Found in Translation

The Train à Grande Vitesse speeds through the countryside: fields of green and brown, hills rising in the distance, rows of grapes, houses and farms dotting the spaces in between. Chapter 7, page 183. “Ou etes-vous allé(e)?” (Where did you go?) The perfect way to frame a chapter introducing the use of “le passée composé avec être”, allowing me to finally relate past events correctly with the verb “être” (to be). Because it’s a well-known fact that when beginning learners of French try to talk about the past, they frequently mix up the verbs that take “avoir” (to have) and those that take “être”—very often verbs of coming and going, of motion. And what better way to learn how to recount moving through the past than to do it on the TGV, through the beautiful French countryside?

So, a few pages later, on p. 190, we find the vocabulary list with many verbs of motion, including:

aller - to go
venir - to come
monter - to go up; to get into
sortir - to go out of

Vocabulary never seemed so real.

I sit in Car 12, Seat 96 (voiture 12, place 96) of iDTGV No. 7912, departed Lyon Perrache station at 14:46 with a brief stop at Lyon Part-Dieu station, scheduled to arrive at Paris Gare de Lyon at 16:59. 4 seats face each other on the second floor. A woman, another student I guess, sits diagonally across from me and tries to close her eyes and rest, a brief respite from the stack of books on the table in front of her. A couple talk in the seats on the other side of the aisle, animated discussion interrupted only by cell phone calls coming and going. The TGV—my TGV—speeds through the French countryside: fields of green and brown, hills rising in the distance, rows of grapes, houses and farms dotting the spaces in between.

What kind of conversations will I have when I arrive in Paris?

Page 189.

“Êtes-vous arrivée en train?” (Did you arrive by train?)
“Oui, je suis venue en train.” (Yes, I came by train.)

The train rocks gently back and forth. “I have arrived” is incorrect, I am reminded. I should rather say, “I am arrived”.

Isn’t this what studying French is all about? What more ‘textbook’ experience could there be? Perhaps a cup of coffee at an open-air cafe when I arrive, maybe a little trip to the Louvre tomorrow after a stroll along the Seine?

This is not French study, I think, but rather French study*. Or maybe it’d be better to write French study™. As I sit with my book open, 90 km south of Paris and closing, I struggle to reclaim my experience from immediate conversion into idealized, sugar-coated, and eminently marketable icons of language learning experience, as written right into the cover of my textbook—and, for that matter, into the brochures of a thousand study abroad programs promising to lead students up the mystical slopes of Mount Fuji in Japanese, to admire the grandeur of the Statue of Liberty in English and, yes, to take them up the Eiffel Tower in French. Everything is perfect in this illustrated geography of language learning.

Trees dot the distance outside my window. The sun has moved across the sky just a bit, or maybe the train has inscribed a slight arc on its ascent to the capital. It’s hard to tell, cruising smoothly at more than 200km/h. The sun shines through the window and glints off the base of the window frame. Fields rush by. Are those really grapes? I look around the cabin. And then I notice something interesting.

Nobody seems to be looking.

Surely a coincidence? Qu’est-ce que vous regardez? (What are you looking at?) When the scenery is so nice, what else is there to regard? The woman across from me has shifted but still has her eyes closed. People who sit further away are reading, sitting in contemplation, talking in hushed tones.

Then the highlight for me, a moment that tells me what to do with my overly serious reflections. The woman on the other side of the aisle, who had been on the phone, is again talking excitedly with the man across from her. And in the middle of all this, perhaps to illustrate a point, he reaches down, grabs one of his feet and pulls it up towards his nose. He smells it.

No, seriously, he takes a good, long sniff. Might even say a drag. Says something and the woman laughs. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he extends his foot straight across the space between the two of them, up towards her face. She leans over and smells it too.

Je suis venue. We’re still 80 km away from the promised streets of Paris and the myriad ‘authentic’ conversations that are supposed to make the French in my textbook come alive. But, I think, I am arrived.

I look at the woman across from me. She sits now, eyes open, her slight smile telling me she might have seen what I saw, or seen that I saw it. I put down the book, and we begin to talk.

Three weeks ago, if anyone had predicted I would willingly go to watch a black and white film, made in the 1930s, starring actors I had never heard of, and sit through it spellbound, I would have laughed my head off. Really. However, incredibly, I just returned from a fifth such movie, as a part of the Joan Blondell retrospective playing at the PFA, titled “Joan Blondell: The Fizz on the Soda.” It was my second double bill in the last fortnight, and I am unabashedly addicted. It’s not just Blondell’s spunk and versatility that has appealed to me; every film I have watched so far has allowed me to immerse myself, as cliched as it sounds, in a different world and time.

One of the things that I find most thought-provoking about the movies has been the transparent sexism of the language, the dialogs. I remember how I squirmed throughout “Blonde Crazy” (1931), where James Cagney playing a sleaze ball con artist, continuously referred to Blondell as “hoooooooney.” Every woman, it seemed, was “honey.” I cannot explain very clearly why, the way he said it (with an extended drawl)…and that he said it…seemed to be very belittling and derogatory. I have heard infinitely more “derogatory” stuff in contemporary mainstream cinema, but there was something so shocking about the almost salacious way he said it, I guess it was because I had never imagined “old films” to have any kind of sexual “bite” to them, especially not in terms of language (I don’t know why I had such a preconception). The Night Nurse (1931), Footlight Parade (1933), There’s Always a Woman (1938), and Three Girls About Town (1941), all contained at least some startlingly sexist language. Common themes in the men’s dialogs included that the “little woman”’s place was in the home, that she was by and large brainless, and should leave the thinking to the men. However, the spunk, wit, and intelligence of Blondell show the sheer stupidity of these “evaluations,” which I find very interesting. Despite the surface but open sexism of the language, Blondell, for the most part, glitters brightly in these roles, as a brilliant and industrious detective, as a smart con artist, as a capable and compassionate nurse, and as a very resourceful hotel “hostess.”

With every utterance of sexist language in the films, there was an audible collective gasp that rose in the darkened PFA theater. For someone like me who, very unfortunately, has little more than a glancing acquaintance with the history of the feminist movement, it was literally shocking to see the kind sexist language that was freely employed in the Depression-era movies. The objectification of women is not something that surprises me to see, since that is still a thriving tradition in Hollywood and elsewhere, but the overt sexism of the language is. As much as I adore these movies, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that such language was acceptable, or normative…How was it ever possible to talk about women this way? And, even if the language has been “cleaned up” now, to what extent has the political correctness in public discourse really been matched by changes in how women are perceived and treated in actuality? Ok, no easy answers, but nevertheless important to think about….

For any of you interested, there are a few more screenings left…go check them out. Prepare to be transfixed, mesmerized, and…a little revolted.

George Carlin, the legendary, irreverent comedian par excellence, arguably most famous for his “Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television” routine, died a few hours ago in LA. I’m not generally given to grieving for celebrities, but the news of Carlin’s death hit me hard. I discovered Carlin a mere three years ago, in Chico, when a roommate invited me to watch a Carlin special that was playing on HBO. That one show was enough to hook me; I was immediately addicted to his “acerbic, cerebral, sometimes off-color” stand up routines. And since then, I’ve devoured his books, and laughed uncontrollably at almost every word he penned. His HBO specials, so many of which are Youtubed, are oftentimes my morning viewing staple…and there are numerous hilarious one-liners of his I can recite from memory. Less than a month ago, as I was packing up to move from the I House to a sublet, I had Carlin classics such as Life is Worth Losing, Jammin’, and George Carlin at USC playing on my laptop while I packed. There are few things that are as guaranteed to act as de-stressers and elicit laughter from me as his incredible comic dexterity and wit. For a variety of reasons, this loss is very personal.

