Literacy Narrative: Being Multilingual
By Chris Beddow
Introduction
Since 2007, I’ve undergone four years of college education supplemented by a
plethora of learning experiences outside the classroom. The most important skills I have
acquired in this short period are the abilities to read, write, speak, and comprehend
several languages besides my native English. I studied Spanish in high school, but really
learned it while studying in Spain in 2008. I’ve studied Arabic for four years, and in the
fall of 2011 I will travel to Lebanon to make my final push toward fluency. I’ve studied
Farsi for several weeks, both on my own and with a teacher, as well as through the
assistance of my Farsi-speaking girlfriend. French has been an interest of mine since
2009, and I learned it entirely through classwork and attained a great level of
competency. These four languages, along with English, form what I see as my personal
literacy. A saying I once heard has been my mantra as my education culminates in
graduation—that to learn and speak a new language is to see the world through a new set
of eyes. This narrative will explain my experiences with each individual language, and
how it has shaped my perspective.
Part I: English
Learning English was a process that I don’t remember, but what strikes me most
about the way I learned English is how it has made me unique among other English
speakers. I have been commended as a strong writer, which has made me confident in my
command of the language overall. What I’ve done in my learning experience with
English that distinguishes me is that I’ve always pursued writing in two forms: creative
writing and writing about my experiences. I’ve loved writing stories since I was young,
and I’ve found that I have often been compelled to use my imagination to create written
stories that illustrate strong images and new worlds entirely of my own design. This is a
tendency that is not common among all people my age. My love for creative writing has
definitely been influenced by my love for reading, especially books with a strong
narrative. What has highly influenced my tendency toward the development of strong
imagery is that I have also spent a great amount of time reading graphic novels, which are
mostly images with supplementary text and dialogue—I’ve sought to illustrate scenes in
the mind of the reader in the same way using only words. This, in turn, has influenced my
writings about my own experiences. I love to write about my travels, my adventures, and
what I’ve seen. I’m a huge fan of the outdoors, and the natural beauty of landscapes is
one of the most powerful and emotional images in my life—this is something I try to
convey in writing about my experiences. To me, overall, writing in English is about
painting a picture with words. My ability to read in-depth articles and be extremely
descriptive has served as a standard for attaining fluency in other languages—when I can
write a powerful story in another language, I feel that I’ve really gained proficiency. If
not, I know I am still developing.
Part II: Spanish
Spanish language came easily to me, because my memory is strong and I tend to
absorb new vocabulary with ease. A vocabulary test in Spanish class during high school
was one of the easiest tasks to study for, as I often spent under fifteen minutes
memorizing whole pages of words. I really was able to learn Spanish when I arrived in
Spain years later, however. My first few days in Spain, I could understand very little. The
man I lived with, my host, spoke no English at all and I had to quickly pick up on
Spanish in order to even communicate with him about basic daily activities. Three
months later however, I found I was extremely social in Spanish. I dreaded going to my
formal Spanish language class and really didn’t do well in it, but I learned street Spanish
to a whole new degree and could speak like a native. I studied in southern Spain, the
region called Andalusia, which has its own particular, very strong accent that is easily
recognized by residents of other regions of Spain as well as by some Spanish speakers
world-wide. In this accent, I pronounced the letter z and many times c with a lisp in a th
sound. Words like zapato (shoe) and attencion (attention) were pronounced thapato and
attenthion. In addition, I would leave out the letter s, thus words such as tres and plurals
such as estudiantes (students) would come out as tre and estudiante—this made me
extremely well understood in Andalusia, and well-noticed in other regions. Spanish
speakers I encountered in the futures gave me more credit in my language skills upon
realizing that I didn’t speak “classroom Spanish”, but rather, had a native and specific
accent that led them to assume I had spent time in Andalusia. I later demonstrated this
during an immersion trip to Panama, where I was complimented on my excellent
pronunciation and treated like a native speaker rather than as someone who, although
they could say the words, didn’t understand the nuances. I was able to experience these
two Spanish speaking cultures of Spain and Panama like an insider, and see how their
languages form identities but also cultural separations and quirks. I was able to visit
Panama while being treated not like an American outsider, but a Spanish relative.
Literacy, especially in the spoken manner, opened a door into the culture and community.
Part III: Arabic
When I studied abroad in Spain, I took an Arabic course that was taught in
Spanish. I found this to be simply amazing, because I was constantly translating between
two sets of foreign vocabulary, asking myself how to say casa in Arabic rather than how
to say house. I also learned the relationship between Spanish and Arabic, and how dozens
and dozens of words are shared between the two languages due to the Islamic history in
Spain. Over the last four years, I studied Modern Standard Arabic, which is based off of
the very formal style in the Qu’ran and is what is today found in books and newspapers.
