Language Stresses

Burlington, VT

No LL

I know how the Bahamians must feel when they look out into their harbors and see nothing but American boats. Around here in the past few weeks 19 of every 20 boats we see are Canadian. Worse, many of the people on board those boats speak only French, or at least they don't speak English very well.

Even when people are nice, and friendly, and open to making new friends, language is a barrier. The party forced to speak a language they're not fluent in feels stressed and embarassed. The other party feels embarassed for the first party.

We learned this lesson first hand when we moved to Sweden with our family. It was very stressful trying to converse in Swedish with Swedes at the start. The stress and fear of stress tended to make us avoid social situations. Fortunately, most Swedes speak excellent English and we had many dear friends who helped us acclimate.

It was much easier to converse in Swedish with other immigrants who were no better at the language than we were. Being equally inarticulate removes the embarassment.

Actually, the Swedes capitalize on this when they design Swedish language courses for immigrants. It was a wonderful experience, and very effective learning. Each student is part of a group who have no common language other than Swedish but who all share the immediate experience of having recently imigrated to Sweden. They are highly motivated to communicate and to make friends with fellow students, but the rules of the school were that they must do so in Swedish. It worked! We made many dear friends who we'll never forget, and we learned the Swedish rapidly.

Later, Libby taught English to Swedish immigrants. They had discovered a cruel truth. Upon arrival, they were told that they had to learn Swedish to get a job. OK. But later they learned that good jobs require English.

It has been a long time since I spent time overseas, so I don't know if that has changed. I suspect that the ubiquity of American TV makes it more deisrable to learn English, but it also provides a passive form of learning.

I'm reminded of an old man I met a long time ago in Sweden. He was the night desk clerk in my hotel. He loved practicing his English on me. Actually he was quite good except he had a very peculiar accent and vocabulary. Finally, I understood why. He had learned his English exclusively by watching Western movies. He spoke like John Wayne.