Simmermon: When English words don’t work abroad
Studying abroad provides several unique challenges.
Monday, April 21st, 2008
I met several exchange students in my journalism classes. All of them are friendly, eager to learn and enjoy sharing experiences from their home countries. One thing that always amazes me about them is that they are at least bilingual.
I’ve never felt more stupid than when I was studying abroad and at least 90 percent of my schoolmates were bilingual.
I knew studying abroad would be a hard and trying experience for me. I have always been a homebody. My mom and I are very close. I just couldn’t muster up the courage to apply for any other colleges.
Making the decision to go abroad was scary for me, but I needed a different experience. I needed to know more than Kansas.
The minute I stepped off the plane in Ireland I felt like a small child in a big world. No familiar faces, no idea where to go or what to do.
I remember asking the cabby why all the highway signs were in two languages. He said, “It’s Irish, girl. Did you think we didn’t have our own language?”
Despite my sudden embarrassment, I stayed silent and thought that maybe I should have done more research about my new “home.”
I learned more in the 25 minutes after I got off the plane than I did in my first two years of college.
I had signed up late for a place to live, of course, so I wasn’t able to have my own room.
I shared a room with a girl I knew absolutely nothing about. When we met, my heart sank a little because she seemed really nice, but she could barely speak English.
How was I supposed to live with someone who can’t understand anything I said?
My roommate, Elisa, was one of those amazing people who already spoke Italian and German. Learning English was next on her list.
Elisa plunged herself into an English-speaking country, knowing that all her assignments would need to be written in English and that all her classes would be taught in English.
Her resolve astonished me. I was completely humbled. That’s when I realized that knowing only one language was really going to hinder me for the rest of my life.
I’ve tried to learn languages, but I started too late in life. I could never catch on, and I’ve struggled through every language course I’ve ever taken.
I owe so much of my incredible abroad experience to Elisa who made me amazing Italian food and taught me all the fun Italian cuss words.
We ended up becoming great friends, and I stayed my last week with her family in Venice where Elisa translated between us the entire time.
I can’t understand why some Americans have such a problem with our country being bilingual.
When a person knows more than one language, others make immediate assumptions about them: that they’re smart, worldly and interesting. Why wouldn’t everyone want to be like that?
It may be too late for me, and I haven’t totally given up, but I am definitely going to teach my children different languages from a young age.
I wish my parents would have done the same for me, but it wasn’t a priority in this country when I was young, and now people are eating their words.
Unfortunately, those words are only in English.
Simmermon is a Leawood senior in journalism.
Discussion
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so...you were completely unaware that the Irish spoke Gaelic in addition to English? so yea, you should probably just stay in the United States from now on. Guess what? Thailand has their own language too! and the Ukraine, and Poland, and Albania, and....ugh.
Well, that's why you study abroad, to learn and understand these sorts of things. You'll see signs like that in Wales, too. One part of the sign is in English and the other part is in Welsh. A lot of this isn't because a lot of people in Wales speak Welsh, but because their language is part of their heritage and they want to keep it around.
You have to remember too that Europe is comparatively smaller and more compact than the U.S. Germany is roughly the size of Kansas. You can sit on a train for four hours and go through three different countries, each with their own language. Some countries have multiple languages (The Swiss speak German, French and Italian in that one tiny country). It makes sense that people on th continent would speak multiple languages. In the U.S., however, we're quite isolated and don't have that close proximity with multiple languages. Most people who do speak multiple languages are actively studying languages; they don't learn them generally in school like they do in Europe. We also have the benefit of speaking the international lingua franca. You see this in the UK, too. Most English students speak English and then casually take another language that they can drop at a certain point in their education. But again, they speak the prominent international language and they're isolated from their peers on the continent.
It's just a matter of perspective. I personally think everyone in the U.S. should be fluent in at least two languages, but I'm not sure how likely that is to happen.
i'm sorry, but in a world where information, especially elementary cultural information, is so easy to obtain via the internet, there is no excuse for that type of ignorance.
Wow, swishymcjackass speaks true to his/her name. I'm sorry but in a world where information is so easy to obtain via the internet, people have become huge losers and harass poor girls who pour their heart out to the public. Way to go shwishy. I'm sure you must know just about everything, because of the time you spend on the internet. Tool...
What makes me sigh about swishy's comment is that it completely missed the whole point of the article. It was about the importance of learning different languages and being worldly, not about the fact that I didn't realize the street signs were going to be in two languages. And I am aware that other countries speak different languages I just didn't figure that an English speaking country such as Ireland would have their signs in two languages. It was just surprising to me. When I approached Irish people with my questions about their native language they were happy to enlighten me about their culture and did not respond with disgust or in a condescending manner such as swishy did. I was eager to learn and they were glad that an American such as myself was interested in listening instead of just talking about how great the U.S. was. That was one criticism of Americans I constantly received abroad, that we talked to much about our country and didn't ask enough about others cultures. I don't think that a person needs to know anything and everything about a country they are visiting, being immersed in a culture you learn pretty fast. I loved my time abroad, I learned and grew so much. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. You can call me ignorant and tell me to stay in the U.S., but I know I'm not and I will never stop traveling. I encourage people to take a chance and step out of what's comfortable, there will always be a home to come back to. You might feel like and idiot at first but life's a learning experience if you don't ask questions then you really will be ignorant.
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