told you “We will marry tomorrow”!
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| Laughter, a required component of learning a language! |
With gratitude and thanks to Anne Perera, the 'official class photographer', for the pictures.
