The human tongue is composed of muscles. Keep this preamble in mind until I get back to it later. For now, I ask this: How do we make decisions? However sophisticated or simple, decisions are made through the same process. An external stimulus excites a particular perception or recognition of some need in our brain. The perception is entered and registered as data by the sensory circuits. As the accumulated data reaches a critical threshold, your mind reacts to it, and tells you to do something — or, as we commonly say, you make a decision; then you take some concrete action.
What any muscle, or a group of muscles, does is change energy to motion. We exert energy, for example, to lift a dumbbell. Be mindful here that such is a decision, too. Due to your perceived appreciation of being in shape, your mind tells you to hit the gym, head for the dumbbell and utilize your muscles, which, in turn, convert the energy you exert into the motion of lifting the dumbbell. There are loads you can lift by the strength of your inborn power; other burdens, however, require that you consciously decide to build stamina for them.
We know that there is no magical stick that can ever grant us the privilege of extra stamina except for effort. The wise among us must know that we build such stamina when we start doing, on a small scale, what we would like to do on a larger scale down the road. In other words, if one wants to lift a heavier weight, one must start with whatever weight one can handle, and take it one step at a time.
The same could be said of learning a foreign language. That burden for which you need more than your inborn strength is the foreign language. Now again: the human tongue is composed of muscles, muscles which are no different in their function than any others in that they change energy to motion. With respect to our topic, the motion here is speech. The difference between a “less-than-competent” foreign speaker of any language, and another who shows superb communicative command of that language is the same difference between the guys working out at the back of the gym and the one who is still carving his way into joining them there. They have been working out long and hard. This analogy drives home my point.
If you are a complete monolingual, here is what I ask you to know about learning any foreign language: a) it is a serious commitment, and b) it is very strenuous — just like bodybuilding. I would like here to extend my analogy a little further: Notice that while the guys at the back of the gym have established the stamina to handle relatively heavier weights, they, too, get tired. The strongest bodybuilder of all time will get tired by the end of a workout, and the guy “who shows superb communicative command” of their foreign language can be, too.
What I mean is that mastery of the foreign language does not mean unchallenged comfortability with its usage; rather, it means taking ownership of certain linguistic tools, which help one to handle difficult situational or other challenges requiring a high competency, get acquainted with them and then move to an even higher level. And to say that there are yet higher levels to attempt is not to negate one’s existing mastery of the foreign language; precisely as when a bodybuilder aims for heavier weights to uphold his or her muscle mass, it does not negate the fact he or she is an established bodybuilder already.
I myself am a foreign speaker of English, and I have suffered and suffered and suffered the more. Although I count myself now a strong “bodybuilder” (that is, according to my foreign language analogy), I still remember fully well what it was like for my tongue muscles to be stuck right in the middle of the “rep” of making a “heavy” sound my language does not have. It is that perspective that I share with you, because, frankly, our campus needs it.
The silly thing about learning a foreign language is that it is a very regressive experience, in the Freudian sense. When you start learning a foreign language, you once again experience the disadvantages of being a child, only, this time, you’re an adult. Imagine being at a grocery store in a foreign country, not being able to name the type of cheese you want, so you find yourself asking very infantile questions such as, “What is this?” or, “What do you call this?” or worse still, being forced to use ridiculous body language or facial expressions to communicate a damn thing you wouldn’t have thought about for a millisecond if you’d been speaking your mother tongue.
When you’re stripped of one of the bulkiest factors of self confidence, i.e., language, you become disempowered, or, as someone once told me, you become only a “percentage” of yourself. Depending on your level, or the strength of your tongue muscles, if you will, you may be carrying only 20 percent of who you really are when you speak your foreign language. Or maybe 50 percent, or hopefully eventually a 100 percent.
My conclusive message is for anyone, be he or she a faculty or staff member, student, employee in town or businessperson who communicates with foreign speakers: Be aware that the so-called “percentage” you see in the foreign speakers of your language is not necessarily indicative of how smart, funny, thoughtful or knowledgeable they really are. That percentage is only a reflection of the essence of their characters. Do that, and you are not only helping them increase such a percentage, but also helping yourself expand your percentage of tolerance, open-mindedness and globality. In my life, I have seen many, many intelligent people. None of them was a xenophobe. Interpret that the way you please.
Please read the next part of this article on Monday, Feb. 20.
Ahmed Seif is a graduate student of English literature from Alexandria, Egypt.
