7 - My Life Through Languages (English version)

In this episode, I will tell you a bit of the story of my life from the perspective of the languages in my life. Growing up in northern Canada, I lived in a mostly Inuktitut speaking environment with some English and French. I will share my experiences with these languages in school, and later on with Spanish. Finally, I will share how immersion in a language during an internship abroad changed my life by igniting my passion for languages. I hope you enjoy the episode! 

This is the English version of the episode originally written in Italian, 7 - La mia vita attraverso le lingue. 

Transcript

Hi and welcome to today’s episode! Today I will tell you a bit of the story of my life through the lens of langues. I hope this will be an interesting episode that will that take you through the years of my life. As you may remember, I’m from Canada. To be more precise, I grew up in the extreme North of the country. My parents come from the English speaking part of Canada (Ontario) and were living in a small community of a few hundred inhabitants on Baffin Island, in the territory of the Inuit, when I was born. Inuktitut is the native language of the Inuit and there are different dialects across the arctic. Inuit have survived and made this region their home for thousands of years.

This settlement, where they were living, was called Lake Harbour when we lived there and is today called Kimmirut, which means 'the heel' in Inuktitut. So I grew up in an environment in which Inuktitut, a bit of English and also a bit of French was spoken. I remember going to the house of a family while my parents worked at the school in Arctic Bay - the second village in which we lived. All the conversations I would hear there were in Inuktitut. I remember my mom telling me that I spoke a fair bit of  Inuktitut as a small child, but I not really sure anymore. As I look back on it now, I think even the memory of her telling me that, might have been a false memory. 

I am sorry to say that I did not learn much Inuktitut as a child. I grew up being used to hearing Inuktitut spoken. I still love hearing the sounds of the language and I think it is a part of the music of my life. It makes me happy and makes me feel at home,, even if I don’t understand all of it. 

I started school when we were living in Nanisivik, the third community on Baffin Island that we lived in, which was tiny hamlet that existed only because there was a zinc and lead mine there. The site of the hamlet has now been abbandoned for years, but that is a story for another episode. In primary school, I would have most of the instruction in English, with second language classes in French and Inuktitut until the 3rd grade, when I had to choose between French and Inuktitut as a second language. I chose French because I have romantic visions of myself speaking it under the Eiffel Tower. 

There was also a lot of systemic racism in the environment against Inuktitut and I think that it would be impossible for that not to have pushed me towards French. In the end, I learned neither French nor Inuktitut well during my education. 

I remember how children would move to Nanisivik from Quebec, often only speaking French. Sure enough,  they would learn English after a few weeks becuase the environment was almost completely anglophone. I, on the other hand, never had to learn another language to be understood. For better or for worse, this is the privilege and the curse of being a native speaker of a language of power. 

Additionally, I would be scared to speak. I remember when the teacher would ask me “How are you?” in Inuktitut (Qanuippit?) and I would get nervous or embarrassed and I had a hard time to answer this simple question with “I’m well”  (Qanuingittunga) or even “well” (Qanuingi). I regret not learning Inuktitut or French better as a child, but it was a different time, and I had not yet developped the appreciation for languages that I have now or my methods of learning languages without fear. 

I remember in high school, at the age of 15 years old, I memorized the present-tense conjugations of the verbs “Avoir” and “Être” in French (‘to have’ and ‘to be’), in order to pass the end of year exam. Yes, these are basic things, but without the real desire or opportunity to speak a language, such things are so much harder to learn. So I really couldn’t put together a sentence in French. I was used to the sounds of French and to some basic vocabulary, like the days of the week, and fruits and vegetables.

When I was 20 years old, I took a Spanish course at university. I was interested in Spanish for the purpose of traveling. I remember I would often go to the university library to study it. I would write lists of vocabulary words and repeat them over and over again until I knew them all by heart. 

So that how’s I learned to memorize, but I still hadn’t learned how to speak a language in a spontaneous or natural way. I wasn’t able to say much in Spagnish but I realized that I like languages and above all the challange of learning them. 

 So even though I wasn't yet able to hold a conversation in Spanish, that course ignited a spark in me, and that spark became something more concrete when a few years later I had the chance to learn a language in total immersion.

Norwegian was, believe it or not, the first language that I learned in earnest. I did an internship in Oslo for five months after graduating from undergrad, I bought two books and would study them every day. 

So here is a question, what is the hardest language to learn? Well, they often say it’s the first one! And I agree. I would make every mistake possible. I would want to translate directly from English and as a result I would say things that would make no sense.  I also would put a lot of pressure on myself to learn Norwegian. I would approach the challenge seriously, with anxiety and fear of making mistakes. You know, if I could do it again, I would have a much more playful and relaxed attitude towards the language. For example, I wouldn’t leave my apartment in Oslo to go shopping until I had learned all the names of the products I wanted to buy. I didn’t have the flexibility and openmindedness to have fun and make mistakes. 

But I did start to consider the dynamics of languages and communication in a new light. I had never had to be in social sitautions where English wasn’t spoken and never had to endure that discomfort. I really had to work hard to listen and understand the conversation, and at times, it was exhausting. 

I would often get asked in Norway, “Oh, you’re Canadian? Do you come from the English or the French speaking part of Canada?” or “So you are bilingual and speak both English and French, since you are Canadian?” These questions and the way that I reacted to them, made me realize that I had a narrow-minded and anglo-centric view of Canada and of the world. I was starting to feel like a lousy Canadian and desire to really learn French. 

In the end, I learned quite a bit of Norwegian during my 5 months there, even if it was disorganized and somewhat random knowledge base. 

But, even more importantly, my mind had started to open up. I was more receptive to the possibilities that learning a language could offer me. And just like that, little by little,  my passion started to develop without me even being aware of it. But this only the beginning of the my journey. And as you will see, each language learned changed me a little bit and brought me a bit closer to who I am now. (As a side note - It’s funny how being sentimental or dramatic in Italian sounds very natural to me but as I translate it to English, it sounds a bit over the top.) Anyways, thanks so much for listening and until next time!