Hi everyone, welcome back to the second part of this interview with Sylvia Gabriel.
If you haven't already listened to the first part of this interview, I recommend you to do so before proceeding with this episode.
Without further ado, let's get started.
Yeah, language learning is one of those things where people you know, people tell me oh, you just have a gift for languages, or I wish I could learn languages like that.
And I say well, do you know how much time I've in these languages, like learning these languages, and i feel it's very much like art.
The way our society views art is very much oh, you're so gifted, you're so talented, and you know, any artist will tell you yes, i'm passionate about it, but though i can do this so well because of the hours and hours i put into it exactly, you know, i think, the way our society sees, like math or science, you know, if someone is not, if someone is struggling in their math class, then their advice is go to a tutor, go and practice more, and that's how I see everything.
You know.
Like maybe there's a little bit of natural.
This thing comes easier to me, but the vast vast majority of it is just practice and time, and languages are no different than that.
Exactly, I couldn't agree more.
So I wanted also to touch on sign language, because I think there's something really unique to your language learning, because not a lot of people learn it.
I think that it's really cool that you've dedicated so much time to learning a language that's not spoken because, at least from my point of view, i'm particularly attracted to languages that have really beautiful phonetics, like when i love i just love listening to different languages, but for me it's like it's almost like entering a whole different realm when it comes to sign languages.
So I just wanted to ask you how do sign languages play a role in your life and what gratification do you haven't got from spoken languages?
So I guess for me, when I'm choosing what language I want to learn, it's much more about the culture surrounding that language and the connection I have to it.
So like you were saying, you're very drawn to the phonetics.
I guess that's not something I usually think about.
I wasn't really thinking about that so much when I started sign language.
I was just thinking of the culture around the language.
That's one thing that a lot of people don't know is that actually there is deaf culture.
And when we talk about deaf culture, we write that with a capital D, because we're talking about them almost as a people group, as a yeah, like as a group, instead of just a medical condition.
And if you're talking about the medical condition, then you write it with a lowercase d, as in deaf um.
So deaf culture is really a whole thing, you know.
I mean, I think it also varies around the world.
So I can speak more specifically about, like, American or North American deaf culture.
You know it has even slightly different rules and traditions and jokes than the broader hearing culture.
Yeah, I mean.
I think that for me, when I was thinking about learning sign language, it's very cool because it's this whole language that's spoken online, or some people will say spoken or signed all around you.
You know, I don't have to take a plane and travel to another country to practice with natives.
I just have to go to the deaf chat in my town, and then I can practice.
And, you know, deaf culture, I think, is really, it exists because of sign language.
And I think that's true of a lot of cultures, that they're very built around their languages.
I mean even like in Canada it's.
I think that there's a slightly different culture in Francophone Canada versus Anglophone Canada.
So I think that deaf culture is very much built around sign language in America around ASL.
You know, if you want to become a part of deaf culture or know about deaf culture, then you really have to know ASL.
I think that's just been a really and it's a really cool experience to be able to communicate with someone without using your voice, you know.
I mean, there's certain advantages to it.
Like, if there's glass, you can communicate with someone on the other side, like outside.
You can.
I don't know.
There's been times with my mom who knows like a tiny bit of sign language that i've taught her.
One time we were very far away in this arena sort of, and she was trying to tell me something and she sort of signed it and then i got it.
So there's also just these sort of little cool things that you can get in sign language that you can't get in spoken languages.
That is fascinating, honestly.
It's always been like an alternative group of languages that i've been curious about, but just never I was motivated to really like get into one, even though I would lie to one day.
I think that it is a really unique kind of alternative way of seeing the world as well.
And it's just like any way you look at it.
Languages either brings people together or divides people, depending on whether you speak that language or not, or whether you can use it to communicate.
So it's really interesting.
It's cool.
What drew you to Bengali and how did your learning approach differ from learning a more widely spoken language like German, for example, even though Bengali has more speakers?
And I know that you talked a little bit about the festival and with your friend and tell us a little bit more about that.
