Why Learn a Language?

At dinner at a friend’s house in London recently, my husband Gerry argued strongly that an English native speaker deciding not to learn a foreign language was a sign of pragmatism rather than cultural arrogance. The other participants in that discussion, who were all rather shocked by this point of view, would no doubt have been even more shocked to learn that in spite of his strongly held views on the issue, Gerry, like me, is an inveterate language learner, having achieved various levels of fluency over the years in French, Spanish, German, Farsi, and Chinese.

It should be clear to everyone that learning a language requires a lot of time and effort. And there’s the rub. Should one spend hours of precious education time learning a language speculatively or leave things to chance and learn only when it is absolutely necessary? Deciding whether or not to spend the time and go to the effort is always difficult and is made even more difficult for an English native speaker by the fact that everyone whose native language is not English wants to learn English and is therefore inevitably much more competent in English than you are, or perhaps ever could be in their language. Also, when you are a non-English speaker it is fairly easy to decide that English is the most important language to learn given its status as the world lingua franca. For the English native speaker, the choices are endless and no matter what language one chooses, the possibility will always remain that speakers of all the other languages one doesn’t speak will be insulted that you didn’t choose their language.

Given our current chosen lifestyle, however, it should be no surprise that our attitude to language learning is that as a traveller, all thoughts of arrogance and pragmatism aside, learning the basics of the language of the country you are in, is a sine qua non of the travelling experience. But then it becomes a kind of race against time. No matter how long you stay in a country, there will always be a trade-off between the effort needed to gain a minimum level of competence and the time remaining in said country to profit from the effort made. So learning a new language always begins with numbers. Counting and communicating in numbers is essential if you want to venture beyond the tourist shops. Next in importance are the merchant words — buy, sell, how much?, too expensive, cheaper, better, bigger, smaller, and one or two colors. And finally, the essential traveller must be able to talk about direction. Whether it’s finding the quiet beach, the bus station, or simply the quickest way back to your hotel, asking and giving directions is very important.

Sometimes, however, the advantage of learning a language only becomes apparent long after the event and sometimes in unexpected places. Take, for example, two cases in which a language used in one country became most useful in a second country.

In September 2001, after almost a month spent in Cambodia, we found ourselves at the border post between Cambodia and Thailand with only about 20 minutes to spare before the border post closed. We were already standing in line with our fellow passengers, who had just disembarked with us from the boat that had brought us from Sihanoukville, a beach resort further along the Gulf of Thailand coast. Just before our turn came, Gerry spotted a poster, advertising a special deal at a nearby resort hotel. The closing date for the offer had passed, but we guessed that they might just extend it if we asked and we knew that the hotel was only a short walk away. We conferred quickly and decided to risk it. If we didn’t get the deal, we might not get back in time to cross the border. Fortunately everything went as planned, we were given the special offer price and stayed two nights. [We should add that when we did cross the border two days later, the poster had been removed!] 

The following morning on the way back to our room after breakfast, we walked by a souvenir shop and caught sight of some interesting looking silvered handbags. With eight nieces and nephews and two great-nephews in Darlington, there is a never-ending need to buy gifts whenever we contemplate a visit. Once in the shop, we were surprised at first to find that the shop owner did not speak English. We quickly realized, of course, that English would not have been very useful to him because the vast majority of the guests in the resort hotel were from across the border in Thailand and so spoke Thai. Having guessed this, we dredged our memories for the few words of Thai we had learned during our stay there and sure enough managed thereby to find out the price, communicate a desire for a lower price, find some mutually acceptable middle ground and conclude the transaction. The shopkeeper was almost as delighted as we were by the halting, very inexpert, and horribly pronounced Thai. He cared not a whit that we massacred the language. All he cared about was managing to sell his product. He was so pleased, in fact, that before we left he insisted on giving us a free can of soft drink to see us on our way. We basked in a glow of pleasure that has barely faded to this day.

Our second example produced no less self-satisfaction, although the circumstances were a lot less warm and fuzzy. We were in northwest Vietnam on a ten-day jeep tour accompanied only by a young Vietnamese driver named Phu.

