Language is a tool that should be used collectively to facilitate communication. What it has evolved into today, however, is a tool that does indeed facilitate communication, but not all people understand it, which has consequently created deep divisions among the world. To put it another way, language now acts as somewhat of a barrier instead of a bridge. What people do not realize is how similar languages actually are, and refuse to overcome their mental set to try and understand what other people are trying to say. There then comes the more extreme case of trying to build a bridge by imposing the universally acknowledged language of English on people who do not speak it. While this does not imply that it is a negative process, as it aids in understanding other people, it does not destroy the “language barrier”- it merely forces people to cross the bridge. What we will explore during the course of this essay, is how different people cope with their exposure to the English language, and how it affects their ability to communicate using the languages they were born speaking.
People tend to react with apprehension when they encounter languages that are different from what they know. I observed an instance of this in myself, while first reading through Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “From Borderlands/ La Frontera”. I found myself overcome by frustration due to my inability to understand what she was saying when she wrote in Spanish. I was therefore doing exactly what I said most people do- I was unwilling to go beyond my mental set to try and comprehend her words. Using myself as an example shows how common it actually is for people to express distrust upon seeing another language being incomprehensively intertwined with English. I distinctly being simultaneously red-faced in shame, while also gaping in awe, when I read the lines “Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without always having to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish…” (Ahmad 445). This completely opened my eyes, and changed my outlook on the way I perceive language. While I was certainly frustrated while reading through her essay, trying to decipher some form of meaning from it, I failed to acknowledge that the meaning was, in fact, relatively clear, even without me having to translate the words from Spanish. This serves as a miniscule sliver of what is going on in the world around us, where people express undue frustration regarding language. Furthermore, an important distinction needs to be made between people who actually cannot understand the language, and people who are averse to the idea of trying to understand.
This phenomenon can, in fact, be observed on an even smaller scale, even when people communicate using the same language, let alone two different ones. We live in a world where, on one hand, the people who do not speak the same language are divided by a seemingly impenetrable “language barrier”, whereas on the other hand, people do have a language which they can all use to communicate- English. This being said, however, English is a language that has certain norms which have been set in stone by the people who originally spoke it. This means that the English spoken in different parts of the world can clearly be distinguished from one another, be it based on the speaker’s accent, or an author’s writing. Consequently, some have evolved to be viewed negatively, and others positively; Gabriel Okara, who is an author born in Nigeria, argues that the way he uses English is vastly different from what constitutes the norms of its usage. However, he argues that this is the only way he can produce his subjective experiences of life on paper. For example, the literal translation of a word as simple as goodbye in English, translates to “may we live to see ourselves tomorrow” (Okara 477). Phrases like this serve as a portal that takes us to the times wherein this language was formed, which is during a time of wars, where people lived with a constant fear of death. Therefore, to use “goodbye” instead would be to express English thoughts, and not African ones (Okara 478), thereby pulling a curtain over the true nature of Okara’s language and blinding the readers from perceiving his writing the way he envisioned it in his mind. To put it into perspective, authors such as Chinua Achebe and Gabriel Okara all have one thing in common- they write in English. Yes, that is blatantly obvious, but consider the deeper meaning: why is their writing shunned, if it is, after all, being written in English? Okara answers this question by proceeding to point out the unfortunate truth- to use a literal translation is unfortunately viewed as a defilement of English language (Okara 478). What people need to realize is that while it is true that their literature may be different from what primary English speakers are used to, it is this very fact that makes their literature contain so much more depth and meaning.
So far, we have looked at incidents that occurred many years ago, which brings about the question- how has this perception of language changed over the years? In an attempt to find an answer, my mind involuntarily wanders back to my opening statement, which says that not all people understand every single language. However, why this incomprehension should cause frustration is beyond me. I am not saying that all people should have every language implanted in their brains upon birth, so that everyone understands each other. What I am saying, however, is that people should try; languages are more similar to each other than one may realize. We still see the words “language barrier” being used in everyday conversation. Why is linguistic diversity still being viewed so negatively? The first step to overcome this problem is to obliterate the negative connotations of the phrase “language barrier”. People are born speaking the languages of their ancestors, which they learn almost involuntarily. I was trilingual when I was two years old, and fluently babbled in all the three languages we spoke at home. At the age of twelve, I was still trilingual, but that was because we had to compulsorily learn another language at school. You may have done the math to figure out that one language had completely disappeared. I distinctly remember speaking my first word in Tamil. Now it is a language I can barely form a sentence in, without exhibiting symptoms similar to that of Werneckie’s aphasia. Is my brain’s left hemisphere damaged? No. Why, then, can’t I speak my mother tongue, you ask? Simply because I was taught to never utter a word in anything other than English in school. The only reason I retained the other language that I learnt during childhood because was I frequently used it to converse with my housemaid.
We still see the words “language barrier” being used in everyday conversation. Why is linguistic diversity still being viewed so negatively? The first step to overcome this problem is to obliterate the negative connotations of the phrase “language barrier”. Therefore, to conclude, I would like to find an answer to these questions: Why are these tongues still considered uncivilized? Why are children being punished when they accidentally utter a word of their mother tongue while answering a question their teacher asks? Above all, why are people who fight the urge to speak what comes naturally, and translate it into a foreign tongue, being reprimanded for trying to reach a broader audience? If this problem were not present today, I would just as freely be able to switch between languages as Gloria Anzaldua does in her essay, and neither of us would face any form of negativity- I wouldn’t get slaps on my wrists, and Anzaldua wouldn’t have to deal with the frustrations of her readers not being able to understand her work. It would thus be a world where people acknowledged differences in language, but learnt to live in harmony with it.