Languages I Have (Sort of) Learned—Final Episode: Bengali

 

Another door of opportunity opened for me—teaching in Bangladesh. When I announced my new teaching job to my family, they looked at me and asked, “Where’s that?” We have heard about Bangladesh on clothing labels, but it was another country we were not familiar with.

Upon opening an atlas, and after some research, I have learned that Bangladesh:

• The country is in the eastern part of India, close to Myanmar.
• It was earlier known as East Pakistan until the country fought for its independence (through civil war).
• It is largely known for its textile and cloth production.
• The religions are Muslim (89%), Hindu (10%), and Christians and Theravada-Hinayana Buddhists (1%).
• The language spoken is Bengali (also known as Bangla).

To prepare for my new job posting, I prepared myself by listening to Bengali language tapes just so I could familiarize with the language.

Soon the day came when I flew to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where other teachers like me were picked up at the airport and brought to an apartment in the capital city. The sights, sounds, exotic fragrances, and locals in their saris and other ethnic dress pressed into our senses.

I worked at a Canadian school in Dhaka for one school year as a prekindergarten teacher with another team teacher who taught in the next classroom. Being an introvert who steps back and watches her environment before joining in, it took me a few months to get adjusted to the overwhelming environment, not to mention the warm, humid climate. It took me a while, but I came to interact with some of the locals.

The staff at the school—those who managed, cleaned, maintained, and secured the school property. I was approached a few times with the question, “Sina?” (I later learned that they were asking if I was Chinese because of my East Asian features).

Because I taught in a Canadian school where we spoke English, I did not learn Bengali (or Bangla as the locals called it) as much as I would have liked despite my ten months living in Dhaka. However, I love the people there. The local staff who took care of the school building, the rickshaw drivers who became regular drivers (if not, guides) for me who took me to local shops, the Muezzin’s voice calling local Muslims to prayer, and those I have befriended during my stay (some who opened their homes to let me celebrate Eid with their families).

Would I want to learn Bengali properly? To be honest, I am not sure. But if God is willing, and I had another chance to meet those who have been kind to me during my stay, I would like to learn enough to say, “Thank you for all that you have done. Your generosity and kindness have been an encouragement to me while living in Dhaka. God bless you.”

Languages I Have Learned—Episode 5: Mongolian (Part II)

My weekly Mongolian helped me go to the market and purchase groceries by asking for bread, fruit, and other items I needed; although my phrases mainly comprised “Hello,” pointing to something and say “That, please,” and “How much?”

I was once told by a Mongolian friend, “You look Mongolian, except when you walk.”

I guessed she meant I kind of blended in—which I took as a good thing.

Because life in Ulaanbaatar was my first time living overseas, I had experienced culture shock on top of my languages learning.

“I missed the honeymoon season,” said my American roommate who shared an apartment flat with me. We both had to agree, the moment we set foot in the country with our individual opportunities (mine being a homeschooling teacher, while my roommate was there to learn the language) we immediately had to swim in the sea of culture shock. It was all or nothing—at least that was how it felt to me. However, I didn’t regret it. I made friends with the locals, and the kindness of my host family and another family I taught helped me with adjusting to my life in Ulaanbaatar.

Some memorable experiences included having a balcony as our walk-in freezer during the winter; discovering that Mongolian tugrik money bills smell like mutton, frequent visits of little roaches (how I hated those guys!), that the electrically powered buses stop in the middle of the only main street in the city and its patrons had to get off and walk (fortunately, most of the places were in walking distance); and tea leaves that were sold in solid blocks (I discovered much later that they had the similar blocks of tea leaves in mainland China). The food was greasy with foods such as fried khuushuurs (deep fried pockets of ground meat and vegetables), pizza with unique toppings (from pickles instead of olives and the occasional shredded carrots), and buuz (mutton dumplings that are fried or steamed). Beverages were undaa (beverages, usually soda, in old-fashioned squat glass bottles) and tsai (salty milk tea, which was a bit of a shock to those who taste it for the first time).

Despite these small delights, Mongolia was still rebuilding from after the Fall of the Iron curtain (this was in the early 2000, by the way). Soon news of Mongolian patriotism came with reclaiming their native writing, though some foreigners bemoaned this news.

“No! Not after all that work learning Cyrillic! And now they want to bring back the Soyombo writing!” I overheard an American foreign worker complain.

The Mongolians derived Soyombo script from Tibetan Sanskrit.