When I spoke Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), it was the equivalent of speaking to
someone in a Shakespearean accent—it brought laughs from native speakers. This pushed
me to learn more conversational Arabic, in local dialects. I chose not to study abroad in
Morocco, because that country has a very unique vernacular, and a Moroccan speaking
Arabic will not be understood at all by an Egyptian, for example. I learned the main
dialects were Magrebi—North African—as well as Egyptian, Levantine, and Gulf. Four
countries that represent these dialects are Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq. The last
three can understand each other well, but still uses different pronunciations as well as
different vocabulary, much like American and British English but with a greater divide
still. Learning MSA gave me a foundation into learning a dialect, and I’ve only barely
gotten my feet wet in learning Levantine Arabic. The fact is, I cannot have a conversation
in Arabic that goes beyond basic “about me” or asking for directions, and I thus do not
consider myself competent in Arabic despite my ability to understand conversation or
read newspapers with some proficiency. When I can have a free-flowing conversation,
my goal will be complete, but I still hope to develop my writing skills and be able to
write stories in Arabic rather than simply write research papers with the assistance of a
dictionary. Today, I see myself literate in Arabic in a backwards sense—I completely
understand the structure and grammar of Arabic, as well as many unique phrases that
don’t translate, but my vocabulary is limited and I need to fill in the blanks by learning to
converse and write well. In Spanish I learned the opposite way, as I learned to speak well
before learning to write with grammatical superiority—because Spanish worked so well
for me that way, I hope to correct my Arabic through the same method.
Part IV: French
My competence in Spanish, as well as English, made French quite easy to learn. I
knew how grammar functioned, and found that almost every word in French was a slight
variation of a word in English or Spanish, or both. Learning to read and write in French
was comparable to learning to read and write cursive, as I simply had to recognize a new
style and pattern while retaining the same understanding of vocabulary. I rarely have
studied extensively to succeed in French, and have essentially come to focus heavily on
developing my ability to converse which, after about a year, is very strong. I can make
my point known, as well as use very descriptive words in order to engage in advanced
conversation. I can read almost anything in French, and could easily write in French as
well. I find it extremely curious how I can easily switch my mind form English to French,
and I could overall exist very well in a French-speaking atmosphere with no use of
English. What is most difficult is switching from French to Spanish in the same span of
several minutes, as they are so similar that I have difficulty remembering without
thinking which word is used in which language; on the other hand, if I forget a word in
French, such as the word for museum (musée), I can remember that it is similar to
Spanish museo and adjust the word to fit the French style that typically would not end in
“o”. Overall, I’ve loved learning French because it comes so easily, and it almost does
not seem like a second language because it requires so little practice and thought as
compared to Arabic.
Part V: Farsi
Farsi has been quite a journey for me to learn. I’ve always had an interest in it due
to the history of the language and its people, and my girlfriend’s own Iranian heritage
influenced my decision to learn from here. I taught myself initially using Rosetta Stone
software, which taught me a very formal style of Farsi—my girlfriend would correct me
when I listed off my new vocabulary, telling me how it is said in normal conversation
rather than in public speaking or formal writing. Farsi required me to learn a new but
simply system of grammar and syntax that was more similar to English or French than
Arabic, but also led me to discover that it borrows a plethora of words from Arabic but
simply pronounces some letters differently, such as a deep throated, gutteral qa sound as
a thick gha. For example, the word for “only” in Arabic is faqat, while in Farsi it is
pronounced faghat. This can be misleading however, as the languages use an entirely
different structure and are not related; rather, they simply loan words to one another just
as they may both borrow words from English despite no Latin or Germanic origin. By the
time I learned Farsi, I had a familiar system in my head for organizing conjugations of
words and using other languages as a reference and memory tool. Remember the Farsi
word for brother was very easy, as it is baroder—essentially I just vary my English
pronunciation. Similarly, feminine words in Arabic end with an “a” type vowel, just like
in Spanish. Farsi as a classroom learning experience was very conversational, and also
did not use the Arabic alphabet—instead, my teacher would transcribe Farsi words using
the Latin alphabet, so that we could focus on speaking Farsi rather than reading or writing
it. What is most curious about this is that my girlfriend and many other Farsi speakers
communicate via email in the same way, and have almost developed an entirely new
written form of Farsi that often uses consistent Latin spellings despite the impossibility of
fully transcribing the alphabet used by Farsi. The Alphabet used also has many variations
from Arabic, as it has supplementary letters that make sounds such as ch and v that do not
exist in Arabic in any way. Overall, I have learned to speak Farsi in a manner that allows
me to be fully conversational with a native, and I still have trouble reading it at a fast
pace. I would be very challenged in writing Farsi, because the sounds that the Arabic
letters make are not the same as Arabic, yet I try to write them as if they are and thus end
up using the wrong letters. As a whole, I consider myself conversationally competent, but
in need of developing my Farsi writing skills. Does this make me literate? In a colloquial
sense, yes—I am literate in the common person’s Farsi, in a cultural way, but not in an
academic way. The difference between the two is very apparent in this language.