The Grammy-winning comedian had a tumultuous personal life (marred by long term drug use), and was arrested several times for what were deemed his “obscene shows.” His routines overflowed with profanities, and he was very anti-Establishment, attacking organized religion, the government…pretty much everything “organized” that got him riled up. His anti-Establishmentarianism wasn’t run-of-the-mill comic irreverence; there were moments of startling, deep, and penetrating insight that marked his “counter-culture” brand of humor. Carlin’s routines were not merely meant to be comically provocative; they were aimed at attacking censorship that regulated language that was permitted in the media. As Richardson (2000) noted,

In 1978, comedian George Carlin’s classic routine, “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Radio,” challenged existing media censorship regulations in two critical ways. First, by mentioning the seven “forbidden” terms repeatedly in the routine, he succeeded simultaneously in de-mystifying them while at the same time mocking the US Federal Communications Commission’s preoccupation with “filthy words“. Second, and perhaps most importantly, Carlin raised the question of agency (individual or collective resistance to some kind of external control) and the media. Given the immense power that the media has over what we see and hear, how can we question and resist its tendency toward the promotion of global consumerism, Eurocentrism and cultural homogenization?

These are questions that we battle and will continue to battle as the media continues to permeate more and more aspects of our daily lives.

Carlin’s comedy was unique; it wasn’t just his comic timing, the turns of phrase he employed, or the deadpan delivery he was the master of. It was comic subversion at its best, one imbued with rich commentary on that unraveled the very fabric of human life.

So what did Carlin say about death?

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating…and you finish off as an orgasm.”

He should have the last word. I am embedding a video of one his most famous routines…Rock on, Carlin. Your words will live on in my laughter.

It was some 25,056,000 seconds ago, at the time of this writing, that I joined Facebook, a megalith among social networking sites. Having tried, tested, and deleted my profile on MySpace a year prior, I was incredibly wary of joining a site I felt too old for…wasn’t Facebook for the unjaded and perpetually-partying undergrad crowd? But, as the old saying goes, you should try everything once, and I did. What I didn’t realize at the time was that Facebook is addictive like few things known to man: it’s like the Cocaine or Heroin of the internet age, the hard drug of a networked mind, the nicotine dependency of a digitized society. A few hours without it and I feel a searing withdrawal: a desperate craving in my soul, a cramping in my fingers from (imagined) disuse, a terrifying disconnection with the world at large…I feel all the four symptoms that the Urban Dictionary lists for “Facebook Withdrawal“: 1) Craving, 2) Fear, 3) Denial, and 4) Depression. [Okay, so I put this last sentence in here primarily because it’s funny (and not entirely untrue).] For this reason, I have the official Facebook Toolbar built into my Mozilla Firefox browser. If I receive a Wall Post or mail, am “tagged,” or receive a gift, I see it the second it is done. Patience, as my friends and family will attest, is not one of my virtues.

To paraphrase Descartes, “I Facebook, therefore I am.” I find myself needing to validate my existence through the site. Who I am-or who I seek to be seen as?-is constructed daily and diligently through my Facebook profile. My political views (”Obamaniac”, the daily political articles posted on my “Posted Items”), religious views (”Whateverist”), emotional states (through “Status Updates”, “Wall” postings, tagged photos, “Notes”), hobbies, interests and affiliations (”Groups”), and musical tastes (ILike Dedications, Recent Plays) are laid bare for my friends’ perusal. I am unclear at this point, I have to say, how much of this is for others, and how much of this is for me…for, Facebook is also a forum for self-construction, self-reflection, and-not to forget-narcissism on a grand, networked scale. I am not merely connecting with others; I am fashioning a self, the self I want public, the self I want “out there.” I can control the “digital” self I put out for “public” consumption through a plethora of privacy settings: I can control who sees what in my profile, and-by extension-I think I control what people “make” of me. How deluded that is is not something I have figured out yet.

Recently, I told a friend of mine a story of how a “Friend” wrote a highly objectionable Wall Post on my profile. I told the story stuttering with indignation and anger. She stared at me like I was a kook, and said, “Usree, that’s Facebook, that’s not real life, you know? Who cares what anyone says on FB?” I couldn’t understand her statement…of course it matters, it’s Facebook! It IS real life-isn’t it? Well, at least it’s a reflection of my real life-with the added benefits of privacy controls, the ability to untag, remove news from your mini-feeds, Block stalkers or people you would like to avoid and-that most important of tools: “Remove Friend.” It’s like a policed, self- and Friend-fashioned life forged through multi-modal literacy. In this very individuated society, Facebook is my savior: it is my life, only better. When I am on it, I feel connected to humanity-and my own humanity-in ways I haven’t in too long. If that sensation is mediated through Facebook, is there something wrong with that?

“I should write my name here? First name last name?” The man asked, standing next to me by the cashier’s at a Cold Stone Creamery outlet. I looked at him puzzled, a little taken aback, preoccupied with trying to juggle a speedily-melting Founder’s Original sundae, several napkins, an overflowing purse, and an ATM card in my hands. I looked at him, a little annoyed, wondering if he was trying to con me, or “hit on” me (I don’t know when I became so jaded about humanity). His skin was dark, like my own, and I thought to myself, though he didn’t look Indian, he did look as if he was from the Indian subcontinent. He was wearing a faded red sweatshirt and loose, stonewashed jeans, and flashy yellow running shoes which had seen better days. I couldn’t place his accent, but it was strangely familiar.

The cashier held out her hand for my credit card, which I handed over. The man pushed a half-filled form towards me, and pointed to a section towards the bottom: “I write my name here? You see if it’s okay?” I didn’t understand why he was pushing the form towards me; what did he mean? My skepticism sharpened; I’ve fallen for a few schemes in my lifetime, and was in no mood to have history repeat itself. I leaned over and looked at the form, which appeared to be an employment application form, and had to squint to make sense of what first looked like a series of squiggles. He’d put everything down incorrectly; the references merely repeated his own name, the date was a string of alphabetic characters, and his address was illegible. I took a deep breath and tried to explain what he needed to do, and he just kept repeating his name, saying he needed the form filled out. My friends, who were standing beside me, were hurling questions at me at the same time, and the cashier handed me a receipt to sign. I hurriedly tried to explain the form to the man, but he was growing visibly frustrated, and my patience was wearing thin. The cashier cast an irritated glance at the man. I signed the receipt, then turned to the man, pointing out where he needed to write his address, insert references, sign, and finally, what the date meant. He filled it out with painstaking slowness, and as we looked at each other briefly, my heart went out to him. We both knew he needed the job but was most probably not going to get it. And he was going to be facing this hurdle many more times in his life, some in places where he would have no help. As he finished the form, I hurried out…I could not look him in the eye. I felt his eyes burning holes in my turned back…I was confronted with my own deep sense of failure.

