38 posts tagged “languages”
- Its portrayal of the immigrant integration challenge: the mother, a low-skilled Finnish immigrant to Gothenburg in Sweden in the 1980's, doesn't speak any Swedish and cannot understand her surroundings, and
- The tackling of the situations a kid growing with two languages and cultures can face: supporting her parents in the local community and being harassed for her background.
A few weeks ago we were fortunate enough to visit Stockholm, to finally see Nortec Collective live. Nedless to say, we jumped around like crazy and enjoyed the gig immensely, especially since instead of Banda samples they actually had live musicians backing them up (who played an encore of their own). We even ended up backstage with them after the gig, and naturally welcomed them to come to the Helsinki Festival whenever they could.
It was a very welcome pause, and it was nice to see that Stockholm still looks the same. An interesting note was that everybody spoke to me in Swedish (even though I had a tejana on most of the time), while that seldom happens in Finland with or without funny hats.
The funniest part of this event is that I probably understand more about Europe and Europeans than your average person hereabouts. After all, I've studied their languages and cultures for many years, and have lived here for a few.
There were two very interesting tidbits for me when they had this stand in Kamppi: I could read and understand more than 8 squares in this poster, which was surprising, and I was able to fill their test on European languages with full marks in under 2 minutes... and I'm not even European.
Yes, of course it did. The structure of the city is typically American, built around the car, and of course the American and Texan flags fly everywhere you look. Furthermore, you will find that Texans are very, very proud of their heritage and to be respected, of course.
However, in a recent visit to San Antonio I was surprised by the huge Mexican influence in the place, as can be seen in the photo to the right and in these other two. I was also rather impressed by the Spanish-language proficency of people not of Hispanic descent, and the amount of Hispanics in the city was quite large. I was wondering if it was always like this given its geographic location or if this is a recent change.
When I was a high school student in Mexico, some of our classes had to do with the different characteristics of our North American neighbours, so I had some understanding on Canadian multiculturalism. However, I was pleasantly suprised in my visit to Vancouver when I basically didn't feel like a foreigner there, as they're very much used to people of varied appearance and culture, and their approach tends to be curious and inquisitive rather than hostile or uneasy.
There were three instances where their approach to multiculturalism showed through.
- The first one was on TV, where you had an Islamic preacher in one channel and a Christian in the next, both speaking English.
- Then they had a report in the CBC about their transmissions of the Stanley Cup, a quintessentially Canadian sports event... in Punjabi. I wondered if the Finnish Hockey World Cup games would ever be broadcast in Somali or, God spear me ;-), Russian.
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Finally, there was the Terry Fox Memorial at BC Place. What struck me was not only the story behind it, but the fact that their advertising includes the face of a girl of slightly Asian features. Given that Finnishness seems to be rooted in ethnicity that was a very refreshing, and at the same time sad detail, as I thought that in the end it would be easier for people like me to be Canadian than Finnish even though I've never even lived there. Somebody has to be the pioneer, though ;-).
Surgeon general warning: if you get easily offended please skip this post. Move along.
I guess it is true that one of the first things people want to learn when starting a new language is the profanity... which in my case caused a couple of hilarious situations, as I came to Finland being able to utter only "kiitos" (thanks) and "perkele" (a general swearword of very strong intensity).
One of my first encounters with other vocabulary was in the public transport. I used to live in a rather bad area (for the standards here) of east Helsinki and for a long time I would hear teenagers finishing their sentences with something that sounded like "tu". Something like "Yadda yadda yadda tu, yadda tu. Tu, tu, tu". Further down the line I understood that they meant "vittu" (cunt, but used as the local alternative to fuck).
Then came the summer, and a game called mölkky. The problem was that I had some difficulty with Finnish frontal vowels (ä, ö, y), which led to me referring to it as mulkku (prick). Hilarity ensued.
Enough said. ;-)
However, on the other hand, when watching TV at my hotel, of 40 channels none of them was in Spanish. They didn't even have Telemundo or Univisión. Nevermind international channels, in Spanish or otherwise.
Aún cuando estoy a favor de la diversidad lingüística (mascullando ocho idiomas no podría ser de otra manera), estoy de acuerdo con lo que hace algún tiempo posteó Martín Varsavsky en cuanto es muy difícil estar al tanto de lo que pasa en el mundo sin saber manejarse en inglés.
Me explico: alguna vez una persona que conozco me hizo burla cuando dije que tenía días sin hablar español y que en la oficina muy pocos lo hablaban, pero la verdad es que, con todo y que somos alrededor de 400 millones de hispanoparlantes, es muy poco probable que lo hables si no lo aprendiste de pequeño. Ahondando en el tema, nos damos cuenta que la mayoría de los nuevos conocimientos generados en la mayoría de las ciencias y en buena parte de las artes se diseminan en tal idioma, que es el que tiene mayor audiencia.
Si a eso añadimos que una importante sección del entretenimiento que consumimos también tiene sus orígenes en culturas de habla inglesa, significa que al esperar traducciones al español nos encontramos con una situación similar a tratar de ver las cosas con anteojos de cristal esmerilado. Vaya, que incluso tenemos problemas para saber porqué actores de origen hispanoparlante han tenido tanto éxito en el mundo angloparlante si no podemos ser testigos de las razones.
No quiero que se malinterprete, no abogo por el abandono de nuestras raíces y de nuestra lengua (al contrario, la sigo conservando en el entorno familiar y no tengo la menor intención de dejarla), mas no puedo quedarme con los brazos cruzados cuando soy testigo de lo que nos estamos perdiendo por no "entrarle al quite". El inglés es el latín de nuestra época aunque no nos guste. "De tripas, corazón".
La Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura ha lanzado el año internacional de los idiomas, en el que habrá varias actividades para promocionar el concepto de la diversidad lingüística.
Esperemos no se queden sólo en buenas intenciones, aunque es un hecho que hay miles de idiomas que estána punto de extinguirse, dada la falta de hablantes.
