On doing as the Romans do: part ii.

What does global citizenship mean? How can it help us as travellers? What separates the traveller from the tourist? How can we develop those traits in ourselves?

In a previous post, I wondered briefly whether the idea of a national border is a meaningful definition or just an arbitrary political construct. After all, any country can be dissected into regions grouped by similar landscape or religion or dialect, and then further dissected into smaller components by class or political beliefs or income, and so on until we’ve deconstructed an entire nation into nothing but a collection of citizens.

Needless to say, we’ve missed something here, because national identity is definitely more than the sum of millions of unique parts. People have fought for it; people have died for it. Clearly, any definition by national borders has to contain some element of plurality, but this doesn’t necessarily weaken what it means to be a particular nationality; if anything it introduces nuance, realism and therefore strength. The one defining factor of national identity is that it brings together a large social group who have managed to identify and strengthen their common habits, interests and passions despite all of their obvious differences.

So what does it mean to be English or Vietnamese or Colombian? These are the questions we try to answer when we travel. We say that we’re going to new places, but really we’re going to meet new people and immerse ourselves in the unique culture that their ancestors developed over thousands of years. We’re going because Vietnam has a clear definition – to the Vietnamese, at least – that doesn’t rely solely on its geographical borders, and we, as outsiders, want to understand what that is.

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”Clifton Fadiman

One way to do this is by comparing everything to our own culture: a completely natural reaction, and by far the most common. This means seeking out and actively noting all the differences between our culture and theirs; we use the former as a baseline and judge the unfamiliar culture by those standards. Unintentional or not, it’s easy to see how this mindset can lead us to construct imaginary social barriers separating “us” from “them”, when really all we’ve done is to separate ourselves from a fabricated perception of people we never really got to know anyway.

The reason this type of judgement doesn’t make sense is that we’re using a false set of criteria; we are using the norms that our usual culture deems to be the right ones, perhaps the only ones. But really, who are we to say that our way is the right way, until we’ve tried someone else’s way on for size? The judgemental approach is far from ideal; speaking with and getting to know natives is better; but by far the best way to understand a particular cultural identity is to walk a mile in the shoes of a native.

Do this before you judge those people for their cultural heritage.

If you’re near Rome during Holy Week, go to the Vatican City. Even if you’re an atheist, pray with the people. Celebrate and commiserate with them in their unimaginable numbers. Meditate on your wrongdoings. Empathise with people you’ve never met. Repeat the Latin prayers, smell the incense, wish your neighbour peace. Feel what it means to be part of the ancient tradition of Catholicism. Do this before you judge those people for their religious heritage, and all the other attached connotations that take precedence in the mind of the outsider.

If you’re a female traveller visiting Egypt, by all means go to see the Pyramids at Giza and the Valley of the Kings – but do it all wearing a hijab. Try to understand why many Egyptian women view it not as a form of oppression but rather as a means of liberation. Wonder to what extent, if any, it has played a role in subjugating women’s rights in Egypt. Consider its long history and its modern-day use. It’s not compulsory and it may not even change your opinions in the long run, but at least you’ve attempted to uncover another little piece of the Egyptian female identity.

After we’ve walked the figurative mile, we’re free to compile our observations, draw our conclusions and announce our verdict accordingly – but we shouldn’t even consider doing it until we’ve lived as a part of the group that we’re about to judge. We shouldn’t let the facts of our lives as we know them so far preclude us from having an open and accepting mind, even when we feel that the very people we’re trying to understand wouldn’t return the favour. We have been accepted into their home; we have a responsibility to be good guests.

What happens when we stubbornly continue to observe our usual customs in a new country?

Whether or not we decide to live by these ideas, we should take time to consider what happens when we stubbornly continue to observe our usual customs in a new country. At best we are signalling our differences, drawing a thick line in the cultural sand between ourselves and our hosts. At worst, we are being outright offensive and ignorant of the very people we wanted to understand. It’s simply not possible to travel without affecting the local people that we meet along the way; real life is not a zoo, in which the exotic and the unknown are shielded from consumers.

As in every situation, we should use our common sense to decide which aspects of the local culture we want to take part in; generally, concerns of safety can be easily separated from cultural bias for this purpose. Travelling is dangerous for so many reasons, but the accidental development of our global citizenship isn’t one of them. It’s scary talking to strangers, but it’s even scarier being one of those strangers: do it anyway.

 

Read part i of this series here.

On doing as the Romans do: part i.