I teach literacy, study it as a doctoral student at Cal. Most of my daily, lived experience is mediated by literacy. My emotions, my innermost thoughts, my familial and other relationships are mediated through it. It is the window into my soul, the opened doors of opportunity for me. But for all my mediations, meditations, and theorizations about/on literacy, how rare it is to encounter someone for whom literacy means so much; not the languid introspections of the soul, but that which must deny the angry pangs of hunger in a starving belly, or a warm jacket to keep out the cold. Growing up in India, I was constantly aware of the problems of “illiteracy”; there were subtle reminders in every walk of life, from the thumb print section in all forms right next to the signature box, the massive governmental billboards that exalted the positives of literacy, and spoke of how we as a country were plagued with “illiteracy,” to the very orality of our culture which allowed us to circumvent some of the problems of “illiteracy”…There, I expected “illiteracy,” it was everyday, I smelt it, tasted it often in the hot, muggy Indian air. However, in my academic and scholarly bubble at Cal, immersed in its theory, immersed in its practice, my laptop keyboard worn down from constant usage, my fingers exhausted from texting and typing, my eyes tired from reading, I see the world without through a haze, a haze of distance, and distortion. That ivory tower I never wanted to live in is suddenly home. I must make my way back.

My name is Katie. I’m white. English is my first language. I was born in Southern California and had lived there almost my entire life before transferring to CAL. My siblings and I had access to a quality elementary school, junior high, and high school education. Learning a second language was not something that had even crossed my mind as a child in elementary school and was never mentioned by my mother. Taking a language course in junior high was not required. I can’t even remember if language courses were offered. It wasn’t until I entered high-school that I became remotely interested in and required to attempt to learn a second language. I was told that Spanish would be the most “useful” for living and working in Southern California. I took Spanish for 3 years and really enjoyed it. I had mastered simple conversation and could hold my own during occasional mission trips to Mexico with my church. I went to a junior college after I graduated high school and thought it would be fun to continue learning Spanish. I enrolled in an intermediate course and week after a week of the professor poking fun of me for not rolling my “r”s correctly, I dropped the class and gave up Spanish all together. Up until then Spanish really hadn’t been “useful” to me, and I wasn’t going to pay money to have this woman humiliate me for no good reason. My Spanish was decent. I could communicate with native speakers regardless of whether or not my “r”s were rolled with native-like rolly-ness.
A few years later at a different community college, I tried my hand at French. I did well both semesters, but didn’t care for the language and forgot 95% of what I had learned a few months after classes ended. When I came to CAL I realized many students were bilingual, many were even poly-lingual. I felt embarrassed. I could count to 20 in more than a few foreign languages, and had great manners in French, Spanish and English, but I was by no means fluent in any other language than English. Feeling the pressure, I decided to enroll in Italian. I had always wanted to go to Italy and thought this would be a good chance to familiarize myself with the language before i planned a trip there. I fell in LOVE with the language. It came easy to me and my previous schooling in Spanish and French helped as well (their only ‘real’ use in my life so far, I thought to myself).
I planned a trip to Italy the following semester and was eager to communicate in my new tongue. When I got to Italy I was surprised at how little I actually needed to use my Italian. Besides the taxi drivers, most everyone spoke English. I can only speak from this one perspective, and I was in Rome, so I understand that English is somewhat the International travel language. But even if I tried to use my Italian I received responses in English. It was almost like “aww, you’re so cute trying to speak Italian. But how unnecessary, because we were already taught your language when we were 3.” I felt robbed. Spanish had served me well during my missions trips in high school. But it did me little good after that, unless you count the curse words and Spanglish I used while joking around with my Spanish-speaking co-workers at a cafe I used to work at. So I feel like I have come full circle. I am the embodiment of my apathetic roots. Like the people who didn’t give a second thought to learning a second language because. . .what was the point? Everybody speaks English now, right? Wrong, everybody doesn’t, and I know this. But I feel like learning a second language will only do me good right now if I am going to immerse myself in a culture that speaks a foreign language, become a translator, or teach English to ESL students. And I don’t plan on doing any of the above anywhere in the near future, or ever. I’m not saying it is pointless for me to learn a second language, I’m just waiting for a reason. I feel, deep down, that is IS necessary. That I SHOULD know a second or third or fourth language, but up until now, the only things that had been driving me were the excitement (which was shot down in Italy) and embarrassment of not being on the same level as my academic peers. And to be honest, neither one of those seem like a very good reason. I also understand the cognitive benefits of being bilingual, but the older one gets the harder it is to learn a second language, let alone become fluent in one. I think my chance has passed me by, and I can’t put my finger on why, but it makes me sad.

An article in today’s NY Times, “Her Dream, Branded as a Threat,” relates the story of Debbie Almontaser, who created a public Arabic-English bilingual school in New York city, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, only to be forced to resign shortly after. While offering few insights into the actual role of the Arabic language in the school, its manner of instruction, etc., the article struck me in its portrayal of a growingly harsh ideological environment confronted by educators of Arabic (and, potentially, other so-called ‘critical’ languages). Do we really live in a day and age when those like Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum (and creator of the group Campus Watch, infamous for labeling professors around the countries as “soft on radical Islam”) can get away with attacking principals of bilingual schools for “working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — [to] promote radical Islam”?

Apparently so.

Before I begin I would just like to say that I am writing from my personal experience and opinion. I make no claims that what I am about to write is true, I simply offer some facts of what I noticed throughout my 4 years in college as a English language learner (ELL), first generation Latino college student

With that out of the way, I think that my story will resonate with transfer students because of the unconventional route we take to reach college. My story will focus on two mile stone events in my intellectual growth: (1) Being humbled by junior college entrance exams. (2) Taking the education 140 course at UCB.

Let’s start off by assuming college students have been in the business of earning grades for over eighteen years and in some fields they would be considered seasoned veterans or experts. Unfortunately, education is a privilege and with veteran experience comes the responsibility of being critical of education and to consciously even the playing field amongst non-mainstream students. Lets also assume that education is the grand equalizer.

When I entered junior college in 2004, I was shocked to realize that I couldn’t pass the math and English assessment exams. I could trace this inability of working at the college level to being tracked into low skills classes in high school. My older brother was a jock and he was placed to low skills classes. I happened to have his counselor in high school and I too was placed in the “dumb” classes, albeit I needed extra help, but I feel I could have caught on quickly in the normal classes.

Now imagine yourself a recent high school grad, having problems passing the freaking math college entrance exam for junior college. What do you do? Do you take a slew of non accredited course and tack on an additional 1-2 years to this 4 year degree, or do you work hard and pass the exam? With the help of a tutor named Tuan, I studied from an algebra book that I borrowed from my high school professor.

The entire summer I browned bagged my lunch and spent the bulk of my day self assigning homework and exams with the help of Tuan and other tutors. I would later learn though Ed140 that this experience was Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Vygotsky, a early twentieth century phycologist and language scholor claimed that cognative ability is not fix and ZPD is the gap between individual problem solving and the level of potential development with the help of another. With self discipline and the aid of others, I was able to reach new levels in my academic abilities and I conquered junior college by transfering to CAL.

It was my junior year at CAL when I entered into a depression over the intese pressure of getting the best grades. Needless to say, I had a rough transition to the UC system and my entire life was out of balance. This was also the moment of Intellectual conciousness. Mikhail Bahktin, a philosophical linguist, coined the phrase iintellectual consciousness and described it as a struggle for liberation from ones primary discourse.