Yeah, so Bengali is really the language I'm focused on right now.
So I'm very deep into this right now.
But yeah, so my friend, one of my best friends in middle school is Bengali.
His family is, and she moved to the U.S. when we were in.
Yeah, I guess it was especially going to Dergapuja, which was a very big holiday in sort of like Hindu Bengali culture.
I just heard so much Bengali and I wanted to understand it.
And also, you know my mom.
I feel like she learned Russian and I think she raised me and my brothers very much to always have the respect for other cultures and to be interested in it.
You know.
If we would ever make some comment you know, this is how something works, or something like that, then she would always count it out with saying you know, like that's how it works here, or you know, there's maybe this other way of thinking about it.
That's just completely different.
So I think from a very young age, my worldview was constantly countered, which sort of made me realize, you know, I really believe that, you know, Western culture, I think a lot of people tend to believe that Western culture is quote-unquote better or has certain things figured out, but I really see it as just one way, and that there's all these other ways that are not necessarily worse or better.
So, sorry, this is not, like, one way of saying.
Just that my mom raised us with access and children's stories to a lot of different cultures.
I remember sort of specifically some like children's books and stuff that she would read us from India.
My mom actually also had a lot of South Asian friends in college.
So I think especially South Asian culture is one that I was only interested in, but sort of more subconsciously.
And then, once I started going to these Bengali events, I was like okay yes, this is the culture that I'm very interested in.
I really want to learn more about.
And I realized you know, even though so many South Asians speak such a high level of English, To really be immersed in the culture and to really start to become more accepted, especially as an outsider, just completely critical to know the language.
So I really just started to fall in love with, like, these South Asian foods.
It's still my favorite food.
I would eat this 24-7.
You know, I think, like, the traditional clothing is really beautiful.
I think just certain things about the culture mirror my personality a little bit.
With um, I'm always late, I'm never on time to anything.
That's one little thing.
And I think also, just being really open, I feel like people are very extroverted and friendly and always starting conversations, so I like that.
But yeah, so I just really decided okay, I really, because of my friends, Bengali became the South Asian language that I was interested in, and but for a long time honestly, for a year or two years I had no idea how to go about learning Bengali because I was like okay, it's not a new lingo um um, i don't know it's not a new lingo.
But so i i found italki and i tried to try a lesson there.
I really just at that, especially at that point when i was a less experienced language learner, i was just completely overwhelmed by the idea of learning a language completely from scratch that was so different from my native one online, it just felt sort of impossible.
So i was like okay, i really need someone like a tutor, a teacher in real life.
Then i realized that the university i was still in high school, but the university in my town actually taught bengali.
So i sent an email, i reached out to the um, the left the bengali lecturer and he was super open.
He agreed to meet me.
So i met him and he was basically like i'll start tutoring you And I was like wow okay, that's perfect.
Basically, this one summer, he disagreed to tutor me.
So I went for one lesson, and then he was like, okay, do you want to meet again tomorrow?
And I was like wow, i thought we were gonna do like once a week or something, but like sure.
So i ended up meeting with him probably like five days a week for a few months.
He was just so generous with his time and you know, of course we wanted to compensate him and pay him for his effort.
But he was also very generous and sort of offering to.
I mean, he offered to teach for free, like of course he still paid him.
But I think I ended up being able to spend more time in classes than if I had to pay, basically like a normal rate.
So he was super, super generous.
And then, yeah, he offered that I would start coming to his classes with the university.
So as a high schooler, I started sitting in on these university classes.
And I did that for two years.
And then...
I'm sorry this is such a long answer.
No no, keep going.
At the end of those two years um, I was sort of a little stuck.
I felt like I learned a lot.
I could read and write pretty confidently, but I felt like my speaking skills were not up to par, and especially with Bengali.
With a lot of South Asian languages, they use an incredible amount of English in their speech.
So you know, I think entire sentences paragraphs, they will just switch into English and also just for individual words.
So one thing for me is like, okay, I want to learn a new Bengali word.
