Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Learning from Language


By Katie Perkowski

A couple days ago when I went to pay to enter the AUB beach, the man working at the entrance saw me hand him a 20,000 bill (it cost 3,000 LBP for a day) and started asking me something in Arabic. I’ve only learned a handful of basic words, greetings and phrases since being here the last few weeks, and of course, none of the things he was saying to me sounded familiar. I figured he was asking me if I had any smaller bills, but I didn’t know for sure, so I just stood there looking helpless and stupid because I didn’t know what to say to figure out how to solve the problem. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young man who I hoped could help me.

After looking from me to the employee and back again, he realized we could not communicate with each other, and then translated the Arabic to English for me. Then I told him I didn’t have any change and to ask if I could get the change later. The unknown translator said something to the employee, handed him 3,000 LBP, and walked in the beach as the employee waved me in too. I still don’t really know if the translator paid for me or if the man let me in for free, because the translator walked in so fast that I couldn’t thank him or ask him what he said.

Either way, this experience taught me how important it is to learn different languages.
In high school, for some idiotic reason I took three years of Latin. If you asked me to say anything in Latin, the only thing I could say is “semper fi,” and I could maybe translate a sentence or two from a first-year book. So as you can see, it did a world of good for me. When I came to college, I signed up for Spanish 101 but quickly became overwhelmed because we had translating assignments in the first couple days and I didn’t even know basic vocabulary words. I quickly opted out and took two semesters of linguistics (which proved to be very interesting and enlightening) instead.

This summer I have done study abroad trips to India and Lebanon, and have been to stops in between on layovers, and I must say that I have often times felt very little and stupid because I only know one language. I have heard people speak three different languages within a span of five minutes. When I ask them why they know so many languages, they always say it is abnormal to not speak at least two. Now I know in the states it is different because we are not surrounded by a bunch of different countries and different languages, but I think to gain a better international education and understanding, and to also better-equip students for future business endeavors, a stronger emphasis needs to be placed on foreign language — earlier and longer in America’s school systems.

2 comments:

  1. Exactly! My Granddaughter, who will be 3 years old August the 3rd, speaks Arabic and English as her native language and is learning French. Her Mother is from KY. and her Father is from Lebanon. They live in Lebanon. My daughter took 5 years of Spanish, also German, Italian and French. She had to take the other languages as she was a vocal performance major. She can only really speak Arabic! That is the one she never took. She can pronounce the other ones perfectly!

    It is very important to learn at a young age.

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  2. Learn business spanish Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your blog with extra information? It is extremely helpful for me.

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