Tongues untied

Living in a foreign country allows one a degree of immersion in that society. Residing somewhere like Dubai - a city that is widely considered a distinctive product of globalisation and a model for the proverbial ‘melting pot' that the world has become today - it is clear that not every nationality of the world can operate in isolation. As a result, we have had to adapt to these changes.

Cultures of the world and their associated languages no longer exist in a vacuum. The world is changing, and our understanding of culture needs to be malleable if we are to deal with these continual shifts accordingly. Flexibility in our thinking and a broadening of cultural understanding is vital. The need to see the world from many angles has become more and more pressing with the onset of globalisation. We are indeed living in an ‘Age of Migration'.

A South African speaking Urdu

Ricki Van Rensburg hops into the front seat and shuts the taxi door behind him. I jump into the back. He asks the taxi driver where he's from, to which he replies, "India." Van Rensburg claps his hands in delight and proceeds to rattle who-knows-what in excited, and very rapid, Urdu.

The taxi driver is gobsmacked. He cannot believe that this English-speaking South African in Dubai - who is in his taxi and has spent no time whatsoever in the Subcontinent - speaks his language.

He also cannot believe that the 22-year-old learnt his mother tongue in the space of three years while living in Dubai, and simply because he wanted to converse better in his job as a site manager.

What follows in the taxi is the most entertaining taxi trip I have ever had. The taxi driver is in hysterics as Van Rensburg yells a greeting in Urdu to our neighbouring taxi driver at the traffic lights, who replies with the same baffled and incredulous codfish expression.

The two are chatting away in the front seats, oblivious to my presence. Pretty soon Van Rensburg is winding up a local Indian radio station and the two are belting out the lyrics together.

A picture is hanging from our driver's rear-view mirror. Van Rensburg examines it and makes some comment to which the driver collapses with mirth. This is then followed by a slightly awkward silence. [Van Rensburg later tells me that he'd told him what a beautiful wife he had, when the picture was in fact of our driver's dear mother!]

They drop me off at my destination, and whiz off into the distance, the Hindi music trailing behind them, with Van Rensburg's arm waving wildly in the air in only slightly ridiculous dance movements. I later discovered that they had swapped phone numbers and headed off to grab some dal and porota together at a roadside restaurant.

Van Rensburg says that he picked up Urdu by listening to language tapes and by simply being around Urdu-speaking people a lot at work.

"Because I am constantly working with Urdu speakers, I wanted to learn the language so as to improve communication with my staff. It really has improved my communication with my colleagues and has helped eliminate a lot of miscommunication associated errors in my work."

As with any new language, the beginning stages were by no means easy, and Van Rensburg says he often felt embarrassed when initially trying to use the language and achieve the correct pronunciation. But by spending time with native speakers every day, and by insisting that they spoke their native tongue to him, he says that he began using it every chance he got - both on and off site.

"People who are native Urdu speakers are always impressed and become instantly more friendly and talkative when I approach them in their language," he says. "I have become far more interested in their specific culture since learning the language as I feel more comfortable asking questions. People seem more open to speak to me when I speak in Urdu as opposed to English.

"People are always eager to teach me new words, and I've had several requests to visit people at their homes and meet their families as a result of my new language acquisition. Funnily, I've even had people wanting to have photos with me so that they can show their friends that they met a white South African who speaks a language widely spoken in the Subcontinent.

"Speaking Urdu has allowed me to open doors and ask questions that I would not have been able to ask before," he says.

He has a somewhat different take to others when it comes to language and culture, in that he believes that they don't affect each other too much.

"Communication is universal, and we all speak about the same things in the same way; the only difference seems to be the sounds made to create meaning. I think that body language is far more related to culture, and it tells us a lot more than the spoken word. I also think that language is affected by culture and not culture by language."

He says that his views shaped his learning and understanding of the language, as well as his interaction in Urdu. "To an extent, my personal world views have influenced my learning because I learnt a language in order to learn more about the culture and foster stronger relationships with the people. Learning a foreign language so different from my mother tongue has shown me how similar people are, regardless of the country they come from, the language they speak and the culture to which they belong."

A New Zealander speaking Japanese

Travis Taiaroa, a Kiwi pilot in Dubai, saw his friends' jaws drop when he answered a phone call in fluent Japanese. Many don't know that ten years ago he worked as a Japanese speaking tour guide in Japan. In the time that he lived there he became fluent in the language, and consequently gained greater perspective of the associated culture.

Taiaroa had a bit of background in Japanese before moving to Japan. While most people opted to learn French or German as a second language in New Zealand, Taiaroa was drawn to Japanese. "I just wanted to do something different. My original thought was that it would help me to get a great job with a Japanese multinational company," he says.