If I look it up on Google Translate, Sometimes I didn't know.
Okay, is this a normal word that people are going to use in everyday conversation?
Or is this a super literary word that no one would use and everyone would just say in English?
So I really struggled to be able to know how I mean, first of all, just how to form sentences and form them quickly and to form them in a way that was sort of casual speak and not like I was some textbook person.
So I was very frustrated at that point and I also felt like my teacher was amazing.
But I think we also came to this point where he wasn't entirely sure how to explain the grammar in English, since Bengali was just his native language.
I think for the basic year he could explain it well, but then, once we started getting into this very nuanced grammar, He would give me explanations that I didn't really understand.
I think that's one thing in language learning.
It can be very valuable to have native and non-native teachers.
Yes.
Because non-Natives, I think can be valuable when you're trying to understand some grammar that maybe Natives have never thought about.
And some Natives are better at this than others.
I was sort of just at a roadblock.
That was actually basically a year ago, like spring of 2019.
Basically it was just like okay.
Going into that summer I had a lot of other experiences, travel and language plans set up that did not include Bengali.
So I said, okay, I'm going to take a break from Bengali.
And that basically was like three or four months.
And that next fall in my senior year, my family was actually hosting an exchange event from Bangladesh.
No way.
So, I mean, we had planned this before.
So I said, you know, I'm just going to wait until she comes.
Then when she's here, hopefully I can get more of that conversation practice, just that casual language.
Yes.
You know, there'll be someone in my house 24-7 if I just want to ask what does this word mean.
That's a gold mine.
So that was actually just the most amazing experience.
And I was so lucky that she was someone who was so open and excited to share her language and wasn't annoyed with my constant questions um and yeah, we would.
She would like do little classes with me where we would practice speaking in Bengali.
And also from her I got to sort of learn a more Bangladeshi accent, whereas before I only knew um, the very standard, more Kolkata one okay um, so just got tons of informal conversation practice and she was So good at just starting a conversation with me in Bengali or, you know, even if I would speak in English, she would switch back to Bengali.
Some people are not as good as this, you know.
Some people you know if you switch the language, they're just going to stay in English.
Even if you're just struggling in the language, they will switch it to English, and she was so good about keeping me in Bengali and helping me practice, so I'm so grateful for that and yeah, now I really I feel a lot more confident in my Bengali and I think finally, after three years I think it took me three years to get to this place where I'm making this connection.
Things are finally starting to make sense in the grammar.
Just because, you know, with something like German, there's just so many more resources.
It's so much more similar to English.
I'm sort of making those connections all along.
And now here I feel like three years in, I'm finally making those connections and it's making sense.
So it was a much longer process.
Isn't that rewarding, though?
After so much time spent with the language, then you're just finally starting to click.
I think the way you described it too, your approach, was very different than the way that you would traditionally approach other languages.
It was very much based on conversation in class, which I think is really important to get a good understanding of both formal and informal registers because, especially with a language that's not, per se, a comfort language in the sense that it's using a different script,
It's totally different in terms of its origin.
It's definitely important to have a retrospective understanding of different registers.
But now I want to get into my favorite language and ask you a question about Arabic.
So what is your favorite aspect of the Arabic language and what do you think foreigners have the most trouble with when it comes to learning dialectal Arabic?
It's so hard.
It's a beautiful language.
One thing I love about Arabic is all of the expressions and sayings.
I feel like Arabic is so rich with sayings and idioms and some of them actually parallel english pretty well and some are just completely different.
But and then, of course, i mean it just has such a cool grammar structure with the whole root system and um, the different i should get exactly, like the woman, like it's a different form, but you can put these like three letters in and then that usually, like i think it's like fifth root or something, gives like a intransitive meaning.
So i'm very bad at this, but it's a very consistent grammar.
That um, i think this is really cool.
Yes, i totally agree.
And what do you think people have the most trouble with?
When it comes to dialects in particular, I think resources are always a struggle.
You know, that's partly what makes Bengali so hard.
And people ask me you know what?
Okay, so there's always the question of what's the hardest language.
