BENEATH THE SKYLINE

PEBLLES IN MY POCKETS (I'M SORRY, I SPEAK ENGLISH)

Deborah Good

This is how I write a column. As my deadline approaches, I begin to poke around my life for a theme—at least a vague center around which my thoughts and eventually my written words can orbit. Then I pay attention. Miraculously, my theme shows up everywhere, in all sorts of places I never noticed it before.

I pick up the bits and pieces I find and carry them with me, like pebbles in my pockets. I find them in the news, in a story from a friend over dinner, in unexpected encounters, in the miscellaneous scramble of my days. Eventually, I sit down, I spill the pebbles across the table, and I try to write.

The column you are about to read began like this.

I was in the formerly East German city of Leipzig in July. I stood taking a picture of a historic trade building when an elderly man, himself holding a camera, passed me. His facial expression told me that the words coming from his mouth were probably brilliant and witty, so I smiled back, then decided it was best to be honest. "I’m sorry," I said. "I speak English." He shrugged, a bit disappointed, and went on his way.

During my two-week visit to Germany, many people graciously spoke with me whatever English they knew (which was often quite a lot), since my entire repertoire of German vocabulary would probably fit on an index card. Other times, I was surrounded by a pool of words and stories and laughter that I did not understand.

I commented to someone over the course of my travel that I was getting tired of not understanding German, and I remember well her response: "They say that when you can’t speak a language, you lose 80 percent of your personality."

Eighty percent of my personality is wrapped up in speaking, reading, writing, and understanding words? I have mentioned this statistic to a few friends since, and all have agreed vigorously. Regardless of the validity of the 80 percent measurement, I imagine most of us who have been in situations in which we were the language-ignorant understand this feeling. We sit a bit awkwardly, trying to smile or even laugh on cue but with little idea what is going on. We feel strange. Boring. Unknown.

In the English-centered culture of the United States, it is easy to forget that English is considered a foreign language in most of the world, and indeed in many U. S. homes as well.

In the 1950s, a Muscogee Indian third grader in Oklahoma responded to her teacher’s questions as honestly as she could. "Who in this class speaks a foreign language at home?" the teacher polled her students.

I imagine the little girl raising her hand along with others in the room. "And which foreign language do you speak at home?" the teacher asked.

"English," the student responded.

In the 1950s, the girl was sent to the principal’s office for implying that English was more foreign than her native Muscogee tongue. (I gleaned this story from an article by Richard Grounds, "English Only, Native-Language Revitalization and Foreign Languages," Anthropology News, Nov. 2007, pp. 6-7).

I hope the teacher would have responded differently today. But there is evidence that little has changed in our national perspective on languages in the past six decades.

English-Only legislation at state and federal levels seeks to establish English as the official language of individual states and our country as a whole. Other policies reflecting the English-Only movement, including aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act, discourage bilingual education through rigorous standardized testing requirements.

Today’s United States, by and large, demands that all newcomers assimilate in language and culture, a process that devalues any group outside the status quo and shows no concern for the loss of identity that assimilation requires.

Native languages have also been under threat elsewhere in the world. During college, I spent several weeks in Chiapas, Mexico’s most southern state and home to indigenous groups with roots stretching back to the days of Mayan kingdoms.

The Zapatistas and other lesser-known groups in Chiapas have demanded of the Mexican society and government a clear recognition of their indigenous language and the right to provide bilingual education to their children. These groups understand that losing their native language to an onslaught of Spanish would mean losing a part of themselves.

Threats like these have anthropologists talking about "endangered languages" much the way environmentalists advocate for endangered species. They see the roots of indigenous knowledge, culture, and tradition as lying in these groups’ ability to pass down their native language from one generation to the next.

Language-based discrimination and ethnocentricism are ever-present social justice concerns well worth a piece of our consciousness.

Perhaps, you might argue, life would be simpler if everyone spoke only one language the world over. Some of our miscommunication and intercultural confusions would be avoided, you say, and you might be right. This homogeneity, however, would not only be impossible thanks to a long history of cultural evolution but would also be intolerable for one very simple reason (and this is my highly academic and sophisticated way of putting it): Languages are cool.

It is cool that even within one country, the English that evolves on the streets of Philadelphia is slightly different than that spoken on the streets of Chicago, both of which are significantly different than the English spoken in the halls of Congress.

It is cool that my mom, who was once a missionary kid in Ethiopia, still talks about her icka, an Amharic word for which there is no good English translation—except, maybe, "look at all my crap."

It is cool that certain Austronesian languages, from what I understand, have no word for the self, reflecting cultures that are more communal than my own I-me-myself way of life.

Language diversity can also keep us humble, if frustrated. This is the point of the Tower of Babel story, right? Lest you humans get too arrogant, says God, I will make sure you regularly stick your foot in your mouth when communicating cross-culturally.

The spaces where languages and cultures intersect are lively, complicated, and highly sensitive. They are ripe with both misunderstanding and bridge-building. These are spaces of utter frustration, embarrassment, profound learning, and—sometimes—hearty and (hopefully) good-natured laughter.

In Washington, D.C., I recently joined a group of travelers ready to board what we often call "the Chinatown bus" to either New York or Philadelphia. One driver stood outside of his bus, yelling out its destination: "Eel-elf! Eel-elf!"

Some of us felt the need to clarify what he meant. "Is this bus going to Philadelphia?" we asked.

"Eel-elf!" he repeated.

I decided that this indeed meant "Philadelphia," a difficult word, I imagine, for a Mandarin-speaker. I put my suitcase underneath and got onboard. Once seated, I looked up to see the familiar block, yellow letters that are at the front of every Chinatown bus I have been on: WE ARE NOT RESPONSE FOR ANY BELONGING, they read.

I smiled to myself as I leaned my head against the window, grateful for my Chinese-Only journey in my English-Only country, grateful for this life-pebble which I stuffed into my pocket and now extend, in friendship, to you.

—Deborah Good, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a Master of Social Work student at Temple University and can be reached at deborahagood@gmail.com.