"Learning a language can be a lot of fun in that it opens up social opportunities and makes travelling to that country a lot more rewarding," he says. "You also get to meet a lot of people when taking a language course."

Learning to read and write Japanese is very time-consuming, says Taiaroa. Also, as with most languages, trying to understand native speakers is difficult at first as they always speak too fast.

"The best way to learn is to put yourself in a situation where you are forced to communicate in the foreign language," he says. "Move to the country where the language is spoken and find yourself a family to live with who don't speak your language. I lived with a Japanese family for a year and learned a lot just by living day-to-day with them."

Taiaroa says that even if you are surrounded by the language every day, it is important to find a good teacher you can turn to when you don't understand something.

"I generally found that native speakers of English who had attained proficiency in Japanese were better at explaining grammatical points than native Japanese [who were of course better at Japanese], but not as good at explaining grammar," he says.

Television, he advises, is a good way to increase one's exposure to a language. "I learned a lot watching American comedy shows dubbed in Japanese," he recalls.

"Don't be afraid to make mistakes," he says. "If you are unsure how to use a particular word, use it anyway and if everyone laughs, then you know you've used it incorrectly, but you learn through these mistakes. If no one laughs, then you know that you are using it correctly. Carry a notebook at all times and if you hear a word over and over during the day, write it down and look it up in the dictionary before you go to bed."

Taiaroa says that the difference in response when making an effort to speak a local language is tremendous. "In Japan, most Japanese are at first surprised when you speak to them in Japanese, and are then relieved when they realise that they don't have to try to recall their high school English! Most Japanese are appreciative of any efforts you make to learn their native language. They are very patient and encouraging. If you are in a group you often become the centre of attention as they are all eager to get your opinion of Japanese culture. ‘Do you like sushi?' is a common first question…

"As your language ability improves, you are naturally able to contribute a lot more in a social situation. Early on you are more on the sidelines as you struggle just to follow the conversation. The next stage is understanding what everyone is talking about and the last step is to actually summon the courage to speak up."

Taiaroa says that there are few stereotypes about the Japanese language because it is quite an insular society. As Japanese is only spoken in the one island country, he has found that the knowledge of the language outside its borders is minimal.

However, the one common perception of the language that he often hears is that it is very difficult to learn. This, he maintains, is not wholly true. "Japanese grammar is a lot more structured than English," he explains. "The nouns are not divided between masculine and feminine as in French. There is no definite or indefinite article and verbs are almost always regular. Pronunciation is surprisingly easy; most people will not find it difficult.

"Sentence structure is a bit strange at the beginning for English speakers as the verb comes at the end of the sentence, but you get used to that pretty quickly.

"It is obviously a challenge to speak at the level of a native speaker as there are a few intricacies with honorific forms of verbs when speaking to elders and superiors, and some different forms when speaking to children or animals, and I won't even start about regional dialects! However, to get to a level where you can communicate effectively is not too difficult. Learning to write two of the three scripts - hiragana and katakana - doesn't take too much time, but learning Chinese characters [which make up the majority of written Japanese] is difficult and very time-consuming," he says.

Taiaroa believes that cultural involvement is a significant aspect of language learning that should dovetail with language acquisition. During his time in Japan he stayed in traditional Japanese inns, took part in traditional aspects of day-to-day Japanese life and conversed with a huge variety of people throughout the country, which, he says, would have been very difficult if he hadn't had a knowledge of the language. He believes that the relationship between language and culture is inextricably connected in that "language opens the door to a better understanding of culture".

Did his personal world views influence his learning of the Japanese language and his interactions in the culture? "It was more the other way round," he says. "My learning of a second language and culture influenced my world view in that I realised that despite worldwide cultural differences, the vast majority of people in the world just want to be happy and do well for themselves, their families and their countries. Rather than language reflecting your understanding of the world, I think it enhances your understanding of the world."

Theoretically speaking

Many believe that it is possible to tap into a cultural identity by learning another language. Middlesex University Dubai's Sally Potgieter, an applied linguist and lecturer, believes that this is absolutely possible.

"Cultural identities are not fixed; they are multiple and fluid. Therefore, there will be an exchange of ideas and understandings and these will impact on your idea of who you are, and thus will become part of your cultural identity," she explains.

Professor Florence Myles, director at the Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences at Newcastle University in the UK, agrees: "Learning a foreign language gives you access to different cultures and ways of thinking, which are not easily available without a good knowledge of the foreign language. The way in which the different languages express things in different ways is often a window into different cultural practices and views of the world."