My first year, I noticed how my swing mate, who had been in private boarding school growing up gracefully managed the stressors of CAL. Although at times he did get serious with his books, he actually had a social life. Here I was a upper classmen getting shown up by sophmore, something had to give. I latter learned that such problems were likely contributed by my secondary discorse,  a phrase coined by famous linguist, James Gee. Gee claims secondary discourses are things that aren’t innate. For instance, schooling could be a secondary discourse in which sucess depends on mastering and control over the discourse.

Mastering the secodary school discourse is simlar to mastering English, the language of power. This makes sense because social science majors typically write a whole lot.  My problem and the reason why my transition to CAL was so terrible is because my primary discourse didn’t support my secondary discourse. Growing up all I spoke was spanish, and my working class parents, who I barely saw didn’t have the experience to push me in school.

I think things would have been different had they known: (1) the education system lacks resources, (2) many students from non-mainstream familys get tracked into low skill classes. After taking Ed140, I realized that I had been desperately trying to survive CAL by closing the gap between my primary and secondary discourse. It was at this time where I began my intellectual consciousness.

The Ed140 class began by claiming it would change students profoundly. I was skeptical, but  in reality the class did help me mature and identify academically the experiences I undertook in college. With this newly found knowledge I challenge anyone who can synpathize with me to take initiative and to tutor students in a needy communities.

I think that as forunate studnets, we have the responsibility to make sure other less fortunate students don’t fall through the cracks. We need to help prepare them to master the secondary discourse of school. That being said, if your a CAL student, jump at the opportuntity to take Ed140.

You won’t regret it and although it’s  geared toward community service, i feel it’s more of a self-help class than anything eles.

Race has once again become an issue in America. By saying this I do not mean to imply that race was ever not an issue in America. On the contrary, I argue that race has always been an issue in this country and that we have been ignoring it. We have done so with happy slogans about “colorblindness” and “celebrating diversity” and pretending that racism ended with the civil rights movement. All the while racial injustice and outrage simmered beneath the surface of our colorblind world. I say that race is once again an issue in America because recently our nation’s forgotten issue has begun to boil over and, in the process, has caused us to consider just how far we really have come. This essay is a challenge to consider how far we have yet to go.

There are many aspects of racial injustice in this country, but to me none stands above that of our school system; and this system of oppression will be my focus. I say “oppression” and many wince or roll their eyes, but it is not my intent to point to a racist conspiracy among those in power or bigotry among everyday whites. I intend to show that the system itself is fatally flawed and that a meritocracy is its own form of oppression when built on a foundation that is fundamentally unequal. It is my argument that segregation did not end with Jim Crow. The way we fund our schools, our obsession with standardized testing, and our ignorance of how the system works lead to a cycle of inequality that must be broken because this is a problem that is getting worse, not better. We cut schools and build prisons. California has recently announced budget cuts to its K-12 and Community College system that will have a disproportionately negative effect on minority communities. George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind Act has served to instead leave a very large number of our students behind, particularly within the minority community. These things happen and we, content in our ignorance, do not see.

Until 1976, California school funding was based on local property taxes. In 1976 this practice was declared unconstitutional. The continued general segregation of communities and the fact that the separateness of these communities was never equal led to much better schools in affluent white communities. This was struck down and replaced with a state formula distribution system where monies were distributed more equally. This lasted about three years until in 1979 Proposition 13 passed, putting a cap on property taxes. After all, if your taxes aren’t going to your own children’s education then why pay them? This set the stage for a system that has carried through to our own time. To make up for low funding, affluent suburban communities began to take out bond issues that, as community funding rather than taxes, did not fit under the restrictions imposed in 1976. Bolstered by these funds, schools in these communities drew more students and produced higher production, giving them more state funding as a consequence. So what stopped inner city urban schools from doing the same? A lack of capital of course! Wealthy whites in urban areas had fled to private schools, leaving urban poor, typically minority, communities decidedly disadvantaged. Teacher’s salary, classroom resources, and overall building upkeep are directly tied to school funding. This leaves poorly funded minority schools stuck in a downward spiral that leaves students without hope of a real education, making many who should be assets to their communities a burden instead.

It is for these reasons that the current Schwarzenegger cuts in funding will have a greater negative impact on inner-city minority schools. Well-off schools are buffered by bond issue money and, for reasons previously stated, already receive greater state funding than their inner city counterparts. So the schools that are most in need will have less money. Less money means an inability to hire enough capable staff, stock the school with adequate supplies, and provide basic upkeep for the schools themselves. These factors lead to a lower quality of education as well as an increase in feelings of apathy or inferiority within the student body that cause more dropouts and lower test scores. These factors lead to a worse rating and even less funding, and the cycle begins again.

Further burdening minority community schools is federal policy enacted at the behest of President George W. Bush in 2001. The No Child Left Behind Act is flawed in many ways. The Act’s disproportionate emphasis on math and English lead to the loss of curriculum in the arts and sciences and the limitations of “teaching to the test” have been well expressed by teachers everywhere. However, it is the racial inequalities that are of most interest in this essay. First, emphasizing English testing puts schools with ESL students at a direct disadvantage. Secondly, the bill has been enormously under funded, leaving the schools which rate the worst in the system without resources needed to improve. It is well known that the schools that have the worst test scores are inner city minority schools. In fact, the Act’s reliance on standardized testing is a major issue. Minority students score lower on “standardized” tests not only because their schools are ill equipped to teach them, but also because of intrinsic flaws within the tests themselves which advantage white students.

It is well recorded that African American and Latino students score significantly lower on standardized tests than other groups. Part of this is they are disproportionately poor and stuck in bad schools but this is only part. To fully understand you must look at the history of standardized testing in America. The SAT is considered the most important test for a high school student. The test was created by a white man named Carl Brigham in the 1920s but was not widely adopted until 1960 when it was made mandatory by the UC system. An important thing to note was that these ideas of standardization and merit are taking hold just as Jim Crow is ending. You also must really ask what it means to be “standard” and who was this test made for? The answer to both is white people. The test was created by white people, for white people, and its ideas of what it is to be standard are founded entirely on the white experience. The SAT has been shown to be culturally biased in the manner of its questioning in many studies. Also, the test is not even created to show success in college but success in the first semester of college. Which leads you to ask, who do you think is more likely to have difficulty, regardless of intelligence, in their first semester of college? The answer is those kids from the schools that don’t have enough books. In fact, the SAT is a much better indicator of race than of success in college. This is because of the key question of “standards,” because if whiteness is the standard then these tests are testing not only how smart you are, but how white you are as well.

All of these give evidence to a system that is built on inequality that, if it stands as is, will continue to reproduce inequality and injustice. Past programs of affirmative action were created for the purpose of breaking this cycle and have done so to varying degrees of success. Affirmative action was not only about fairness but also the enrichment of the community as a whole though enforcing policies of equality and justice. Affirmative Action programs do not fit in a meritocracy, however, and in 1996 proposition 209 banned the consideration of gender, race and sexuality in California’s schools. This is where we stand today.

This essay is not an essay about banning the SAT or reintroducing affirmative action programs but is instead a simple statement that what we are doing is not working. A merit-based system cannot function equally if its foundations are not equal. Education is the heart of any community and by
denying a segment of our nation equality in education we are allowing a great injustice to take place. And so here is my call to action for you. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last book was entitled Where Do We Go From Here? Forty years later this is what I ask you this question. So if you disagree with what’s written in this paper, respond, but do some research and look around. Ask yourself what you really see. If you agree, respond, add your thoughts and think of solutions. We came a long way to get where we are but we are not finished yet. Nowhere near. Every crisis is an opportunity for change and we represent that opportunity. How can we make the change we need?

