Saturday 22 March 2014

English is in my feet

Well, technically, a language cannot be in your feet. If anywhere, it is located in your brain - that is, unless you let children draw language portraits.

Every language portrait starts with a simple silhouette of the human body. Children are now encouraged to colour them, with each colour representing one of the languages they know. They should also write comments or short texts explaining which languages they described and why they can be found in certain body parts. The idea behind language portraits is to make children think about the languages and cultures that influence them, and to show them that diversity is important. They should be proud of knowing more than one language instead of having the feeling that one of their languages is "bad" or "unwanted".

The descriptions (collected by Krumm, 2003) are insightful and sometimes heartwarming. One child, for example, wrote "German is in my head because it is the language my thoughts are in." Another one, however, said the reason for English being in his head is that he has to think a lot about it when speaking it.

I wanted to post my own language portrait at this point, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw one freely after all that I've read about them. Maybe I will let the topic rest for a while and add my own language portrait later. What would your portraits look like, though?

Wherever the languages you know are located, you cannot deny that they are a part of you and define who you are. I think Pentti Saarikoski put it best:

”Suomen kieli 
on minulle ikkuna ja talo
minä asun tässä kielessä
Se on minun ihoni.” 

It can be roughly translated as:
"The (Finnish) language
is for me like a window and a house
I live in this language
it is my skin."

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