Thursday, March 7, 2013
Growing up with my parents in the American southwest, I was born and raised to speak English. But I also had exposure to another language. When I would visit my papou (grandfather), he would try to teach me Greek. He would tell me Greek stories, and try to teach me the meanings of Greek words, and show me how English words also come from Greek meanings. After several such visits, I was intrigued by the new and special language of my ancestors. I asked my father if he would allow me to take classes in Greek, or if he would buy me software that would help me learn. He would not allow it. He said that if I wanted to learn another language, it should be Spanish, because it would be much more useful to me later in life. I argued with him, but to no avail. I was determined, however, to lean Greek despite my father's reaction. I reasoned that I could take it in high school if I waited a couple years. So I did. But when the time came to register for classes, I discovered there were very limited options for languages at my high school. Either Spanish or French. Defeated, I took Spanish, because it would be "more useful." I excelled at Spanish without any difficulty, but I wish I could have learned Greek. This made me feel restricted. This restriction shows the importance of literacy. To be able to pursue the intellectual avenues that I desire is a freedom that I was denied when I was a child. I hope to pick up Greek someday soon, but for now, I am forced to stick to more practical matters.
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I, too, learned Spanish as a second language throughout middle school and high school. I would say at times I found it challenging because of all the odd cases where certain rules are broken. However, I was told that imagine learning English. There are thousands of exceptions to the rules in my native language. I was blessed with a high school that offered several different languages. One of the other popular languages, was Latin. I am not sure how close it is to Greek, but the students in my high school that took that route said it helps build your vocabulary because you learn roots that mean the same thing in Latin as in English. This was not enough to change my mind because I had already began to learn Spanish, but I had no idea what kind of a ride I was in for in making my decision. My last year of Spanish was defiantly the hardest because we focused more on writing papers and being able to fluently communicate. In the long run, I am glad that I learned Spanish. I still have a lot to learn in the language because I am definitely not fluent in it. I think a long trip out of the country could easily fix this problem.
ReplyDeleteWanting to know the language of your ancestors and not being able to is a very frustrating thing. I experience this with my mother's side of the family, although it was with the Spanish language. I took Spanish all throughout middle and high school and learned a great deal but not to the extent that I wish. Even though my mother was bilingual in both Spanish and English she never really pushed Spanish on me as much as English and I believe that this rose from her bitterness of what she had to go through in order to overcome the language barrier and learn the English language when she first came to this country. In whichever case, I hope that you can someday rise above this frustrating situation and learn Greek someday, bringing you closer to your heritage, just as I hope to become more fluent in Spanish.
ReplyDeleteCuriosity certainly plays an important role in learning. Unfortunately, as you point out, there's always the debate of curiosity vs. practicality. I remember the same argument being made against taking Latin when I was in high school. However, I also think that it's important for children to be encouraged to explore their own interests to some extent.
ReplyDeleteAs AndreaGrace points out, perhaps resistance to teaching children a family language relates to the parents' and grandparents' experiences with being forced to learn English and to disregard one's native tongue? Some of my parents' generation refrained from teaching their children Spanish because it was frowned upon when the parents were in school. Then, the children reached high school and the parents discovered Spanish being offered as a "foreign language" option. What was once "familiar" became "foreign." It's almost like a pendulum swinging back and forth from generation to generation.
What Candace said on the ongoing struggle between curiosity and practicality seems to sum that all up well. I'm an economics major and as such they teach us that there are no solutions, only trade offs. With the limited time we have, unfortunately we have to choose between things. The ability to obtain everything we want is rarely realistic. Within these bounds, I see where your grandfather was coming from but it definitely would stink to be resricted from something you sincerely wanted to learn.
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