Note: This written piece was written by Daniel Traverso and contributed by Davetta, Coleen, Shirley, Trinh, Jose, Ann, Jordan, Daniel, and Zohair. All of them are part of Sociology 141 course, Spring 08.

It was in the nineties in India that the word “globalization” started seeping into my daily discourse. The word gripped a nation which was reeling with continuing political uncertainties, civil strife, terrorism, and social and economic problems. It was upheld as a beacon of hope, the promise of economic and social salvation, the wondrous solution to the ills that plagued our society, the key force that was going to allow us to finally unshackle us from an oppressive colonial past. Technology suddenly intervened in the daily lives of upper and middle class Indians in unimagined and unanticipated ways: electronic mail, dial-up Internet, cell phone service, “hip” FM radio, and cable television offering a plethora of foreign programming. Coke, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut billboards plastered the metropolitan cityscapes. Overseas travel was suddenly infinitely more affordable, and High School graduates began leaving in droves for American, Canadian, British, and Australian universities. By all surface accounts, India was a new “network society”; India was going global. Now, as Radio Australia notes, “India…has become the poster child of globalisation.”

Lately, I’ve becoming increasingly wary of this buzzword; every where I turn, in India, here, the word continues its stranglehold in the popular, and academic imagination. Yet something within me is deeply dissatisfied. At the recent AERA conference in NYC, I heard frequent references to the increasingly globalized nature of our world; apparently, it is the inescapable truth of contemporary society [An aside: what do we mean by “contemporary society”? Who do we as academics think of? What is common across us all beyond being in the same moment: now?]; we are all interlinked in a networked world, spiderfeed trapped in the webs of interlocked and intertwining societies, cultures, languages, and peoples. The global village is the new modern nation-state; it is the superarching structure that has permeated into the fabric of every society. No nation is isolated, alienated from the ineluctable pressures of “global flows.” Globalization, we are told, is universal.

Though I haven’t fully formulated my position on this, I have deep analytical reservations about these perceptions, especially when applied to India. Some “220 to 280 million” Indians live in dire poverty, according to the BBC. Ethiopia outperforms India in terms of the malnutrition index, according to one study, India was placed “94th out of 118 countries on the Global Hunger Index”, and a Doctors Without Borders report states that “83 percent of women [in India] are anemic”. According to one estimate, despite the popular conception of India as an English-speaking (and thus increasingly global, by some accounts) society, some 98% of Indians are not considered English speakers. While economic ramifications of a furiously networking world cannot be denied, these forces have a tremendous impact in particularly urban areas, whereas nearly 70% of India lives in agrarian societies in rural villages, with such problems that a farmer commits suicide every half hour, six thousand children perish every day to malnutrition, and a huge percentage of people remain illiterate.

When we talk about a “global” India, who or what do we speak of? It appears to me to be an elitist formulation that can not be applied across the board in a country as markedly divided on urban-rural lines. I’m not postulating that “globalization” is a myth in India; it is not fantasy; but analytically it has taken on mythic proportions, and seems to be obscuring the economically less powerful micro with the macro, a macro-structure which is city-centered and urbane. The “global” gets reworked very differently in local contexts, and it must be attended to, and carefully. Again, I do not lay claim to any notion that the forces of globalization don’t matter; they do, at economic, political, social, and cultural level. But they don’t matter in the same ways, nor must they matter everywhere.

Six thousand children die in India everyday, as noted earlier; the “globalization” afforded in the form of Micky Dee burgers or Domino’s pizzas doesn’t seem to be doing too much.

à Lyon…
toujours… en fete…
…d’accord, d’accord.    mon mot de passe c’est…
anglais, par anglais
choisir … qu’est-ce que vous voulez boire?
oh la la ça c’est
quoi? endroit?VeloV, autres…
Je vais, en fete, d’accord, la rouge s’il vous plait.
mon ami mon copain
tu est jolie!
et tu?
non, toi.
eh?
on dit “toi”
ah toi.
d’accord
je sais… l’euro. Cent? pas cent. centime. c’est centime
quai, quai, quai, quai, quai…
…mon frère as… je pense que.
j’ai vu, as tu eté?
arrête c’est ’stop’. ha ha ha ha ha.
~ c’est absolutament necessaire. a t il
enregistrer, dossier. nous allons nouzallon
et le fromage! doctorant. combien de temps?
tramway!
tirez, poussez, tirez, poussez, ouf!!
oui, way, oui, way, oueeeeee
demande a carole que elle…
d’accord!
plus que…. longtemps.
Combien de temps?
Longtemps.
Il y a longtemps que
je…
t’aime? what?
de vrai?
oui, c’est vrai. c’est toujours vrai.
a oui?
mmm.
bonne chance, bonne nuit, bonjour?
ne? ね？
je suis….
invisible…
en français?
impossible…
en français?

invisible.

I’m not sure how much Marc Augé had in mind discourses of advertising when he wrote in 1995 about the “non-places” of airport lobbies, train stations, and other generic spaces of transit, “Frequentation of non-places today provides an experience - without real historical precedent - of solitary individuality with non-human mediation (all it takes is a notice or a screen) between the individual and the public authority” (p. 117).

But there it is. My napkin and my snack box on this United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt inviting me (imploring me?) to enjoy my mini-meal and thanking me for choosing to fly with them. The monitors on the screens that dot the back of chairs and are installed so thoughtfully in front of us on the bulkheads move seamlessly, soundlessly (Were they giving away headphones on this flight? Or did they cost $5?) between mainstream U.S. television programming, important corporate partners, and the UAL maps showing our red line of progress across Greenland, over Iceland, and down towards the continent. And, of course, even at 35,000 feet above the earth, we can rest assured to know that we’re never far away from Starbucks: the familiar circular green logo greets me on the United (?) coffee cup, replete with a warning no doubt the outcome of the McDonalds coffee spill lawsuits: CAUTION: CONTENTS MAY BE HOT! This last remnant of language from the “public authorities” Augé mentions, written in the United font on a Starbucks cup, seems to suggest that even this authority may have passed from the hands of the government to the corporations that now hold our best international travel experiences and coffee-drinking safety at heart.

Wait, did someone say “international”? Yeah, right, this is an international flight. The couple sitting next to me—an Irish woman and a Scottish man and their lovely 21 month-old daughter—seemed real enough, and she had actually stayed in Lyon (where I’m going, I think) through a homestay exchange with a French university student several years ago. “It’s beautiful,” she tells me, “and the food is great.” I am enthused and pull out my French textbook, Chez Nous, to Chapitre 4. We are greeted by the title of “Métro, boulot, dodo”: this emblematic descriptor of the French workday and a photo of a crowd of commuters boarding the metro, itself a non-place par excellance, stares back at us. Sitting in row 32, she going home and I going away, we somehow seem very far away from the chapter subtitle, “La routine de la journée” – the daily routine.

Later, after descending on a cool (at least that’s what the pilot told me—the only ‘real’ air I’ve touched is the weak cross-draft in the tunnel leading to the gate) and overcast (below the cloud cover, that is) morning, I struggle to see what around me might be German, or at very least, different from the airport I left from 12 hours ago. Where might one look to find something of a ‘real place’ in a location that is so prototypically non?

