When you are living in Asia, and you're Canadian, unless you were actually, like, a student in your university days, and actually, like, studied and stuff, you probably don't speak the language of the country you're living in. You are, in essence, a child.
Why? Because a child can't read. When a child is lost, he or she can't look at a sign and figure out which highway sign leads to Lindsay and which leads to Pembroke. (Not that a child should be looking at highway signs. I'm not advocating children driving. And if you don't know where Lindsay is, you're not from Ontario. Or, if you do know where it is and you're still not from Ontario, that scares me. People shouldn't know where Lindsay is. Some places should remain unknown.)
So, in Asia, at least for the first little while, we're infants. (Actually, I guess I was an infant back home, too, but that's for another post.)
I've been in Cambodia for seventeen (?!?) months, and I can't speak barely a lick of Khmer. It's not that I don't want to; if my life was measured in centuries, rather than years, I wouldl earn Khmer, and woodworking, and the rules of American football, not to mention Canadian football, and I would try my had at pottery, as well. But I'm getting up there, you see. Time ain't forever, Tupac Shakur's mother said in POETIC JUSTICE, and she was right. (And if you're wondering why I'm quoting old Janet Jackson/John Singleton movies as if they were scripture, well, I'm the kind of guy that quotes those kinds of things, is all. And I didn't go to church, no, but I went to the Fairview Mall cinema every Friday, so there you go.) I'm not sure how useful Khmer would be back in St.Catharines, or Ottawa, or Canada, or, um, the rest of the world.
Of course, that didn't stop me from trying my hand at Japanese, which sure as hell ain't the language of choice in Oshawa or thereabouts.
Why did I study it (albeit briefly)? Because I'd been in Japan for two years and I couldn't speak it, for one, and I wanted to see what studying a language did to my head, for two.
I wanted to know what it meant to study a language. I don't remember how I learned English. I'm not quite sure what's happening when I try to write English. The words come, and I transcribe them, and occasionally they're in the right order, and often they're not, and, well, so be it.
Learning a foreign language makes you a kid again, and it forces you to think about, well, thoughts in a way that you've never had to before. It's really, really hard, and really, really gratifying, and, the cool thing is, it doesn't matter how smart you are, or how many degrees you have, or how man other languages you speak -- when you learn a new one, welcome to infancy, babe. Nap time is at three.
Of course, knowing other languages does help you to learn a new one. I took lessons at the Association for Japanese Language Teaching in Tokyo (and if you think that sounds strange coming from this St.Catharines kid, imagine being this St.Catharines kid, sitting in a Tokyo classroom at eight a.m. on a cold winter's morning in that land of the rising sun, an expression that most Japanese have never heard of, come to think of it), and in my class there was a French couple and an American Chinese and a Brit and an eccentric German professor, mid-thirties, married to a Japanese, Japanese kids, but he didn't speak the language, and he wanted to learn. Considering he spoke German, French, English, Thai and Malay, I thought he wouldn't have a problem.
But he was just like me. He came to class early in the morning, and he wore glasses, and his hair was never combed. (Like I said, just like me.) Difference was, he was smart. He under -
stood languages. Both of us were inept at Japanese, but he understood that was this was necessary, and essential, and unavoidable.
At a certain point, about four months into our lessons, he turned to me, excited, and said: "Scott, I zink ve hav reached a turning point. Ziss is vere we go forward."
Or words to that effect. (With apologies for my German transcription.) There does come a point where things click, and words fall into place, and you do things by reflect that you used to have to by, well, thinking.
Simplest example: When a waitress brings you your food, do you consciously think about saying "thank-you." No. It comes out. (And if you are one of those people who don't thank waitresses, I hope you burn in hell, eternally.)
The thing is, when you learn a new language, you do think about it. And think again. Until, after five or ten or twenty times, presto-changeo, out they come, the words, and you didn't think about it, and you've made a leap. First it's a word, and then it's a sentence, and then, when you learn the vocabulary, it's a conversation. (Or a monlogue.)
Ah, but there's the rub -- vocabulary. How do you learn enough words to be fluent?
You have to read, and listen, and speak, and it's repetitive and boring and endless, but I'm starting to believe that if you don't speak another language, you're not in touch with some -
thing fundamentally human. If you only speak one language, you're living life in black and white.
Learning another language brings out the shades and subtleties, the yin and the yang of how we communicate and how we identify ourselves. Thoughts are words, nothing more, and words are thoughts. They're our currency. You speak another language, bam, you're rolling in dough. And you get to wheel and deal with people and concepts outside of your normal frames of reference. You get to continually access and wield something ancient, lasting and open-hearted.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
A PERPETUAL PRESENT
Here's the deal:
You want to go to university. You want to study English. You are young, and bright, and you are tired of dropping off both Khmers and foreigners at the front gates of schools that you have never dreamed of stepping foot inside, let alone attending.
But now you are dreaming, you see, and your dreams are big. Problem is, so are your children. And so is your wife, come to think of it, who is eight months pregnant.
Do you stop your job? Do you go to school full-time to ensure the prosperity of your future, thereby neglecting the realities of the present?
This is what a lot of Cambodians face. There are dozens of universities popping up all over, promising degrees, which they will undoubtedly deliver, with one small warning: DOES NOT GUARANTEE A JOB UPON GRADUATION. (Actually, the schools won't carry this warning, and everybody knows that anyways -- there are thousands of students, and hundreds of jobs, and those jobs that do exist will go to those with money and connections, period. You bet people are worried.)