Meanwhile, as I continued with my teaching, my contracted ended at six months. It was a short overseas experience with a long winter that lasted the first four months of my stay. That last two months comprised a brief spring (about a month long) and a taste of summer. With warm weather, bright sun and colours replacing the winter greys, I left the country with a heart full of thankfulness to those who had shown me kindness.

Languages I Have Learned—Episode 5: Mongolian (Part I)

 

When I learned about a teaching opportunity in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, I took it thinking, “Mongolia shares a border with China, and since I learned Mandarin Chinese for a few years Mongolian should not be that hard.” Obviously I did not learn how different the two languages are until I arrived in the country.

I have never heard Mongolia spoken where I live (Alberta, Canada) other than a song that a friend from my Mandarin class introduced me to (when I think about it, the song was actually a song another Chinese dialect, not Mongolian). So when I first heard Mongolian spoken, to me it sounded like a combination of Russian and something else. Compared to the Russian I have heard on language tapes, Mongolia did not have the harsh tones and rolling r’s. Instead, it was much closer to an Asian language like Korean or Japanese than Chinese.

A Canadian missionary who hosted me in the country told me that Koreans and Japanese people could probably pick up Mongolian faster than North American speakers. The missionary and his wife learned the language by trying to find something common with the language they knew (English and biblical Greek). He told me he learned by matching some Cyrillic letters (used in Greek and Russian) and identified the sounds and worked from there.

When I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, it was 14 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Cyrillic letters were used in the Mongolian language—something carried over from the Soviet occupation (Mongolia was a buffer zone for the Soviets, which explained a lot of Soviet influences from buildings to some political values, and of course, writing).

The missionaries kindly introduced me to their Mongolian language teacher, a teacher at a local school, who taught me Mongolian. To my delight, I found it was easier for me (with a language background in Japanese).

Mongolian had a similar grammar system to Japanese (and, I was told, to Korean) so I just needed to remember where to plug in the correct Mongolian words to make a sentence. The part about learning Mongolian that was difficult were certain sounds: the rolling “r” (as we Canadians would say, “Rrrroll up the rrrrim to win”) and the exhaling “l” (you exhale as your tongue touches the roof of your mouth making a “hla” sound rather than a “la” sound). Imagine how much trouble I had just to say “thank you” in Mongolian (which is “bayal-hlah,” by the way). I think it took me a month or more just to get the sound right.

Despite the language mishaps (mispronouncing the rolling r’s and exhaling l’s), the minus 40 degrees (celsius) weather plus windchill (I lived in Mongolia during the winter months), and other things (did you know that tap water had hepatis A and B, so you need special filters or drink bottles beverages like pop or juice?); life in Mongolia was full of surprises.

Languages I Have Learned—Episode 4: Mandarin Chinese (Part 2)

    After, a positive experience in learning Mandarin Chinese for three years in high school I wanted to take the language course again. In my third year of university, I did, but with some challenges.

    Like I have previously mentioned in one of my previous entries, this time, Japanese interfered with my Mandarin learning.

    “You are thinking in Japanese, aren’t you?” my Mandarin instructor said with a grin.

    “How could you tell?” I asked.

    “Your grammar is not Mandarin.”

    I tried again; this time I was told I was using English grammar with my Mandarin Chinese. By the end of the course, I did not get as high a mark as I did in high school, but I still passed and graduated.

    Oh, and there was another reason I took Mandarin again in university: I had a teaching opportunity in Mongolia after graduation. Thinking that the Mongolian language shared something with Mandarin Chinese, I took the course. Later, I have learned that, again, the two languages were completely different.

Languages I Have Learned—Episode 3: Mandarin Chinese (Part 1)

 

 

   Some could pick up languages quickly, like a brand-new tool, and use it immediately, while others, like myself, had to build the craft just to communicate, whether verbally or in writing. For those of you who are still learning, keep learning and see the small rewards you find along the way—a smile returned with a greeting, a flurry of words that are a progressing conversation, or just an odd look.

    After learning French for three years in junior high, I signed up for another year of French in high school, until I discovered Mandarin Chinese. In high school, I had Chinese friends whom we sat in the hallways in front of our lockers during lunch time and played card games. During these games, Chinese (Cantonese) bubbled from our conversations to the point I felt left out. Being Asian, I guess the group was so comfortable with another Asian that they forget I am an Asian who does not speak the same language.