There are many ways of learning foreign languages that can all be effective. "Some people seem to be better at studying the language first, then putting what they have learnt into practice; others prefer to learn by doing," Myles says. "The most important thing might be to be willing to ‘have a go', without worrying too much about mistakes, as it's important to use the language for real communication as much as possible."

Outside influences

Words are not neutral, and when you learn a new language, you learn much more than how to converse. "Culture is transmitted, represented and shaped by language, therefore learning a language inevitably means learning a culture," says Potgieter. "Language is never neutral - it is always socially and politically embedded."

Foreign language learning is also affected by the paradigms and principles of the learner's native culture. "Hopefully there is an interchange of ideas and practices which shape the native's paradigms," says Potgieter. "Maybe not linguistically immediately, but social, personal and political paradigms and principles will shape future language exchanges."

Myles agrees, adding, "The learner will tend to assume initially that everything in his/her own language and culture has a direct equivalent in other languages and cultures. It is only through learning the foreign language that s/he will come to realise that, in fact, this is very often not the case, and that different cultures express things in very different ways, or focus on very different aspects of what might be construed as similar situations."

The process of learning

Multilingual speakers do not have separate language units in the brain; they are intermixed, and speakers draw on multiple discourses and language knowledge to work out new understandings, says Potgieter. Human behaviour such as perception, cognition, language and communication cannot help but be influenced by several factors, which, she says, are social factors more than cultural. "One's primary discourse and language structure does influence one's future language use," she says.

There seem to be universal features of perception and cognition, but the way in which they are realised in different languages varies, and it has been argued that this shapes the way in which we perceive things. Myles offers a few examples: "The way in which colours are expressed in different languages can vary, with some languages having a great many different labels and others just a few. This can make it difficult for people to distinguish the difference between colours which might seem different to us, but which to them are just variations of the same colour. Similarly, the way in which we express time, or plurality, can vary between languages, and make some aspects of the world more or less salient to us."

Renowned theorist Noam Chomsky proposed a theory that humans are equipped with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) - an ‘organ' of the brain that is supposed to function as a congenital device for learning language.

He asserted that humans are born with the instinct or "innate facility" for acquiring language, an ability that was long thought to be stronger in children. Yet to what degree does our LAD affect our ability for language acquisition? How do we learn a language? This is a phenomenon that has been mulled over extensively in linguistics.

"There is no clear answer to this question yet," says Myles. "Although, after a few years living in a foreign country, children tend to outperform adults and become indistinguishable from native speakers, there are some adults who also manage to become native-like." In fact, says Myles, teenagers and adults are quicker and better at learning languages at the beginning than young children, but the latter catch up after a while. And whereas adults often stop short of native-like competence, children rarely do. "It remains unclear whether this is due to learning mechanisms being different, or to the fact that adults have already developed a strong cultural identity - intrinsically linked to their native language - and retaining an accent means holding on to this different identity; in other words, they do not want [subconsciously, of course] to sound English because they are not, and sounding like English native speakers would mean giving up their ‘Spanishness' or ‘Turkishness' for example, which is an important part of their identity," Myles explains.

Can a foreign language be learned in isolation from the culture associated with it? Many argue that it is implicit to address the culture of the community in which the language is used, and that culture should be taught in a language course. But how and why are language and culture related? "We learn about our culture through language as we grow up, and our culture shapes the way in which we use language," says Myles. "Studying languages and translating from one to the other constantly throws up the fact that language is a reflection of our culture, and that our culture is embodied in our language, often making it difficult or even impossible to keep the meaning of the original in a translation." Potgieter advocates that cultural, emotional and political ties make culture and language inseparable, in that "language is the most primary way of representing these aspects," says Potgieter.

Myles, however, contests this belief to some degree: "I would not go so far as to say that they are inseparable: many immigrants learn to function in a different language, and take on many of the cultural and political references of the country they live in," says Myles. "We are constantly reshaping our identity as we travel through life, and the relationship and balance between different aspects of our emotional, cultural, political and linguistic lives are constantly renegotiated."

Culture is not a catalogue

Culture has thus become increasingly convoluted, compounded by the phenomenon of globalisation. As a result, one cannot restrict the definition of culture to a catalogue of rituals and beliefs. Yet explaining culture remains something of an enigma as, being constantly malleable, it defies a clear-cut definition.

Culture is a way of seeing and expressing the world at many different levels, explains Myles. "As with identity, culture is not static or given, but in constant evolution, and is constantly being reshaped by individuals and societies. It is not necessarily tied in with language or nation in a very direct way," she adds. Language holds a fine line when it comes to affecting socialisation within a group, as it is integral in constructing belonging and exclusion. Language is absolutely crucial to socialisation, which cannot take place without effective communication.

