Language Matters
Language matters to us. It is how we communicate with others. Whether it is written words, words we speak, sign language, body language - this and so much more helps make up the wide world of language.
Because language matters so much to us, we have deep emotions about the languages we do, and don’t, speak. This has come up over and over in my interviews with Third Culture Kids, Cross Cultural Kids, and in my workshops with parents of cross-cultural families.
Too often we focus merely on the practical aspect of learning languages, ignoring the emotional impact of language on us as we use it to communicate, express ourselves, and exist in relationship with others. When this happens, it’s all too easy to make bad decisions about what is best for us - and our children - when it comes to the languages we speak.
“One family I spent time with returned to Vietnam after studying in the Philippines. Their young daughter had no memories of Vietnam and found the transition, especially into a local school, very traumatic. The parents found her constant complaints about their beloved home country very distressing. They tried to help by speaking to her in Vietnamese, to improve her language, and limiting discussion of their old life, to encourage her to engage in their new life. These strategies backfired, with their daughter expressing more anger and resentment. After we talked about how the transition must feel to her – moving to a place that felt foreign, speaking a language that was taxing – the parents changed tack. They told their daughter it was okay to miss the Philippines, and she could speak in English at home any time she wanted. This gave her a safe space to express parts of herself that did not fit in at school, and the atmosphere in their home changed almost immediately.”
Cross-cultured individuals, whatever our experiences have been, are almost always impacted by different languages, or dialects, or accents. Each language, dialect, and accent, has a different place in our lives - and we have a relationship with each one. Some of those relationships are strong, some are shaky. Some are deeply emotional, some are purely intellectual. Whatever the case may be, addressing the relationship with a language and the emotions we feel about it is crucial.
Perhaps you are a parent, and you feel guilty that your child hasn’t picked up much of the local language where you’re living. Perhaps you are sad or frustrated that their command of your own mother tongue isn’t great.
Perhaps you no longer live in the country where you grew up, and you mourn a lack of fluency in a language you once spoke - or feel a sense of loss over a language you never learned.
Perhaps you don’t have a single ‘mother tongue’ to point to. You might feel confused about that, perhaps while also feeling proud of your mixed cultural upbringing. It can be frustrating when others try to find a box to put you in, though.
These ideas and so much more became a huge part of conversations I was having with parents, educators, young adults, and TCKs of all ages. So much so that I developed a workshop all about our relationships with languages, and how to understand and improve our emotioanl connections with the languages in our lives.
It is not a workshop about how to learn a language. It is all about how and why the different languages we are connected to affect us. We discuss the impact of language on identity, our emotions about language, how we feel about the languages we do and don't speak - plus practical strategies to help children (and ourselves!) develop positive connections with the languages in their/our lives.
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Want to know more? I run a workshop on Language Matters: exploring the heart of a multilingual life - and you can book a private session anytime.
