read time: approximately 14 minutes total: ~5 minutes for Part I; ~7 minutes for Part II; ~2 minutes for Part III

This week

• Wed, 10 Sept I facilitated my first workshop at Halden VGS, with vocational studies students (electricians);
• Th, 11 Sept I traveled to Moss, Norway;
• Fri, 12 Sept I facilitated to workshops at Malakoff VGS;
• Fri, 12 Sept I returned to Halden for Culture Night

This week I want to think about language. And I want to think about it in three parts: Learning Norwegian; The Clout of English; and Free Speech.

Part I Learning Norwegian

I had my second Norwegian Language class this week and it was so fun! It’s at the college and me and a graduate student are the only two who aren’t international undergrads. The other students are from all over Europe, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal. Sometimes they remind me of when I studied abroad in college and it sounds like they’re having a good time too. 

Learning Norwegian is the first time I’ve tried to learn a new language knowing as much as I do about language acquisition, so I’m trying to use all that knowledge to learn this language. For example, babies acquire their first language because they first have a lot of exposure to it: they hear it in utero, and then people are constantly talking to them—or need to be—once they’re on our side of the world. Same goes for people who are learning another language: steady and constant exposure to language is important. So I’m watching Norwegian shows on Netflix (Ragnorak; Billionaire Island; Home for Christmas) as part of my daily Norwegian homework. 

Part of the reason why exposure to language is so important is to develop a sense of the pattern of the language: what are the most common sounds? Where does one word end and another begin? Norwegian sounds like it’s all vowels, made in the back of the mouth. I’m developing my ear and articulators (mouth, teeth, tongue, hard and soft palettes) to hear and replicate the sounds. But I’m starting to recognize words when I hear people talking and that’s really exciting. 

When I was learning French, one of my college professors wrote on a paper she returned something like, this paper sounds like you wrote the whole thing in English and then translated it to French. Well, I thought when I saw that comment, yeah, that’s because that’s what I did. I went to see her in office hours and she said that in order to learn the language I have to think in it. At first I didn’t know what she meant, but then I started wondering about Thai. I think in Thai, and it is separate from my thinking in English. When someone speaks to me in Thai, or I speak to them, I don’t translate. I hear it and respond to it in Thai. Thai was my first language so this makes sense; I have a strong neural network for Thai. But this happens for me in English too. When I hear English, I don’t translate into Thai and then translate my own response from Thai back to English. Because I learned English as a kid, when I went to preschool, it makes sense that I also have a neural network for English. Living in Paris in college finally allowed me to learn how to think in French.

So I know I can do it, and I’m also trying to be intentional to not translate Norwegian, but to just learn the structure and vocabulary of Norwegian as is. It’s hard, but I know what it feels like, so I’m challenging myself to use my growing knowledge of Norwegian syntax (sentence structure) to support my learning. The other day in class the teacher wrote a sentence on the board: “Unnskyld, hva heter dere på norsk.” She was trying to explain “på,” a word I had gathered was some sort of versatile preposition. I knew “unnskyld” because I had heard it on Ragnorak; it means sorry or excuse me. “Hva heter” we use to ask someone’s name: Q: Hva heter du? A: Jeg heter naitnaphit. “dere” is like, “this/these.” You’ve got that preposition “på” and then “norsk” is Norwegian. But when I looked at the sentence I didn’t do a word-for-word translation like I just did for you. Instead, I asked where I had seen those words before and tried to put them together. Even when I look at the sentence I feel myself reading it and thinking it in Norwegian!

Using the same process of putting together words I have already learned, I am able to now say, “Unnskyld, jeg snakker ikke norsk” (I’m sorry, I don’t speak Norwegian; literally I’m sorry I speak not Norwegian) when people start talking to me in Norwegian in stores or on the street. When I try to remember how to say it, I don’t think about it in English and then translate to Norwegian (because negation in Norwegian is not the same structure we use in English so it’s just more efficient to think about it in Norwegian). Rather, I think about Norwegian syntax and put the words where they go in a Norwegian sentence (instead of an English one). I’m looking forward to continue to try learning the language this way! It also helps that vocabulary acquisition is relatively easy because in looking at lots of Norwegian words that function as nouns, you can see how they became English nouns. 

Part II The Clout of English

Norwegian students have been learning English since Kindergarten. When I learned this, I thought they would be really fluent in English, since they learn it alongside Norwegian. But then I learned that in elementary school they only have a couple of hours of it a week and the schools get to decide how those hours are spent: in a standalone English class or in another subject area, like this week we’re going to use English in our Science class. Everywhere else in Norwegian society, they speak Norwegian. If I speak English to them, or now use my new fancy phrase (Unnskyld, jeg snakker ikke norsk), everyone is able to switch to English for me. Except for the lady at the Thai massage place. We spoke Thai. 

So when I go into schools (I got to facilitate 3 workshops this week in 2 schools!) the students have variable levels of fluency and comfort in English. All the workshops that I’ve facilitated so far are in classes where students are required to learn English. After their first year of English in VGS (upper secondary school), they can opt out of English. The other Rovers and I learned from stats that the Language Center (my homebase at the university) collects that after compulsory English, students aren’t opting to take it their last two years of upper secondary school English; they’re trying to figure out why because in their national tests, students aren’t as fluent in the language as they hope by the end of compulsory English. 

Although I had information about English in schools, I didn’t really understand what students’ fluency and comfort with English would be until I started meeting them. I found myself defining terms I didn’t think I would have to define, words like “slang” or “perception” or “takeaway” in a context outside food. I already think A LOT about my language: what language I use, what it means, how to find the most precise words to convey my thinking. And now I’m thinking even more about my language, to make sure I’m being understood. I have found myself speaking slower—also because they asked this week if all Americans speak so fast—and to give me more time to examine their faces to see where they’re at just in understanding my words. And the workshops they’re booking with me are about systems of oppression! So we’re doing a lot of definitional work already as well: oppression, what makes it a system, persistence, dominant group, marginalized group, etc.