"We could say it's a prerequisite," says Myles. "After that, lots of other factors come into play which might facilitate or inhibit the socialisation process, such as race, gender, social class and so on."

Straddling cultures

Is there a danger that in opening a door to accommodate one culture, an individual can become stranded between two doors, unable to get into either one? Myles stipulates no; one can most certainly accommodate other cultures, and it is important to understand that there are other ways of seeing the world. In other words, we should not let our own culture get in the way of seeing things afresh.

"I myself am French but have lived in England for a long time," Myles adds. "I grew up and was educated in France, but England is where I have brought up my children and pursued a career. I feel at home in both countries, but I would never claim I am English, nor do I feel I am completely French, having left the country so long ago and created my home and family in another country. So I would say I am both or neither French or English, but I see this as a richness rather than a handicap."

Labels and language elitism

Certain stereotypes have come to be associated with certain languages: there is a pecking order in that languages are related to social standing. English is still considered the language of commerce; French has a cultural edge; Sanskrit is considered archaic while Greek remains classical. Language elitism has arisen over history, with these characteristics and stereotypes attributed and often enforced by dominating world powers.

This is largely historical, representing the impact those languages and cultures have had upon the world at large, Myles says. "But the elitism of languages is not only a Western concept," she adds. "In some cultures, speaking two, three, four or even more languages on a daily basis is common place. Even in those places, languages often have a very distinct domain, with high prestige attached to the language of education or religion, and low prestige to the language of family life. People will often believe that the language they speak at home is somehow ‘inferior', a ‘dialect' or a ‘simplified' language. This is not the case, however: those languages are just as complex and sophisticated as the rest of the world's languages."

Potgieter disagrees with the description of Dubai being characterised as a melting pot in that, "today, everyone is expected to learn English. A true melting pot would be where there is equal power and status for all language groups, which is not wholly realistic given that the US and UK hold such powerful influences. English has power and status and, despite resistance, is bringing about language death in many places in the world."

An individual's world view has a major impact on their learning and understanding of foreign languages and cultures, says Myles. "Someone who is insular in their outlook on the world will have little interest in learning other languages. Someone who grows up in a context where foreign languages are seen as of little value and importance, as ‘everyone in the world speaks English', is starting at a disadvantage. Someone who thinks that their own language and culture is somehow ‘superior' to other languages and cultures is similarly unlikely to want to invest time and effort in second language learning. On the other hand, someone who is growing up in a multicultural and multilingual environment, and who engages in that environment regularly, will take for granted the fact that languages and cultures co-exist and interact."

Watching Van Rensburg chorusing in the taxi and Taiaroa chatting animatedly over sushi, one cannot help but be envious of their language abilities.

Even though certain things may get lost in translation, their scope of the world is that much wider. They are undeniably all the better for their knowledge, as is the world for their contribution to cultural understanding.

At the root of it: why learn?

There are many different motivations for learning a language. They are usually classified as either instrumental or integrative, Myles explains. "Instrumental motivation is when you learn the foreign language in order to achieve a goal which is not language learning itself; for example, you might learn a language in order to pass an exam which will give you entry to university, or you might learn a language in order to get a better job or to get promoted. An integrative motivation is when you learn the language because you are intrinsically interested in that language and culture. You like its people and you want to become part of its culture. In reality, for a lot of people, both types of motivation are present to varying degrees."

How you speak

The extent to which phonetics and accent play a role has long been debated. To some extent, one categorises people according to their accent, pronunciation and inflections. Linguist Sally Potgieter reflects that, "The teacher needs to be sensitive to language varieties. Understanding and constructing meaning is important, so if meaning is impeded there should be explicit work on pronunciation. However, the idea is not to make the student a standard speaker, but rather to value the varieties while ensuring that clarity is achieved."

Accent is very often what gives people away as foreigners, even if they speak or write very well. What's more, it seems to be the aspect of speaking a second language that most points out the native language of the speaker.

Professor Florence Myles offers an example: "We can easily tell a French speaker of English through the way in which s/he pronounces the ‘th' sound in ‘the' or ‘thin', or a German speaker who will tend to say the sound ‘w' in for example ‘way' as ‘vay'. Other aspects of language are difficult, for example the use of masculine and feminine nouns in languages like Spanish or Italian, especially for learners who do not have this distinction in their native language (like English). However, a foreign accent seems to be what is most difficult to eradicate, although there is a lot of variation between individuals."

Do's and dont's

Professor Florence Myles from Newcastle University offers a few tips on language learning and speaking

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