Or is the very task of capturing something of the ‘place’ in a photo, taken while jetlagged, transient, waiting for a connecting flight, conscious of the ‘security risks’ of pointing a digital SLR in an airport (in the clime I come from, at least), and familiar only with the contours but almost none of the meanings of the German language and rhythms of life, false from the very start?

Just finished reading a somewhat alarmist article in the Indian national newspaper, The Times of India, entitled Does Hindi have a future? In that article, the fate of Hindi in the Indian urban landscape is considered precarious; the writer, Mohammed Wajihuddin, asserts that “An unsettling reality of metros and towns of India is that Hindi is slowly becoming an alien language.” That, in the writer’s words, is the “unkind truth” of our day.

Wajihuddin next goes on to “show” how academic interest in Hindi has declined over the years, quoting a former Mumbai University (in a region not a part of the “Hindi belt”) teacher who notes that the number of students enrolling in graduate programs in Hindi there has halved since the 90s. The decline of Hindi is bemoaned in other settings as well; an anecdote the writer provides as a case in point is this: “Soha Ali Khan [a young up-and-coming film actress in the Bollywood (Hindi) film industry, based in Mumbai, when asked] whether she speaks Hindi at all when she is not mouthing dialogues on the sets, [offers]: ‘Yes, I talk to my driver, dhobi [washerman] and liftman [elevator operator] regularly.’”

Not everyone believes the language is dying, however, as Wajihuddin notes; a Hindi “optimist,” Prasoon Joshi, thinks all is not lost, that there is hope to salvage the language, saying: “Yes, Sanskritised Hindi of Doordarshan [the government-run national television channel] is dying and it should die.” His point is clearly directed at the increasing popularity in the last decades of “Hinglish,” and the increase in less formal structures in Hindi popularspeak. The language, if it is able to adapt to an increasingly Anglicized world, and rid itself of the rigors of Sanskritic formality, will not only survive but flourish. The overall tone of the article, however, indicates that Hindi is endangered.

There are too many comments I am tempted to make here, but for the sake of brevity, I am going to address only a few. Let me start with a Forbes article published two days ago, entitled the Bleak Future of English, asserting that the increased thrust in education across India will result in greater Hindi usage, and diminish the number of English speakers there. The article goes on to note that since English is the second language of many speakers across the globe, the first languages are not endangered, a point that Wajihuddin totally misses. One count puts the number of first language speakers of Hindi at a reasonably respectable 180 million people, a fact Wajihuddin neglects to mention as well. He is not alone in his beliefs that Hindi is endangered; politicians and scholars are commonly quoted in the news media lamenting the rapid decline in Hindi usage. However, the alarm bells are rung regarding its usage in towns and cities, where people have become increasingly bilingual in Hindi and English, not monolingual in English. Hindi continues to thrive in the heavily populated rural areas of the “Hindi belt” and beyond. My own observations lead me to believe that there is a popular decline in “Sanskritised” Hindi use, but that doesn’t automatically mean that English (that dreaded colonial inheritance!) is being increasingly incorporated into the language; popular Hindi has adopted a lot of Urdu vocabulary as well. The adaptability and elasticity of the language, as Joshi notes, will help it survive. I think scaremongers are generally more troubled about the survival of “pure” Hindi than about the survival of Hindi. There is plenty to comment about the question of “purity,” but I will have to reserve detailed comments for another posting: as a Native Speaker and former teacher of Hindi (I taught it over five semesters at Cal), I have many mixed feelings on the issue. Briefly, I believe linguistic purism is principally rooted in nostalgia, and while I totally understand that sentiment, I also feel that it sometimes leads to blinkered perspectives (e.g. failing to recognize recognizing popular varieties as legitimate), that is, resistive linguistic snobbery.

I have no doubt Hindi will survive. It may not remain the literary Hindi of yore, but it’ll be a Hindi of the people. Let’s not ring the death knell for Hindi yet.

The International House (endearingly truncated as “I-House“) at Cal affords an unparalleled multicultural and multilingual experience for residents, staff, members/visitors, and cafe regulars. In my six months here, I’ve witnessed and been engaged in numerous cross-cultural and cross-linguistic exchanges that have amused, moved, and confounded me. This blog focuses on linguistic interactions between a group of my fellow residents, all German Economics graduate students (in their early twenties), visiting Cal on a year-long study abroad program.

A constant source of tension and strife in the group dynamic is Markus’ (one of the exchange students) insistence on speaking in English to his fellow German friends (a group of about ten). The whole group is constantly thrown together because they take many of the same courses, and generally socialize together, and Markus’ insistence on speaking English is bitterly resented. As an “outlier” member of the German troupe, I have had an interesting vantage point from which to observe how this resentment has unfolded. Initially, I figured Markus spoke to others in English out of compassion for me, so I would not feel left out, with my poor command of German. [His direct interactions with me, however, were in French (we both were trying to increase our fluency) and English.] Every time I observed a conversation between Markus and other Germans, I sensed a marked irritation on the part of my German friends, and the reason for their anger did not require any complicated sleuthery; it was patently clear that Markus’ English usage was the prime source of friction.

Markus is not about to back down, even after six months of being at the receiving end of some very choice epithets. As he explained to me, “I’m only here for a year…I came to America not so I would spend all my time speaking in German to Germans….I came to America to practice my English! I want to practice as much as I can!” My other German friends, however see things differently; Edith, for example, says that speaking in English to fellow Germans makes one “pretentious.” Erika thinks it’s “unnatural,” and feels that if Markus wants to improve his English, he should do it with Americans. Uwe doesn’t like the “Germanic structure” of Markus’ English.

The friction has taken many forms: the German troupe has refused to respond to Markus if he spoke in English, threatened him with ostracism, openly confronted him on the issue, and, during a recent trip to Hawaii, they started the trend of charging him a quarter every time he used an English word; Markus, needless to say, has bought several pitchers of beers for the troupe [when I asked Markus why he paid up so easily when he could just use German, he said (1) he is not going to back down from using English and (2) he is paying for a good cause-drinking.]

I’ve found this issue very interesting on several different levels. Both sides are convinced they are right; Markus cannot understand why he should speak German in America, whereas the others do not understand why they would need to resort to speaking in a foreign language with a native speaker of their mother tongue. Markus is constantly frustrated but perseveres in his English use, whereas the troupe is constantly angry and equally adamant in their beliefs. Markus spatializes his language use, whereas the others think language use should be a function of the immediate community with which one interacts. For Markus, this is an incredible opportunity to exploit the immersion context for FL acquisition; the troupe, I think, embraces the touch of home German represents for them. As Edith told me, only half tongue-in-cheek, “We’re protecting the German language!”

I’m not quite sure if this will ever be resolved…three more months to go. However, I have a feeling Markus is paying for many more pitchers of beer this semester. I don’t think he’ll be complaining too much. It, as he notes, is for a good cause.

So, next time you go to a Chinese restaurant, what kind of things can you ask?
你们放味精吗？ [Do you use MSG?]
你有没有饺子？ [Do you have dumplings?]
什么好吃的？ [What’s good?]

The teacher laughingly criticizes that last one: “Of course all the food is 好吃.” We laugh with her and don’t mention the fact that out of the twenty-odd students in the class, probably none of us will actually speak Mandarin in a restaurant to someone who works there. Someone who actually knows how to speak Mandarin — or worse, in my opinion, anyway, someone who doesn’t.