Another thing I think is interesting as I’m paying attention to my own language is the ways I’m received at schools because of my level of English acquisition. One student, in an effort to learn tips about being a fluent and comfortable speaker of English, asked me how I came to speak English so well. I get this question in the States in a different sort of tone. In the US, people ask me why I speak English so well because I am brown and my name is Naitnaphit Limlamai. I am perceived, as all Asian Americans are, as a perpetual foreigner, even though I was born in the States. But this student’s question was different: she wanted to know how she too could achieve the level of fluency and comfort I have with the language. I didn’t really know what to say besides, I live in a country where the language we communicate in for the most part is English. School is in English. Television shows are in English. When you go into most stores, people are speaking English. It’s all around me and I have many opportunities to use it in speaking and writing, many opportunities to hear it spoken. I could just recommend to her some of the same strategies I’m using to learn Norwegian: lots of exposure and opportunities to use the language. 

Some of the students’ reactions to my English made me uncomfortable, because I’ve always been a little wary of my Americanness. It is literally an accident of birth that I was born and raised in the United States. My parents are both from Thailand. My father wanted to go back to Thailand after he graduated from college. Had my parents moved back to Thailand, I would have been born a Thai citizen. All it would have taken was one plane ride (and my mom agreeing that they were going to move back). I can’t say this for sure, but it feels like a lot of Americans take for granted being born and raised in the US, like it’s an inevitability. When the other Rovers and I were talking about birthright citizenship about a month ago, I said, that’s how I have US citizenship and there was kind of an awkward silence. But my parents were only green card holders when I was born and became full citizens in 1985, four years after my birth. My brother and cousins and I had a freak out moment earlier in the year when Trump was moving to revoke birthright citizenship if your mom wasn’t a citizen when she birthed you—this would have applied to me, my brother, and two of our cousins. 

When I was living in Morocco and Sept 11 happened, I remember sitting in a town hall meeting at my university. The professors were debating about whether the university should fly the Moroccan flag at half staff in honor of those who died in the Sept 11 attacks. Professor after professor stood and, with a lot of zealousness, said that if the university lowered the flag for Americans, they’d have to lower it for all people around the world who died daily from acts of terrorism. Daily. As a sheltered American, this was news to me. The professors named the countries where they were from and noted that the university had never paid any attention to those attacks, and when the US was attacked, now all of a sudden they were going to lower the flag for the Americans? I remember being so shocked at this—many of those first days were spent in shock, am I right?—but this was one of my first experiences realizing how important Americans think we are and how I might be perceived abroad as an American.

After each workshop this week, a few students stayed after to chat, ask me some questions, and say thank you for visiting. One students said she was “starstruck.” Another said it was “like meeting a celebrity.” Another student, who’s from Kharkiv and asked if I had heard of it (um, yes, because your city is being bombed daily by Russians) asked for my “autograph” and a selfie because I have helped him to achieve his dream of meeting an American. For the majority of the 75 or so students I met this week, I was the first American they had ever met. And they were so excited to meet me, not because of anything else about me besides the fact that I was born in and live in the US and speak English in the ways that I do. Their teachers speak English, but their teachers aren’t American. But I think about being American and speaking English in the ways that I do because of a lot of factors that led me to be born in the States and not somewhere else. I’m not sure when it became an inevitability that I would be born and raised in the US, and for this thing that I didn’t ever have a hand in doing, I am celebrated. It’s a weird feeling.

Part III Free Speech

I was really nervous going into this week. The last time I lived abroad, Sept 11 happened. I know it’s not reasonable for me to think something like that will happen again, but I noticed myself anxious at the possibility of my peers experiencing some sort of historical trauma that I will experience differently because I live abroad. 

Well, this week, Dr. Melissa McCoul was fired at Texas A&M and Charlie Kirk was assassinated. There has been notable outrage over both events. And no one should lose their job or their life (yes, different scales here, I get that) because of something they said. What keeps me up about these two events this week is why does Kirk get to say whatever he wants and Dr. McCoul can’t? If we value free speech, we value free speech. Period. 

But also, why is it okay for Kirk to say dehumanizing things about people and groups: women, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQIA+ people, people of color, etc etc etc? People often use the First Amendment as a shield to justify their ability to spout bigoted ideas. 

Dr. McCoul’s ideas about gender reflect actual reality, yet she—and a couple administrators—were fired for her being able to say those ideas. 

I too value free speech and academic freedom, especially as Dr. McCoul’s work in an English department are a little too close to home. I don’t think anyone should be fired or killed or harmed in anyway for what they say. But from the news I’m reading and watching over here, and my experiences in the States, it’s like we allow some speech to be labeled as free speech and some speech to be restricted. I’m asking myself, what are the patterns in whose free speech is protected? In other words, who gets the right to free speech? Who doesn’t? 

This week in two of my workshops we had to define “dominant group” and who was in them because systems of oppression hinge on dominant groups using their prejudice and power to oppress others—whether by their speech; by their interactions; by the policies and laws they help put into place. The oppression is designed by members of the dominant group to hold down, to press down, to prevent a minoritized group from full participation in society because of their membership in said marginalized group. Systems of oppression harm those being oppressed and the oppressor because whenever you rank and sort people, all people in the hierarchy are harmed because it is dehumanizing to rank and sort people—even if you’re in the top of that hierarchy. 

So who’s in the dominant group and thus seems to have the right to free speech?