And, of course, that is completely dependent on your native language.
But I also always like to add in that it's also dependent on your passion and the resources.
Yes.
So in terms of dialectal Arabic, it can be more Bavarian um, although more and more are being created, like there's actually a lot more resources for different Arabic dialects than there are for Bengali, I think.
But um, and you know, especially if you're learning Egyptian or Levantine, there's quite a few.
I think also, like the diagnostic situation in the Arab world is very complicated and it's very hard for um For outside of Sunday band, and I'm not even going to say I understand it perfectly, but I think I have a pretty good grasp on it.
And one thing I've realized is how much respect Arabs have for the standard language, for MSA.
And it's very important culturally.
And they...
I tend to view the dialect as more like slang.
As a linguist, from a linguistic perspective, I don't view it like that.
I see the dialect as basically a dialect, as languages... or dialects within their own right.
Right.
And I see them as having grammar because you know I see any dialect as having grammar because you know there are rules that you have to follow.
And if you break the rule and you say it wrong, then it's wrong.
I mean, a speaker can correct you.
So I think if there were no rules, you could say anything and it would be correct, right?
Which is obviously not the case.
I agree.
But many Arabs tend to see the dialects as slang that don't have grammar because, you know, grammar is almost synonymous with the standard language.
So because of this, you know my favorite comparison for this.
Instead of the typical, like Shakespearean English to standard English comparison, I like to compare it to standard English versus African American vernacular English.
Mm-hmm. um because you know if if someone said you know i want to learn african-american vernacular english like an outsider um then you know a lot of people would say well why don't you learn standard english first like african-american vernacular english doesn't really have grammar it's just slang which i think most people would say that but i think the way linguists look at it is actually known African-American vernacular English is a dialect that follows rules and has its own grammar.
But many Americans would be hesitant to say you should learn that because they knew it as slang.
So I think it's more of a similar situation like that with Arabic.
So just because of that, I think it can be hard for Arabic students to get natives to practice the dialect with them and to get natives to you know, correct them on the grammar of a dialect.
So they'll often say, oh, it doesn't have grammar.
But I also see this as slowly changing.
Like there's more and more resources becoming available for specific dialects.
Yeah, I do agree, because I was learning Egyptian Arabic for a little while and in the beginning I did find it a little bit difficult to find the resources that I was particularly interested in, especially whether it be movies or shows or videos with subtitles in dialectal Arabic was extremely hard to find.
Maybe I could find an Egyptian movie and if I'm lucky it'll have English subtitles.
But it's very difficult to have both the colloquial Arabic And with the spoken language, which was particularly difficult for me.
But I have noticed yeah, like you said, that there are more and more books available on Amazon, for example.
If you look up, you know Levantine Arabic.
You can find certain resources that will be of some help to you.
And on that note I will conclude part two of this interview, in which we spoke not only about Sylvia's rapport with the languages she knows, but also the difficulties that come with language learning and a bit on how she overcame those hurdles, whether it be for German Bengali Arabic, Spanish or any other language.
There's no doubt that hearing about the hardships and rewarding experiences from such an enthusiastic language learner is definitely motivating, at least for me.
And I hope also interesting for you guys to listen to.
In the next episode we'll talk a bit about Celia's travels, the countries that she's been to, what it's like to be a solo female traveler in the Middle East, along with cultural shocks, her work and school-related ambitions, and what we can do better here in North America when it comes to foreign language instruction and, in general, with regards to pedagogical methods as a whole.
Another exciting update for you guys.
I actually just created a PayPal account on which you will be able to support this independent project designed to help you take your English to the next level in record time.
In fact, by donating just 2 as a one-time payment, if you wish, you will have access to the full transcription of any one episode of your choice.
Besides interviews, actually, I have a different plan for those, which I...
We'll explain in the next episode.
In the meantime, you'll be able to find the link to my PayPal page in the description of this episode.
Your English will thank you.
And I want to thank you as well for your support and for making it to the end of this episode.
Until next time, my friends, take care.