I’m the kind of person who likes to speak a language I’m learning whenever I can, just to make it stick. That desire conflicts with the general awkwardness of speaking a language I’m not that familiar with, and the specific awkwardness of the other person simply not expecting or even preferring not to speak in that language. (Especially when I probably wouldn’t even be able to understand if they said “We only put in MSG when our customers ask us”, despite knowing how to say such a sentence myself.)

My #1 issue is that by speaking in Mandarin (or Japanese) to someone, I’m making an assumption about them. In effect I’m stereotyping them. The person I’m speaking to may not even be of that nationality (I’m notoriously bad at this)…or they may be second- or later generation…or they may not speak the language for some other reason. On the other hand they may be one of these and still be able to speak the language, at least at my very basic level. It all comes down to the fact that, especially with a bad accent, there’s a very significant chance that if I say “请来一个四十号” (please bring me one #40), I’m just going to get a stare. Especially since I’m not even sure if that’s the proper way to say that.

One of my favorite southside places to eat is Viet Nam Village, which is, of course, run by Cantonese people. I would not be surprised if they understood Mandarin, or even Vietnamese, yet I would not feel comfortable speaking to them in Mandarin. The #2 issue, by the way, is just the very high chance that I’ll screw up and look like an idiot. At least a native Mandarin speaker would be able to withdraw (”Oh, no Mandarin? Sorry…”) with minimal embarassment. Probably.

The title of this post is “Practice, Practice, Practice”, but so often the chance to practice outside of class is precluded by cultural boundaries — boundaries which I think are respectful because they proscribe making assumptions about people. Even so, it’s a good thing to take the chance to use a language outside of the classroom, with friends or whoever else. I’m just not sure it’s appropriate to use it with people you’ve never met as a way to practice…unless of course they don’t speak English. In this part of California, at least, “speaking English” is a reasonable assumption to make about someone who takes orders in a restaurant.

Thanks to my desire to practice outside of class, however, my interjections and some of my out-loud musings are now in Japanese and Mandarin. (If you ever see a Caucasian guy on campus mutter “kuso” under his breath, it’s probably me.) And I like it that way…eventually, you get to the point where you do understand why some concepts are basically untranslatable.

I’m going to close with another anecdote. Over winter break I was at a friend’s house, and his mom asked if we wanted to try some of the food she was making. I accepted the bowl, took a bite, and with eager pride, declared “很好看!”

She looked at me, puzzled for a second, then said “Ah! 很好吃!” Embarassed, I nodded and started laughing. After all, what else can you do when instead of saying “tasty”, you just said the food looks good?

I’m studying abroad in France this semester, and just to keep in touch with my Russian interests, I decided to take a Russian history course. The first hour of the first class was all in French, and I was able to follow most of what was going on, as well as take notes (there have been a few classes here where I haven’t been able to take notes and still understand what’s being said). Then the second hour of class came, along with the second professor who teaches it, and suddenly everything was a blur. She started speaking in Russian, but then would switch into French to explain when the students had no idea what she was talking about, and then right back into Russian to continue with the lecture. I’d be listening, understanding Russian one minute, then not understanding Russian at all the next - because she was actually speaking French then. By the time I had switched to French, she had switched back to Russian and my brain was dizzy from trying to understand two foreign languages at once. My notes were a befuddled mess of Russian, French and a French that’s written in Cyrillic. Then to top off my mental foreign language confusion, we had a paragraph of Russian history to translate into French for homework.

Well, I thought that the homework would be the make-or-break point, and so I tried it, completely expecting to fail. I ended up translating it into English and then from English into French, because I simply can’t think in French and Russian at the same time. However, it wasn’t as terribly difficult as I expected, so I went to the second class today, thinking maybe I can do this two foreign languages at once thing after all- it might give me a better grasp on both languages.

That was my mistake. So today we had to read outloud in Russian (it felt like I was constantly making pronunciation errors, whereas the other students were speaking fluidly and fluently) and then she wanted us to translate directly into French. I was dumbstruck when she said that I should do that, but thankfully one of the French students spoke up for me and said that it would probably be kind of difficult for me to translate into French, seeing as how I’m not a native French speaker. By the end of lecture though, I felt like I was in the completely wrong place, and so I went up to the professor to ask her what she thought, if I shouldn’t take the class. Far from telling me that I should try a different level, she just said, I gave you the accents on the words, practice reading at home, and next week when I give you back your translation I’ll also give you the correct version so you can correct your errors. I’m not sure that was the answer I was hoping for…

However, in terms of studying a foreign language in a foreign language, several people now have told me that the reason it is so hard is because foreign languages are stored in the same part of the brain and so you can’t switch back and forth - there’s nowhere to switch to. It takes time to build up a truly multilingual brain, with different “compartments” for each language. I guess I’ll see if I can get my brain “organized” by the end of the semester, since the professor basically gave me the challenge, but maybe I’ll just end up so tongue-twisted by May that I won’t even be able to speak English.

Not your typical question that teases the intellect at a late hour on a rainy Saturday in Berkeley, but then is anything typical on a precipitative night? So, is Sanskrit, the language which is considered “Quite dead, really,” living on purportedly only in liturgical services or in classical literature, really, honestly, extinct?

Before I hit my teens in New Delhi, I received Sanskrit initially in somewhat low doses…during Hindu festivals like Durga Puja and Saraswati Puja, and during wedding ceremonies. During the former, we would repeat parts of the priest’s prayer recitation. During the latter, almost the entire ceremony would be conducted by the priest in Sanskrit, with the bride and groom chiming in occasionally, when instructed to do so. Even at a young age I was sensitive to the accents in which priests spoke Sanskrit: at the bare minimum, the Bengali priests’ tendency to pronounce the “v”s as “b”s and frequently add “o”s in the coda always caught my ear. Apart from religious and social ceremonies, I had very little exposure to Sanskrit, mainly in the form of little sentences we used in the home, mainly because my mother was doing a doctorate in Sanskrit, and my father picked up little introductory books in Sanskrit to show his support.

As a teen, I received intensive instruction in Sanskrit, from grades 6th through 10th, as many Indian students do. It was mandatory till grade 8, after which I elected to pursue it (with some “coaxing” from my parents). However, the texts were drawn from ancient writings, exciting in that they provided glimpses into life and beliefs in ancient India, but definitely far from immediately relevant to our modern lives. I remember the texts today as being moralistic in tone, though not in overtly religious ways. The instruction was primarily grammar-centric, which made studying Sanskrit quite easy, since its grammar is highly structured and grammatical patterns relatively predictable. After I finished my final year of Sanskrit, I came out thinking it was “deader” than I had thought.

However, in my very recent trip to India, on a trip to an orphanage, I was struck by its life. I observed little boys, mostly between the ages of 4 and 6 (1st language speakers of Bengali, and 2nd & 3rd language speakers of Hindi and English respectively) doing their prayers and singing devotional songs in Sanskrit. In the little boys’ “dealings” with Sanskrit, there is a special kind of spiritual and devotional engagement; even though it is mostly parroted and recited, and the uses confined to ritualized settings, their perception appears to be that the language is sacred, holy, but meaningful and expressive of their spirituality. Of course, due to the limited data I have, I am not sure I want to stretch this too far, but suddenly, a language I had left for dead has just…resurrected as a living force, at least in my mind. Sanskrit, for me, is not quite as dead as a dodo.

