Namibians speak over a dozen languages as their home/family/traditional/native languages, and some of those branch out into multiple dialect forms. Under German administration, from the late 19th century into the 19-teens, German was the unifying language; under South African administration, from the early 20th century until 1990, Afrikaans was the official language of government and the most common in business (the bigger businesses, not village stores and local taxis and such). When Namibia won her independence, the new government re-considered. Both German and Afrikaans stirred resentment in many, and there was no way one or even two indigenous languages (Afrikaans is kind-of indigenous; it's a localized version of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch) could be pegged as the official language without stirring other forms of resentment. South Africa's post-apartheid government went with eleven official languages, but the Namibians chose just one: English.
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| Eleventh graders, ambitious for improvement. |
For some of the older people with whom I've talked, the transition felt difficult and maybe stirred some resentment of yet another kind, though mild. They'd been talking Afrikaans all their lives, and were proud of their mastery of that language, and blammo, they were told they had to learn English. The transition in the schools wasn't easy, either; there were few teachers qualified to teach English and a generation or so of learners had to muddle through as best they could. (The first Peace Corps volunteers in Namibia, a few months after independence, were English teachers.)
Today, if you visit, you'll meet many people skilled in English, especially in the tourism and hospitality industries. If you visit my small desert town, built from scratch in the 1970s to serve as a home to miners from all over, you'll find some contention at public meetings over which languages should be spoken. Lots of people, meeting me, admired my most excellent English and asked for help with theirs; a couple were especially concerned that their accents weren't like mine. (One told me I spoke much better English than most Americans, and then imitated a typical American accent: it was a horrifying mush of gabbled glottals. Overall, they don't like us eliding our ts into ds.)
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| The world map came in handy for English, too. Thanks, K&K! |
So I started an English improvement class. I loved this. I built a slide deck, inspired by English Teaching Forum magazine and my own PC Afrikaans lessons. We started each lesson with a bunch of vocabulary around a particular theme, and then had conversations to use the not-always-new words and related concepts. There was homework with each class: read a sample paragraph and then write one of your own. People were really good about doing the assignments. For the last class, we read a brief essay together and discussed it. I tried to get everyone engaged and physically active in each session, in keeping with recommendations for adult education.
I started the class with the reminder that English has many dialects, and none of them is better or worse than another. I speak standard American English, my friend Val speaks standard British English, there's Black American and Australian rules English, and Hinglish and Spanglish and Namlish. Your accent is fine, and I'll try to remember that Namlish trends more to the British English and say 'colour' not 'color.' Ha ha. 'Petrol' not 'gas,' 'trousers' not 'pants.' Then I shared some words that few Namibians I know understood: noon, chilly, grab and darn. And then tried to sort out the lasting confusion between 'lend' and 'borrow.' Then we had just enough time for greetings; please stand up and say variations on hello to each other. "Now you're meeting a good friend you haven't seen for years." "Now you're meeting an important politician."
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| Chilly is less than cold. Chile is a country, and chili is a pepper. |
Session two was weather, which generated one of the best moments of all time. Me: "These are words we don't use much here. 'Humid.' 'Humidity.' Does anyone know what that means?" Eleventh-grade girl, raising a tentative hand: "Is it... the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere?" Me: "Um. Yes." I had photos on the screen of some DC-area friends running on a warm July afternoon, and I tried to explain to them what humidity feels like. I'm not sure they could relate.
Then we had feelings and senses, and after that, parts of the body and describing people. Session five was food, built around the 'healthy plate' model for good nutrition. Then we did budgeting, including idioms like 'nest egg' and 'tighten your belt.' Session seven was on HIV and AIDS prevention and care, and I shall write specifically about that in a future post. Health volunteer A. came to town to help me, bringing her 17 steps for how to put on a condom.
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| For the food class, I ripped up a grocery circular and handed out the pieces. Everyone chose a food on his or her piece and discussed it briefly: why they like it or don't, how they cook it, when they eat it. This was a fun exercise. |
The final session was my favorite. We sat in a circle and took turns reading, paragraph by paragraph, a beautiful 'Lives' column from the New York Times Magazine. (Thanks, K&K!) It's the story of an emigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and his early weeks settling in to a small town in western Massachusetts, and in about 900 words it flows gently from cozy home to sweaty work, "I was young and happy", to recollection of his dad's murder in Burundi, "I was grateful just to be where I was," to a night bike ride home past the woods, a police stop and some confusion around English, "To get home to my wife and child -- that was all I wanted." It closes with a bachelor's degree within reach, training for the National Guard, and, "the police never bothered me again. Instead... they sometimes slowed down, turned on the light for a second and made that little whoop sound. I started to like it when they did that. I was new to the United States, and this was a kind of hello." This felt like a perfect piece for our class: relatable, beautifully written but with accessible vocabulary, and evocative of a range of emotions that help demonstrate the power of language, and enable a degree of empathy that connects us with language. I want more of these!
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| Condom class was pretty good, too. More later. |
I'm planning to start an English reading and conversation group in January. Send me stories if you come across any you think would work.
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