ktravula – a travelogue!

Save Foreign Language Departments!

“22 staff in Modern Languages at Swansea University are threatened with compulsory redundancy. A proposed restructuring announced by the University on August 6, with no prior consultation, would delete 40 academic jobs in all, in 9 departments, over the next three years. 95 people have been told that their jobs are at risk. Of the 40 redundancies, 11.8 are planned in Modern Languages, with effect from summer 2011. The department has 22 lecturing staff. Just 10 will remain. Its the swiftest, most savage cut proposed. Its also very bad news for education in Wales.”

This is an excerpt from the news of a horrible trend now sweeping through Universities around the world where departments of foreign languages are taking the brunt of a global economic instability. Swansea University in Wales is only one. We don’t know how many more will follow if this horrible experiment goes through, and we’re calling all lovers of language and the academia to take a stand and make noise about this, and write letters of protest to protect the jobs of these professors and the whole idea of foreign language literacy at large. Foreign Language departments are not useless, nor are they just decorative appendages of art faculties. They contribute to knowledge, the economy, and understanding across nations. Please lend your voice. Send a strongly worded letter to the Vice Chancellor at Swansea. It will go a long way in influencing their decision.

Read more about this unfortunate case and how you can help at Clarissa’s blog.

Barking In A Foreign Language

This post was first published on Clarissa’s Blog today as part of a guest-writing project. Clarissa a cool Professor of Spanish language and literature at my department will also be a guest-blogger on KTravula.com in the coming days. Watch out.

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Prompted by two related observations in my mind at the moment…

One was the search term in my blog statistics today. Some random person had apparently been directed to my blog by searching for the term “barking in a foreign language”. This is not so strange when I realize that I had once made a blog post about the cartoon that I found on the glass entrance to my department.

The second was this very comprehensive article, and discussion, in the New York times about why, or whether Americans will really, learn Chinese. I enjoyed reading it and picked up a few nuggets, one of which was the fact that the interest of many Americans in learning foreign languages came from political and economic expediencies: They learnt Russian during the Cold War, Arabic after 9/11, Spanish because of their neighbours, and now Chinese in the wake of China’s global economic uprising. Thus said the writers of the article. Not me, even though I have learnt also from a few interactions on the matter that many American students now study Chinese for the purpose of gaining leverage in the emerging economic world.

The article doesn’t mention Yoruba, Swahili, or any of the other minority world languages being learnt in Universities all over America, but that is not the point – I guess. As much as this point in the article could be seen as a generalization of perhaps a genuine interest of students in expanding their worldviews, I believe that there’s something interesting about the said American foreign language fad. For a fact, the govenment of the United States has shown more interest in languages spoken in parts of the world with some economic, political or cultural relevance to its own survival. At the Fulbright conference in December, I had made friends with a guy called Osama from Yemen, a Fulbrighter on a similar programme. That was before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, and its subsequent link to Yemen. After the terror attempt, I asked a friend if she thought that Yemen will now get a lesser slot in subsequent Fulbright programmes because of the terrorism incendent, and she said NO. Quite the opposite, she said. If this all rings true, then Hausa will also soon become another language of interest for Americans in the coming years, because of the failed bombing attempt of Christmas day. This creed can then be summarized somewhat thusly:

“If he has tried to kick your ass, kick his ass too, and then learn his language. You might understand him more, and thus prevent any further aggression.”

Whether this is true, or whether it ever works as planned in the long term, is of course subject to debate.

On Chinese Poetry

Professor Tom Lavalle is a great man. He is soft-spoken, he has sparse beards that cover much of his chin, and he smiles a lot. And he speaks Chinese! He is an American Professor in my department and he learnt, speaks and teaches Chinese language and literature. Isn’t that amazing? I met him for the first time on Monday even though we had been communicating a lot through email, and even though his office is just a stone throw from mine. For all I know, we may have gone past or maybe even bumped into each other more than once since August without knowing. For sure, the image of him that I had in my head before meeting him was not of someone of such height and demeanour. Why I had the preconceived image in my head, I have no idea. All I know is that when I met him, I was pleased. He is a pleasant person to talk with.

