Language is fun
Have you ever hesitated at the point of introducing someone because you have momentarily forgotten their name? Well the Scots have a word for that and it is to ‘tartle’. Or, have you ever tried to improve something but your botched handiwork has made it worse? The Germans have a word for that: ‘verschlimmbesserung’. Or maybe you have an overly inquisitive child who asks ‘why’ all the time? In Russia such a child is known as a ‘pochemuchka’.
I have discovered these words in a delightful book my wife gave me on Monday entitled What a Wonderful Word, which is neatly appropriate for our focus this week on respecting other cultures and languages. We are very proud of the different nationalities within our school and it is important to promote the varying cultures from which our pupils come. As a prelude to the International Day of Languages on 26 September, eleven pupils delivered a chapel service yesterday morning in nine different languages. Among other things, we learnt to say ‘hello’, ‘I love you’ and ‘this stupid, useless computer’ in German, French, Spanish, Cantonese, Kazakhstani, Swedish, Nigerian and Italian.
The children delivered their lines with pride and enjoyment and embodied the attitude that learning another language is fun and interesting. Discovering another culture has many benefits, from making people more compassionate, tolerant and peaceful, to recognising that there is more than one way to do something. Ultimately, with the world getting smaller due to the speed of technological advancement, pupils who can engage in a second language will be more adaptable to an increasingly global future.
For most people, knowing that the Finnish word ‘poronkusema’ means the distance a reindeer can walk before needing the loo or that the word ‘murr-ma’ from the indigenous Australian language of Wagiman means to walk through water searching for something using only your feet, is totally unnecessary. But isn’t it fun to find out and play around with language.