My family has an inside joke that I am absolutely horrible at the Sinhala language. This has no doubt got a lot to do with the fact that I always got bad grades in the subject at school. I studied in the Sinhala medium for awhile, so while I understood a lot, my horrible grasp of the language meant I could not communicate sufficiently during exams. Concepts would swirl around in my head and I could not find the right words to translate them fast enough. Reading text was easy - my interest in looking for patterns and logical analysis usually meant I had a good idea of what the question asked and I often knew the answer but I never knew how to say it.
For awhile there my grades dropped. Hence the assumption that I was horrible at the language. However, I am someone who was born into a family who almost always spoke English. My first language was English. It wasn't till my sister came along that we started as a family speaking Sinhala more and by then I was three and a half years old. I had started speaking at the age of one and my basic communication patterns had been set, imprinted, dealt with. My sister, however, seemed to catch on and became more bilingually efficient.
A few years later, I went to school where I was the only person whose first language was not Sinhala or Tamil. The teachers took a lot of pains to teach the basics of English grammar and vocabulary but in the other languages they did not feel a need to do so. The assumption was that the children knew as much they needed to know about these languages because they spoke them at home, at school, everywhere. So I floundered and for a long time understood words but had a very basic vocabulary that I could recall - most of it slang and therefore useless when I was called upon to write an essay in formal Sinhala.
There was no way I could be expected to pass the Local Ordinary Level and Advanced Level examinations at a time when there was no option to take them in English other than switching schools and taking the London examinations instead. I switched schools and swapped mediums.
Now years later, I have been away from home for eight years. I have lived in society that requires me to communicate in a variant of English. I have rarely had an opportunity to speak Sinhala. I have more opportunities to speak a language such as Japanese rather than I do French, Sinhala or Dutch.
So I am amazed that when I do go home, that I can remember words. I can recall my grammar much better and more vocabulary now than I could when I was in school. It isn't absolutely perfect and it probably never will be. I have friends who know three to four languages and I envy them because I don't think you can adequately learn a language in a classroom, you need to be using it and you must have a need to do so before you become fluent. I look at my friends and think that they must be lucky, they must have had such opportunities or perhaps more determination or dedication than I ever had. I wonder if they ever realise how lucky they are.
I do wish I had someone who speaks French, someone who speaks Dutch, someone who speaks Japanese and someone who speaks Sinhala more or less on a daily basis fluently. Even if I floundered at the start, I could then practice. I could improve and perhaps then I would no longer require my brain cells to work faster and hesitate before finding the right words to say.
My desire to learn languages comes from a desire to communicate. Just as my interests are varied simply because I want to be able to strike up a conversation about anything with anyone, I would like to do so in other languages. It's not enough for me anymore to rely on context, logic, pattern recognition and an interest in etymology to read and interpret other languages, I want to dredge words up and use them. I want to be able to play around with them, the way I can with English. My inner child finds this ability to play with words fun and so I want more toys to do it with.
In the meantime, I am still the butt of the family's jokes. In English, of course.
- Marisa Wikramanayake
Comments (3)
LOL I can understand what you say...
But if you want someone to speak in Japanese, I'm here! I admit I'm far from being fluent in Japanese, but I can handle it... Well I have to.
Cheers!
http://sachtheone.blogspot.com
This is almost exactly like me = ) I always feel that I read your posts!
growing up, I was exposed to a lot of different languages, but never really took the time to learn them. i speak two languages, english and foreign. its a jumble of spanish, french, japanese, thai, vietnamese, mandarin ...
I'm always surprised at how much I start to learn when I'm pushed into it. Mandarin words from my youth start popping back into my head. Of course, a few days away from it, and I'm back to my inability to understand anything.
You're a good step ahead of me.