Conversation

A girl at school felt ill, and had to go home. Of course, we need to establish contact with the family before we release a kid, so I got her to ring home. She rang a contact, showed me the screen on her phone, to let me see who she was ringing, and the word on the screen was one I didn't recognise.

She finished the conversation, and I asked her about the word. Arabic for pappa, she told me (transliterated into the Latin alphabet). So I asked her about the word for mama, and so on. The conversation lasted all of a minute, but it was as if this girl grew a couple of inches -- a teacher was interested in HER background. She left smiling, despite feeling ill.

Arabic is my no means a small language, but it is where I live, and so the same mechanisms this opinion piece describes ("You must change to please us.") are all too often apparent from day to day.

Show a little curiosity, rather. Learn a little from those whose perspactive is different from yours. And above all, respect other people and their backgrounds -- they are as valuable as you think you are.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/language-speak-big-slovene-english-german

#language #culture #pluralism #schoolwork #learning