Coronavirus and Languages: Learning from Other Countries

Coronavirus and Languages

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Welcome to The 5-Week Linguist Show. Coronavirus and languages is what I wanted to talk about today. So, of course, this has been an unbelievably dark time for so many of us in the world, some of us more than others, unfortunately. It’s just been heartbreaking. So many people are hurting. And if it’s not just their health, it’s economically, what this has done to people’s finances and people with low-paying jobs. Then, maybe people who aren’t affected by either of those things, necessarily, directly, are probably suffering in some way from mental health issues, not being able to see people for months on end. If you can work at home, you’re supposed to.

Then, we have this whole we want to get out and we want to do things. But, then, of course, there’s this very real threat of a second wave of this virus, for which at this point, at the time of this recording, there’s no vaccine, and we’re still learning. There appears to be different strains that are mutating in different ways, some less potent, some more potent. Everyone’s wants to find out what the origin is because we don’t know … It gives us a much better idea about what we can not do in the future for something like this to happen.

I saw an Instagram post. And I don’t know if he made it or not, but Dr. Thomas Bak, amazing cognitive neuroscientist, professor, taught at Cambridge for many years, and did the amazing research that talks about having languages in your life can delay dementia, the onset of dementia by four to five years, better than any drugs currently available, share it on his Instagram this really interesting poster about learning languages and coronavirus. And it really got me thinking about that connection.

I had found myself, quite frankly, really frustrated with seeing policies being so different in so many different places of the world. And while I appreciate that every culture and every country is different, it also seems that we have … I think we have more in common than we do apart. And it seemed like there were so many opportunities, or there are so many opportunities still, to learn from each other, and I really hope that we embrace that.

Coronavirus and Languages: Making Connections

If you’re familiar with the ACTFL, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, standards, one of them is connections. So it’s sort of about learning … making connections between content areas. This is a very real life way or real life practical application of that, learning about this disease and the effects from and through other languages. So, it got me really thinking about that.

In my opinion, some of the lessons that I’ve learned is that we’re more connected than ever. Humans are so much more alike than we are different. And while some of the data and statistics might be different in different countries, it’s following a pretty clear pattern of outcomes in places. So I found it really interesting that some countries say they weren’t going to lockdown, and they end up with a much higher death rate than others or some countries locking down and being able to contain things a little bit more, or a lot more in many cases, effectively than others.

What I find really interesting is, I think, from my point of view, I thought we’re all humans. So surely while there’s some differences in the way we do things, this is going to affect all of us in the same way. And I think the data is proving that this disease has a certain R rate, a certain transmission rate. And while different strains may do it a little bit differently, this is spreading in a particular way, and so we have to learn from each other’s triumphs and from our successes.

We’re all human, of course. While they’re finding this affects some populations more than others, at the end of the day, we’re all just human beings and we’re more alike than we are different. So many people are suffering in so many different ways. And that also, what I find really interesting is people really coming together and supporting each other. I’ve seen a whole lot of that.

I’ve also seen a lot of people reverting back to some really simple things and simple pleasures, finding what’s good about certain situations and what’s maybe not so good, really learning some lessons about what’s important. One very positive thing, I think, has been seeing people really get some family time back, which the pace of our world oftentimes doesn’t allow for that in a way a lot of families would like. We all have some really basic needs for connection and caring about each other, and we’re seeing some of that.

So, policies and lessons. It’s really interesting. I’ve learned a lot of things through my studies of other languages, that things I didn’t even intend to learn, one of the things when we get the basics down of a language that we spend a lot of time learning language through learning about the history and culture and geography of a place. So whether you want to or not, you end up getting a lot of history lessons and learning a lot of facts that you just wouldn’t have any other occasion to know as they’re related to language and as your being presented with cultural items from the history of the language that you’re studying. So essentially, you’re learning the language and culture through reading, through listening, through content.

I think that this couldn’t be a better time for more focus on languages and cultures because this has been bad. This has been terrible, this pandemic that’s like something that we’ve just never imagined ourselves living through and then it happening. We just couldn’t imagine that we would be in a place where we are. But, we are where we are, and we can’t just change it, necessarily. We have to learn how to defeat this and all the damaging effects that it’s had.

Coronavirus and Languages: Cultures

One of the ways that we can do that short term and very much long term is having a focus on cultures and education that learning from people who are different from us, people who have different policies than we do, different ways of doing things, that we can learn from what they experience, that we’re not that different. We’re more alike than we are different. I think that a lot of the decisions that have been made have been made thinking that things are different in different places. And while that may be true to some extent, it’s that perspective, understanding the products, practices, and perspectives of other countries and other cultures that could really keep us united and safe in a way that this pandemic could’ve taught us. I think that focusing on looking to other cultures and languages could not be more important in this age moving forward. Until next time.

Thank you for listening to The 5-Week Linguist Show with Janina Klimas. Join us each week here and visit us at reallifelanguage.com/reallifelanguageblog for more resources for learning and teaching languages.

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