How strong is the relationship between language and accent? How much should accent factor into our language-learning process? What difference does it make if we choose to ignore accent altogether?

Throughout my foreign language education, a small minority of my classmates have always fallen into a peculiar category: they refuse to copy the accents of native speakers, preferring to apply their own accent from their mother tongue to the new language. They believe that accent and language shouldn’t be intrinsically linked, because one can be understood without the other. While the results can at first sound like completely new languages, most advanced speakers are eventually able to extract meaning. Imagine a person speaking English with a heavy Russian accent; as a native or fluent speaker, the outside influence is undeniable but we can still understand their speech.

In some cases, it’s involuntary: the older we get, the harder it is to hear and copy a new accent correctly. Those who come from areas ruled by one particular, distinctive accent are also at a disadvantage. Surrounded by endless speech variety during childhood, the listening skills of children in Andorra will be far more extensive than those of children in rural Argyll; from birth, the phonetic palettes of the former group have been enriched with sounds from several distinct dialects and languages. They know how to copy a large number of different spoken sounds, so they can make themselves seem more local than they actually are in several countries.

This isn’t about achieving linguistic perfection – it’s about putting in the effort.

This means that if we weren’t lucky enough to learn a second language or live in a multilingual environment at a young age, we’re far less likely to sound native in that foreign language. In fact, researchers have generally agreed that it’s a near-impossible task. But this isn’t necessarily about achieving linguistic perfection – it’s about trying, and what it says about ourselves if we aren’t willing to put in the effort. The underlying idea is, of course, that native is always better; after all, accents and languages have historically evolved in tandem. But what harm does it do if we don’t try to sound native at all? What happens when we stubbornly cling on to our own accents, as unnatural as they might seem among the landscape of local sounds?

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” Robert Louis Stevenson

In certain Asian cultures, upon entering the home, the host will typically ask guests to take off their shoes as a mark of respect. All around the world, we observe a huge variety of customs when we are invited into someone else’s house. They want to share their lives with us, however similar or different they may be to our own, and if we choose to accept the invitation then we must also follow their rules. On a personal level, it’s easy to see that removing our shoes, albeit a simple gesture, goes a long way towards demonstrating our acceptance of our host. Attempting to speak a foreign language not with your usual accent, but with an accent associated with the language you are trying to learn, is the exact linguistic equivalent. It’s a small effort, but a painful blow to the international barriers that divide our global society.

Even the rarest of accents has the power to alter a common language.

This doesn’t mean that we’re only allowed to learn Castilian Spanish, or Parisian French, or RP English; instead, learn Spanish from a Colombian, learn French from a Québécois, learn English from an American or an Irishman or a Scot. Any accent connected to the language is native and therefore relevant, and each one can be equally rich and important in its own right. After all, every accent is connected to a region, each region has its own particular expressions and slang terms, and each new generation of people from that area will be culturally affected by this idiosyncratic set of vocabulary. In this way, even the rarest of accents has the power to permeate and alter the way that a common language develops over time.

But wait a minute! Isn’t this is all pointless anyway? Language and accent and speech are all constantly adapting to keep up with societal evolution. Who cares if I can’t be bothered to copy an Italian accent? It’s lost in a multicultural society. As with all things, we have to learn the rules before we break them. If we’re speaking a language but neglecting the accent, we’re only seeing half of the picture. The likely scenario is that we’re learning the language as a means to an end, and we’re failing to understand that this set of words and sounds and ideas is inextricably connected to a nation, a culture, an identity. Until we’ve learned the accent, we’ve probably never had a conversation with a native speaker, and it’s likely that we don’t really understand what it is to be French or Spanish or English. We’re not in a position to judge until we’ve seen the inside.

This is the mindset that separates the advanced speaker from the beginner.

I’m going to sound ridiculous. I won’t ever sound native anyway. My accent is part of my personality. I don’t know who I am without it. There are a million and one reasons not to try, and most of them fall under the long shadow cast by fear. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we’ll wait until we know a little more of the language; that’s when we’ll start trying out the accent. But as anyone who has ever learned a language will tell you, there’s no aspect of language learning that just “kicks in”. We must decide whether we really want to be anglophone or francophone or hispanohablante, and if so how we’re going to align our lives with that ethos. This is the mindset that separates the advanced speaker from the beginner. It all develops slowly, gradually, over time – so start now, or resign yourself to being forever on the outside, looking in.

 

Read part ii of this series here.