We had read in our guidebook about the days when travelling around Vietnam required police permits and sometimes even police bribes but had never had any such encounters in our two-plus months in the country. However in Muong Khuong, a small town close to the Chinese border, we got back to the hotel after going out for a walk and were greeted by Phu telling us that “polit” were causing trouble and that we should talk to Mr. Vo, the owner of the jeep we had hired, to find out why; Phu’s English was too limited to explain it. He made the phone call and Jan talked to Vo who explained that when Phu had taken our passports to the police for permission to spend the night in the town, the police had become suspicious because we were travelling without a guide. They didn’t want to let us stay unless we paid them 100,000 Vietnamese Dong (about $7). Vo suggested that if we didn’t want to pay the extra money, we should drive on to Lao Cai instead. We told him that neither solution was acceptable. We didn’t want to pay extra money and we didn’t want to drive to Lao Cai because night was falling and we didn’t want to miss any of the spectacular views that we knew would be on the route there. Vo was understanding but said that we would have to handle it and take the consequences. However, he did say that he thought that we had an advantage in that we could always plead ignorance as we didn’t speak or understand Vietnamese.

Jan gave the phone to Phu so that he could learn what had been said while she explained the conversation to Gerry. Phu was quite happy with the decision as it allowed him to go back to his water pipe and beer. We were just as happy to go up the stairs to our room to await developments.

An hour later all this was out of our mind. Jan was reading and Gerry was working on photos on the computer. He had already downloaded the day’s shots from his digital camera and now was labeling them We were then interrupted by a knock on the door. It was just before 7 p.m, a time when we wanted to be ending the day, not starting a flight from town. A young man in his thirties was at the door and it was clear he was the police. He was not in uniform, but had our passports in his hand. He started by asking somewhat aggressively questions in Vietnamese. Jan smiled politely and indicated that she didn’t understand. We repeated this a couple of times, getting nowhere, until finally the man asked in Chinese, “Do you speak Chinese”. At first, Jan thought she should say no. After all, wouldn’t they find it odd that westerners would speak Chinese? But then she decided that some communication was better than none, so she smiled again and said in her very bad Chinese, “Yes, I speak a little Chinese.” While this was going on Gerry at first worked on the photos, then thought of showing them and the computer to the policeman, and then thought better of getting our computer involved in his thoughts and unobtrusively shut down the computer and put it away.

At this point one of the hotel staff who was hovering nearby (probably the owner) intervened to try and sweet-talk the man, but he was not to be diverted and came back to the door to pursue his investigations in Chinese. His Chinese was much better than ours, but Jan managed to explain to him that we were an American couple and that we were tourists and that we thought his country was most beautiful. He asked where we were going and from within the room Gerry invited him in to look at the map of Vietnam, where he pointed out our itinerary. This mollified him somewhat and so Jan, inspired, asked him how old he was and how many children he had (the obligatory questions in Chinese small talk). He proudly told us that he was 35 and had two children. He asked us the same questions and we gave him the shocking reply that we had no children.

By this point we were sort of friends. At least we thought the tone of the interview indicated it was all but over. Then came the crucial question that Jan didn’t understand. It was his last question and involved “fengjian” or something similar sounding. To our ears it had the ring of “bahksheesh” or “gift”. Maybe it had something to do with paying a fee or a fine and maybe it didn’t. But since we honestly couldn’t understand and said so, he had nowhere to go. After a long silence, he finally smiled and said that he was sorry to have troubled us, and got up to go. Jan responded that it was no trouble and escorted him to the door, wished him a very good evening, and out he went.

We were both quite amused by this incident. First we would never have imagined that learning Chinese would be so useful in Vietnam. Second, we were interested by the change in attitude of this policeman; how a few formulaic exchanges in a common language seem to have removed most of his suspicions. His first words had been quite aggressive while his good-byes were very restrained and polite. Perhaps the sight of our recently washed underwear hanging up to dry in the room, or the frank way in which Gerry had laid out our itinerary had disarmed him. Later, Jan reflected on her hesitation at creating suspicion by speaking Chinese. For him, it obviously seemed normal that one should speak Chinese, perhaps because he did or perhaps because we were so close to the Chinese border. And of course, he had seen our passports, one of which (Gerry’s) was filled with Chinese entry and exit stamps, why wouldn’t he assume we spoke Chinese? 

Is there a moral to these stories? Not really. We like to travel and enjoy the challenge of making ourselves understood in foreign places, but we well understand that others come up with a different answer to the cost-benefit equation of learning foreign languages and we think no less of them for that. However, perhaps knowing our experience might make them more inclined to make the effort.