Learning

It’s funny how when you are growing up and at school you almost loathe certain aspects of learning and don’t take a keen interest in what you are studying. Years later you find yourself (for no apparent reason) revisiting these studies and taking an active interest in the facts. You find yourself in a book shop suddenly engrossed in a book on Pythagoras or tax planning for beginners, when you would have loathed this at school. I think this all comes down to choice! When you choose to do something you often take more of an interest and you will have much better learning experience. That is not though to say that if you are forced into learning something, you won’t pick it up either. I know a number of friends who have moved to a different country and picked up the language quite quickly. Usually an accelerated professional course to master the basics of the language followed by immersion of talking and reading that language will do.

I spent around 10 years of my life rote learning Afrikaans in school. Now this was once one of only two National languages in South Africa basically forced on you at school as a prescribed elective. (Note there are now 11 national languages) It is a derivation language of Dutch, from when the first Dutch Huguenots arrived in South Africa, although it has been modified with a lot of local African language expressions, Malay and sprinklings of English. It also dropped a lot of the formality of Dutch so longer words like bouwen (to build) became bou. I remember a discussion with a Dutch person who said that Afrikaans sounded like a baby language version of Dutch! Not that the Afrikaners would agree as they believed their language was a vast improvement on the higher Dutch. Nevertheless only about 15 million people speak Afrikaans and even less as their home language (~7 million). The point I make is that after all that time, and a wonderful vocabulary, my Afrikaans is still not great with limited capacity to practice it and also linked to the idea that I never really wanted to learn it or it was forced on me.

Languages are a wonderful window on the world. I remember a neighbour of ours in Durban who spoke 7 languages fluently (including 3 African languages, 3 European and English) saying that once you knew 2 languages – later languages were actually easier to adapt to and apply. Part of this was due to languages often being similar in structure depending on their derivation. So once one knows Spanish, so I have been told, Portuguese is easier to learn. The true sign of someone who is completely bilingual is if in talking the language, one is actually thinking in that language. I admit I still think in English and then attempt to translate in my head to Afrikaans on a word by word basis. Another funny thing with languages (again uncorroborated but told to me by my genius wife) is that no matter how well you learn a language after about the age of seven, you will still make simple grammatical mistakes. You also battle to form the sound of the words in the language. When we are young we listen and practice the sound of the language, meaning we are adaptable to speaking it.

So broad lessons for learning languages:

• Start young as it is in your formative years that you learn the sounds and grammar of the language
• Truly ‘want’ to learn the language either through necessity of actually living in that country or a desire to learn.
• Augment any learning with just throwing yourself into practising the language – usually easier done than said.

Another thought for the learning experience. Often our learning is linear. We pass exams and move on up the tree. Many O levels get whittled down to fewer A levels. In South Africa there was a tendency for you to do your matric (which itself dictated whether you could go to University or not) Students then went to university at the age of 18 with absolutely no idea of what they wanted to be but an idea that maybe they should pursue something that they were good at. Having already been disillusioned by the Doctor idea, I thought it would make sense to do a basic B.Comm. I was decent at Maths and Economics so that was the sensible move. Then I seemed to ‘drift’ into accounting and auditing as it was one of the electives for the B.Comm and next thing you are signing up for auditing articles to become an auditor. Yes sure I did a few vacation programs to earn money outside University with some Accounting firms, but I ultimately didn’t really have an idea of what the job was about or why I was doing it.

So many young people I am sure drift into careers like this. They either follow their fathers or mothers into whatever they do. Dad is a teacher so now I am. Or they follow their grades. Maybe they are forced to take up a job for money and just never consider years later whether this is really what they wanted to do. This means they don’t ultimately necessarily end up I n the right career.

I am a strong believer in the gap year. If you are 18 and just left school and have no idea what you want to do the n you should think on it. Go waitress in Cape Town. If you have the money or support go sit on a beach in Thailand. Even go get a job in the industry before committing yourself fully to it. Do charity work? Join the army. Life is all about choices and you don’t necessarily have to dive into the first thing it offers you. (Don’t be the one going for the house special – otherwise you are going to miss the crayfish!)