The Beauty of Language

We have been teaching English for over a year now and we have also been part of an English club for several months. It is so nice and encouraging to hear our students speaking English. Some of them still have a long way to go, but we can carry on conversations in English and understand each other. We can teach an entire class only using English…no Lingala. We have meetings with the Hospitality Team in English with very little need for reviewing things in Lingala. Don’t think that you can come here and meet a team of fluent English speakers, but they can get by.

It is so interesting to me (Sarah) how we can express ideas, emotions, stories, etc. by just making certain sounds with our mouths. But, if you do not understand sounds from another language, those sounds strung together mean absolutely nothing to you. I can be listening to someone speak Lingala and be tracking with them or carrying on a conversation, but once they throw in a French word I have no idea what has just been communicated. The director of the Elikya Center, Mambo, speaks fluent English and many of our conversations and meetings are a mix of English and Lingala. I often wonder what prompts any of us to initiate a conversation in Lingala or English. Sometimes one sentence has both Lingala and English words…sometimes even a French word or two. And I can hear all of these sounds merged together and understand what is being expressed. It is quite incredible. Soleil has begun speaking a little bit and she can say both English and Lingala words. She has no understanding of the distinction between the two languages. She will clap her hands together if you tell her to do so in English or Lingala. She understands what it all means and it is just different sounds forming together.

Last week I ended up in a room with two people from our hospitality team and two other people who have been attending the English club and was pleased to see that they all chose to speak to each other in English. English is not their native language, and there are at least two other languages other than Lingala that they know better than English, but we were all standing there chatting in English. It felt very surreal to me. Sometimes it amazes me to observe these interactions and to notice the processing that my mind does as I take in what I am hearing.  The only down side of everyone speaking more English is that I am not using Lingala nearly as much, so I am forgetting some of it. Ugh!