So this is the thing -- it's easier to ride a motobike around and pick up people and drop them off than it is to go to school. Know what? It's more profitable, too. Once you graduate, and you get a government job, and you're on the path to respectability and progress and achievement, you are congratulated with a salary of about twenty U.S. dollars a month.
Know what a moto-taki driver (motodop) can make, if they're lucky?
More than twenty bucks. Not a lot more, no, but more. And when you have a pregnant wife, and crying, hungry kids, more is more, no matter what the amount.
I don't know what's going to happen to Cambodia. Nobody does. Women are getting a university education for the first time in who-knows-how-long, and the people, the young people, are certainly smarter than their elders; after all, all the really smart ones were decimated during the Khmer Rouge era.) There is still cheating and corruption amongst the young whippersnappers, of course, but that's par for the course. They are bright, and they motivated, and they have mouths to feed and families to make proud.
And yet...
There aren't a heck of a lot of jobs out here. And women are still second-class citizens. And Cambodia is still, first and foremost, an agricultural nation. None of the university educated young 'uns want to go back and work on the farm, however, because there's no money in that, no esteem in that, and besides, the government jobs have air conditioning. And who can blame them? But what that means is that nobody is really studying how to properly farm and irrigate and innovate this country, in rural terms; nobody, as far as I know, is interested in creating a structure that will allow the majority of Cambodians, those living in small villages and communes, to thrive and prosper and heck, maybe even feed their families. And, on top of that, the education system, pre-university, is abysmal. Everybody bribes their teachers. The teachers themselves are not educated. Nobody wants to teach in the rural areas because the money's no good. And the teachers themselves make only twenty, thirty bucks a month, which means that they have to get two, even three jobs, which means...
You get the point.
Cambodia's future is wide open. It's better than before, of course, unquestionably, but then again -- how can it not be better than genocide, or a foreign, Communist power ruling over your homeland? There are lots of signs of improvement here. You have to look closely, true, but they're there, nevertheless.
But there is still that moto-taxi driver, you see. He wants an education. He wants to learn about the world, and English, and the world beyond Cambodia. But he has a wife, and family, and while nobody likes to drive around Phnom Penh at midnight, tracking down backpackers, hoping to give them a lift, the present will always win out over the future, every time, and that's what worries me about this country the most -- it's in a perpetual present, until that unknown point in time when the future catches up with everyone, and by then, you see, it's too late.
You want to go to university. You want to study English. You are young, and bright, and you are tired of dropping off both Khmers and foreigners at the front gates of schools that you have never dreamed of stepping foot inside, let alone attending.
But now you are dreaming, you see, and your dreams are big. Problem is, so are your children. And so is your wife, come to think of it, who is eight months pregnant.
Do you stop your job? Do you go to school full-time to ensure the prosperity of your future, thereby neglecting the realities of the present?
This is what a lot of Cambodians face. There are dozens of universities popping up all over, promising degrees, which they will undoubtedly deliver, with one small warning: DOES NOT GUARANTEE A JOB UPON GRADUATION. (Actually, the schools won't carry this warning, and everybody knows that anyways -- there are thousands of students, and hundreds of jobs, and those jobs that do exist will go to those with money and connections, period. You bet people are worried.)
So this is the thing -- it's easier to ride a motobike around and pick up people and drop them off than it is to go to school. Know what? It's more profitable, too. Once you graduate, and you get a government job, and you're on the path to respectability and progress and achievement, you are congratulated with a salary of about twenty U.S. dollars a month.
Know what a moto-taki driver (motodop) can make, if they're lucky?
More than twenty bucks. Not a lot more, no, but more. And when you have a pregnant wife, and crying, hungry kids, more is more, no matter what the amount.
I don't know what's going to happen to Cambodia. Nobody does. Women are getting a university education for the first time in who-knows-how-long, and the people, the young people, are certainly smarter than their elders; after all, all the really smart ones were decimated during the Khmer Rouge era.) There is still cheating and corruption amongst the young whippersnappers, of course, but that's par for the course. They are bright, and they motivated, and they have mouths to feed and families to make proud.
And yet...
There aren't a heck of a lot of jobs out here. And women are still second-class citizens. And Cambodia is still, first and foremost, an agricultural nation. None of the university educated young 'uns want to go back and work on the farm, however, because there's no money in that, no esteem in that, and besides, the government jobs have air conditioning. And who can blame them? But what that means is that nobody is really studying how to properly farm and irrigate and innovate this country, in rural terms; nobody, as far as I know, is interested in creating a structure that will allow the majority of Cambodians, those living in small villages and communes, to thrive and prosper and heck, maybe even feed their families. And, on top of that, the education system, pre-university, is abysmal. Everybody bribes their teachers. The teachers themselves are not educated. Nobody wants to teach in the rural areas because the money's no good. And the teachers themselves make only twenty, thirty bucks a month, which means that they have to get two, even three jobs, which means...
You get the point.
Cambodia's future is wide open. It's better than before, of course, unquestionably, but then again -- how can it not be better than genocide, or a foreign, Communist power ruling over your homeland? There are lots of signs of improvement here. You have to look closely, true, but they're there, nevertheless.
But there is still that moto-taxi driver, you see. He wants an education. He wants to learn about the world, and English, and the world beyond Cambodia. But he has a wife, and family, and while nobody likes to drive around Phnom Penh at midnight, tracking down backpackers, hoping to give them a lift, the present will always win out over the future, every time, and that's what worries me about this country the most -- it's in a perpetual present, until that unknown point in time when the future catches up with everyone, and by then, you see, it's too late.
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