During the first email exchanges we had before we actually met, he had sent me these few translated poems from Chinese which I loved, so on meeting him, conversation inevitably turned to the subject of Chinese poetry and language and how it had influenced Japanese language and literature as well, especially in the form of writing. I learnt so many new things, about him, about China and about writing, language and culture. Why an American would be interested in Chinese poetry is not a question I would always ask, but I did ask for his own motivations, and I found them rooted in a craving for private space in the solace of words. He is a poet himself, writing in English, and his contact with Chinese writings had sparked a different kind of interest in him that has been sustained up to the present day. And because of him, students of this department now have the chance to learn Chinese language and culture at SIUE, and take field trips to a country of so much intriguing history.

Because of meeting him, one day I hope to start learning Chinese. I don’t know where to start from though, whether on a lesson in good calligraphy or on a lesson in Chinese alphabets which I am very sure is larger than the English one. And unlike many of the students who register for the class, my motive will not really be in anticipation of, and preparation for the new world order where Chinese is spoken as a first language by all world citizens, but to access many of the different forms of expression of thought buried within the texts of old and classical Chinese poetry.

Well, maybe I lie when I say that, but how would you know?

“Drinking Wine” #4 of 4

Tao Qian (365-427)

Autumn chrysanthemums have beautiful color,

With dew on my clothes I pluck their flowers.

I float this thing in wine to forget my sorrow,

To leave far behind my thoughts of the world.

Alone, I pour myself a goblet of wine;

When the cup is empty, the pot pours for itself.

As the sun sets, all activities cease;

Homing birds, they hurry to the woods singing.

Haughtily, I whistle below the eastern balcony –

I’ve found again the meaning of life.

(Translated by Wu Chi-liu)

Four Languages

A Swiss guy visiting Sydney, Australia, pulls up at a bus stop where two locals are waiting. “Entschuldigung, koennen Sie Deutsch sprechen?” he asks.

The two Aussies just stare at him.

“Excusez-moi, parlez vous Francais?” he tries.

The two continue to stare.

“Parlare Italiano?”

No response.

“Hablan ustedes Espanol?”

Still nothing.

The Swiss guy drives off, extremely disgusted. The first Aussie turns to the second and says, “Y’know, maybe we should learn a foreign language.”

“Why?” says the other. “That guy knew four languages, and it didn’t do him any good.”

On Foreign Language Teaching

I received this article this morning about how to thrive or survive as a department of foreign languages. It’s long, but for those interested in the topic of teaching foreign languages, especially in a depression economy, it is worth reading.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/29/languages

NOTE: It was just a few days ago that I was talking with friends who expressed surprise that a language like Yoruba is taught in an American institution. “French or German, yes, but Yoruba?” they wondered. “How is it ever useful to anybody anywhere?Who would use it? Everyone (including the Yoruba people in Nigeria) speaks English anyway.” they said.

Apparently, it is still hard to sell the idea of learning a foreign language that doesn’t come with a “sophisticated” appeal like Spanish or Russian to most common people anywhere in the world. My interlocutors were one American and one African. A day earlier, another friend – this time a Nigerian on the chat messenger – had expressed similar sentiments. He even added a twist of the absurd by insisting that I was working for the CIA. That was the only way he could rationalize a scholarship that affords me the opportunity to teach my language in the United States. He also could not understand why foreigners could be interested in the language.

I think this attitude is a result of a fundamental ignorance of the purpose of learning anything at all, which is simply to gain knowledge. And there is no knowledge that is not power, as that writer Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it. Learning a foreign language gives one access to new ways of looking at the world, no matter how small the number of people who speak the language is. But the Yoruba language is spoken by over 30 million people, and has a culture that has survived hundreds of years and has influenced countless other cultures all over the world from the Carribbeans to the United States’ African American population, and produced one Nobel Laureatte. What is there not to learn about its culture, and language, and people? The lesson for me – if any at all – is in learning more about the importance of linguistic, language documentation and cultural studies. It helps to have something to say while being challenged about the use, or uselessness, of what one does.

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