    In another situation, I have heard some think that Japanese, Chinese, and Korean are all the same. Unfortunately, they are all different languages. When you ask a Japanese speaker what it says on the cover of a Chinese magazine, for example, it is like asking an English-speaker if they could read Russian because it had Romanized lettering similar to the English alphabet (for those who know; they use Cyrillic letters which look like the English alphabet but have distinct sounds for the letters). Or, when you ask a Japanese-speaker, while watching a Korean drama, what they are saying, it is like asking a Dutch person to translate a French dialogue.

    Much like these examples, I have thought that if I learned Mandarin Chinese, I could communicate with my Chinese friends; however, I learned that there are more than one Chinese language—and Mandarin Chinese is one of them. The language that my friends spoke was Cantonese (commonly used by Hong Kong Chinese). Mandarin Chinese is the most common dialect, that standardized form of Chinese used in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. The difference in not just in the languages, but also in the writing (Mandarin uses simplified Chinese characters while Cantonese uses traditional Chinese characters). It was until I learned Mandarin Chinese that I understood these differences.

    If you ask me how my Mandarin learning went, I did well—better than French (sorry, Francophones). I would like to say that my knowledge of kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) helped.

    For now, I will say that I was glad about my decision to expand my language borders by learning another language.

Languages I Have Learned—Episode 2: French

 

French is one of the two national languages in Canada.

I took French in junior high because I thought that was what a good Canadian student should learn in school. Sadly, my language learning for French continued until the first month in high school, but that’s another story.

During the time I learned the language, I felt I would not be hard thanks to the daily exposure of French programs on TV during my childhood (thank you, CBC). Sadly, it was not as simple as I thought.

First, French was very different from English; and second, I had trouble getting the pronunciations right.

I remember while studying linguistics (the study of how languages work) in university, learning a second language uses the knowledge of one language. In my case, I had two languages that I used (Japanese and English) to build towards learning a new language—in this case, French. What I have later learned, but not mentioned in linguistics, is that the earlier languages interfere with language learning.

For example, I was trying to remember my lines for a French dialogue. When I look at the original French, I want to make sure I understand the content of the dialogue, so I learn the meaning (in English) and then remember the lines in French. Then comes the part about the pronunciation. Some sounds exist in English (the French word for cat is “chat” where “ch” has a “sh” sound) where I note making specific sounds in a French word. By the time I was ready and stood before my teacher to do my French dialogue, the content is now in English with a smattering of French words and some Japanese phrases thrown in (I don’t know how those got in there, but they were there!). Then, upon seeing my blank face, my kind and very patient French teacher would encourage me to go back and review the dialogue in French again.

Despite those confusing and interrupting episodes, I have miraculously completed my French classes with a passing mark; and many years later, able to use simple phrases and even recognize some French word on a label during my travels.

The point of this entry? Yes, there will be interferences from previously learned languages when learning a new one; and no, not all language learning is for everyone (of which I will talk about much later in detail). Some languages are easier to learn (as I will talk about in my next entry) while some are hard to adapt. In conclusion, it is good to learn or try different languages, perhaps you could find one that is easier to apply.

Languages I Have Learned—Episode 1: Japanese

 

Being immigrants from Japan, my parents spoke Japanese at home; because we lived in an English-speaking country, my mother was worried about communicating with her children in Canada, so she had us attend a Japanese language school provided by the local Japanese community once a week.

The assignments from the language school were hard. We learned hiragana (the Japanese letters), katakana (Japanese letters used for words foreign to Japanese), and kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese). We learned reading, writing, poetry (both traditional haiku, tanka and other forms), folklore, and essay writing. Because the community school used a curriculum according to the ones used in Japan, during Christmas and summer vacation we had homework (I could still remember how my Canadian friends from school looked at me weird when I mentioned I had to do homework during summer vacation).

The work was hard growing up, being different and learning something that others did not; but looking back, I recall I did not hate it as much as I thought I would. Yes, there was homework; double the amount if you count the ones I brought home from my local Canadian school. Yes, at the school they strictly enforced us not to speak English, even if we did, we got scolded for doing so, which was the extent of the punishment.

Despite of all the challenges and hard work involved, I would not trade it for anything else. It was a legacy that I polished for my family, knowing that one day I would use that language skill when I go to Japan or help others with Japanese. And those days came when I travelled to Japan to visit relatives, translated for Japanese visitors who visited Canada, and enjoyed Japanese novels, movies, and music.