I’m inspired by Usree’s posts and will try to post a little more regularly here too…hope that others join in! I’ll get back to an old post on “Raspberry Jam” soon, but am immediately moved to write about my crash course experience in French 1 for a research project I’m involved in. It’s been a little overwhelming to be without words in this new language…

“À quel moment de la journée?”

Such reads the title in the little inset box near the beginning of Chapitre 2 in the text I was reading before starting French 1 this semester. The box introduces Vocabulaire such as: “le jour - day, daytime,” “le matin - morning, in the afternoon,” etc.

What’s less than fascinating to me about this, but probably most important in terms of getting where I need to be to just get by in French, is the vocabulary building through association that can be leveraged with this list. “Jour” is most familiar through colloquial use in English: I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “soup du jour” at a restaurant (actually it strikes me that most of the French I’m already familiar with may come from experiences in restaurants). “Matin” is totally new to me, I think, though the longer I stare at it and say it, the more it seems like maybe I’ve heard or seen it somewhere (aren’t most words like that? Nested in different memories, hanging out by themselves somewhere in the far recesses of our minds, or more out there in front, networked with more common words…). “L’après-midi” is new. Here I put a little bookmark to come back to later: what is “après”? What is “midi”? What other words do they get combined with and how are they used?

“Le soir” and “la nuit” are relatively new, but familiar in different ways—the first because I’ve already learned “Bonsoir” (is that how to spell it?) so it’s an “intra-French” association, and the second because, well, it sounds and looks enough like the English “night”. I’m sure that a lot of learning French vocabulary is going to be about remembering what’s different and how it’s different from what I’ve learned in English for 30+ years, and to a lesser degree what I can remember from high school Spanish. Kind of like finding the critical differences in pronunciation, and on the keyboard like I was writing about in my last entry

So what’s more fascinating? Well, simply that “moment” in French gets rendered as “time” (point in time), and “journée” as “day”. These are the restructurings or refigurings of meaning across the two languages that pull on so many pre-existing associations, habitual uses, and infuse forms that * look * so familiar with new meaning. It’s a feeling of both difficulty and inspiration. Like trying to brush your teeth with your other hand, or saying the alphabet backwards. Especially since the word “journée” looks so much like “journey”. Are our days really journeys? Do journeys imply ‘days’ or name them outright? Look at it: JOURney. A little light goes off in my mind as I take a step back from the English word I’ve been carrying around in my head for my whole life, never having seen the day…

Lakoff and Johnson rocked a few people’s boats in 1980 with the beginnings of cognitive metaphor theory—we all use metaphors all the time when we speak, without ever giving a second thought to it. Isn’t one of the joys and benefits of second language learning the ability to make the familiar foreign, to feel the carpet pulled out from under you and find what it takes to regain your balance? And I feel this kind of visceral pleasure a lot with metaphors. Until they get routinized, until they start to fade into the background of ‘the way things are usually said’ in that language, there’s a life between the target and source domains in at least two languages—learning new expressions makes you want to compare the source domains in the two languages, compare the target domains, and all the cross-linkages. Of course a lot of this is imagination, since I’ll be the first to say I don’t ‘speak’ or ‘know’ French right now. But this is a space to be explored, to play with in testing out the metaphor and trying out all kinds of permutations, to see if we can take ‘side paths’ through durations of time in French in this case…

Just as there’s a joy in discovering these connections (which may just as well be bunk) there’s a little sadness in thinking about losing the ‘freshness’ of being thrilled at little things like this as my French improves.

Well, no need to worry about that in the meantime. How do you say “journey” in French?

As I sit in a café at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland, I marvel at the linguistic miracle that is the modern day airport. I am thousands of miles from home, having left another linguistic wonder (Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, India) hours ago, yet a young Indian man just walked up to me, and asked in Hindi, “Wireless kaam kar raha hai, kya?” (“Is the wireless working?”). To my left, a young man is speaking tenderly on a cell phone to his wife in Bengali, and I turn away in mild embarrassment since he is speaking blissfully unaware that there is an overhearer who can actually understand the language. Minutes later, an elderly German lady asked me if bringing in outside food into the café was “verboten,” and I mumbled, “Nein” (I had just read the sign which said one could). It was interesting, because I hesitated a few seconds before answering, the “Nein” stuck in my throat momentarily, wondering first what would make her think that I spoke German. 

The Indian man assuming I spoke Hindi was, I instinctively thought, “natural“: I boarded the plane, like him, in New Delhi, have Mehendi designs all over my palms and the back of my hands, and—most importantly, with my dark hair and wheatish skin, look (I think) unmistakably Indian. The Bengali man, on the other hand, probably noticed the Mehendi and assumed I was not Bengali, since it is less common for Bengali women to stain their hands with it.

But I was stunned that beyond German borders, in Finland, the lady approached me in her mother tongue, a language she could not—on the surface, I thought (and as I write “on the surface,” I wonder what that means)—associate with me. In hindsight I think she thought her tone and the gestures she made would carry the content of her utterance; it was not, I imagine, that she thought I was a German speaker. Her reaction told me she was clearly taken aback that I responded in German.

This little interaction was illuminating for me on multiple levels. I realized that I have expectations about how others (should) recognize me linguistically. The interaction also revealed how these expectations are driven by some very surface considerations and cues (cues that I expect others to recognize, and feel baffled when they aren’t). I did not expect to be spoken to in German because I was (1) an Indian (2) at a Finnish airport. The lady’s astonishment at my response, monosyllabic as it was, showed that she also expected that I didn’t speak German (note: I don’t really “speak” German, just have high beginner knowledge of it).

I started thinking about other interesting incidents from my life which connected with the question of “linguistic assumptions.” My mother and I recently visited the Great India Palace (an Indian mall), and the elevator man addressed my mom in Bengali, without her having spoken a word. The first clue would have been that my mother wears shaakha-paula-cultural insignias that signal her Bengaliness and her marital status. Street vendors in Janpath, a traditional open-air shopping area in Delhi, are well versed in this art, of being able to guess where one’s from, and quote prices accordingly. If my mother walks in a store with me, one of the first questions someone asks is if we are “from Kolkata” (the capitol of West Bengal), a question inspired either by our “Bengali faces” or my mother’s bangles. If I walk in alone, I generally speak very colloquial Hindi, slurring my words as local Delhiites are wont to do, signaling that I am a local (a point which drives down prices by a third, generally). When I resort to English then, my accent is distinctively “Indian,” again signaling that I belong to this community. During this winter break trip to India, I did exactly that: when the vendor began by quoting an exorbitant price—for a Delhiite—I said, in the most slurred Hindi possible, “Bhaiyya, Dilliwalon ko kyon loot-te ho?” (”Brother, why do you loot Delhiites?”). The seller laughed and slashed the price to about a fourth of the original quoted. As my mother and I walked away, we began speaking in Bengali. He angrily called after us, “Arre, aap to Kalkatta se ho!” (“Hey, you are from Kolkata!”). I turned, and put on my most hurt expression, “Dilliwale Bengali nahin bolte kya?” (Don’t [some] Delhiites speak Bengali?”). Despite having spent 22 years of my life growing up in Delhi, though, I felt like I was cheating him a little bit by modifying my speech to lower the price.

There is another side to this: I still vividly recall my first week in Canada, where I went to study for a Master’s, and the serviceperson helping me open a bank account insisted that I could not have just arrived from India because I spoke English “like us.” She was quite suspicious and rude, and it wasn’t until I showed her my arrival papers and the passport with my date of entry that she relented. This has happened to me many times, and though I think most p