The World Of Words!

❝If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.❞ ‒Nelson Mandela

Being born in a country whose population of one billion speaks several hundred languages (SIL Ethnologue lists 415), I grew up naturally learning many. My native language happens to be Bengali. But I learned the written form of it at a much older age.

I was initiated into the realm of literacy by a foreign Language, under the tutelage of English & Irish nuns, at a Catholic missionary school in India. English is one of the two official languages of the subcontinent and within a year of Kindergarten, I had successfully mastered A to Z!

The second language I learnt to read and write was again not the one I had inherited from my parents but Hindi, the second official language of India. This one came to me as a result of my father’s decision of making me capable of earning my own bread and butter, had I to travel to one of the Northern provinces close to home. And it proved to be quite a pleasant departure from the regular heavy handed subjects. Soon I pursued 3 other languages of the same family- Bengali (my mother tongue), Punjabi and Urdu.

At this time I speak all the four languages mentioned above & have a decent understanding of Bhojpuri, a language spoken in the neighbourhood of my province in India.

Four years ago I immigrated to Canada. My admiration for the study of languages strengthened in this amazing country renowned for its multiculturalism and open hearted acceptance of diversity. I was thrilled to find Canada had two official languages just like India.

Taking advantage of the abundance of time that I had at my disposal, I started to take French lessons. There were two things that immediately came to my attention;

1)      you need to find speakers of the language you are trying to learn, to be able to practice it with them on a daily basis

2)      you must start reading books in the language you are trying to learn to develop a workable vocabulary as quickly as possible. This will help you to form ‘broken sentences’ during your initial struggle to converse. Later you can fit these words into grammatical structures and refine your use of the language.

Another common sense fact about language also appeared vividly before me at this time. It is easy to learn languages of the same family at one time. This mainly happens because of the similarity of the grammatical structures & of words/ use of words. For example, French words like ‘boucher’, ‘descendre’ and ‘fleur’ translates into English counterparts as ‘butcher’, ‘descend’ and ‘flower’. And just by translating word for word from English to French, “maintenant je peux parler français conversationnel”. Although this is not a good long-term practice, it serves you well during your initial learning days.

The theory of association is also a very helpful tool. While learning new foreign words, just picture the word that you are trying to memorize. We all learn better when supplied with visuals; remember your A for Apple days?

With these mantras in mind, I am about to begin classes in Spanish. I have two months to visit Mexico and I better be able to do better than “Cómo estás?! :)