diaspora | spiritual learner | intermediate-advanced
A technique specially designed for those of us attempting to learn a language taken from us through colonial or migrational violence. Get ready for an emotional rollercoaster as you acquaint yourself with untranslatable words from a past you and your mother/father/grandparent/uncle/aunty never had.
HOW: This technique is a concept with loose ideas rather than rules. The language learner finds someone from their community.
Thinking about the consequences of this choice in advance can help. For example a reading relationship with a mother might tend to get more emotional than, say, with a cousin. But sometimes it’s impossible to predict such things*
While one could simply choose to converse with the community member, reading a book together can provide a nice framework for the sessions and the conversations will invariably follow.
The language learner should consider the reading material. For example do they want it to transport them and allow them to get acquainted with the culture, in that case a book written originally in that language or dialect can facilitate this. If they wish to avoid arousing troublesome pasts, then a translation of any book which they are already familiar with could suffice.
* In 2018, Ahilan began doing Tamil-language skypes with his older cousin Manju Akka, who had grown up in Sri Lanka. Despite a positive first video call, Manju Akka ended up feeling compelled to say no to further Tamil-language video calls. Speaking Tamil, and about the war-torn Jaffna, which she had grown up in pre-war, ended up being too traumatic for her.
EXAMPLES: Ahilan reading Shobashakthi’s novel Gorilla with his mother