Common Language

When I started with Peace Corps, we spent two months living in a training village where we began the immersion process by living with host families, attending technical lectures, and beginning to learn the language. My host family was particularly wonderful and helped my language capacity progress at a decent rate. They would go with me through my language notebook each night, noting what words I had learned so that when they communicated with me they could cater to my knowledge base. In that way we had a common language: a base of words, phrases, gestures, and looks that defined our relationship and interactions, that tied us to each other in a way that we were not connected to others. 

Then I moved in with my permanent site family. And I created a different language in common with them. It’s replete with jokes and traditions and shared knowledge and is entirely unique from the one I had with my former family. This family also studies my language books and teaches me new words and phrases, and they even talk with my coteachers and language tutor to track my progress and see what new words they can introduce in our household conversation. This common language is more than just an attention to my continuous struggle to learn Khmer; it encompasses and defines and foreshadows all our interactions. It is the commonality that draws us together and makes us a family. It is the bond that is unique to us.

This week I returned to my training village and spent two nights with my former family. The affection was there, but something was different: We had outgrown our common language. I’ve had 5.5 more months to study the language and change the way I communicate in Khmer, which was enough to destroy our minimalistic communication of my first two months in country but not enough to evolve into more sophisticated conversation. There had been too much time apart and not a common language with which to catch up. We drifted. 

I worry about that sometimes… losing a common language and not knowing how to restart. Going back to the States and meeting with friends and family and finding that we’ve had years to develop new common languages that do not include - and may exclude - one another. Especially since the new languages I’ve developed encompass a culture and environment and society that is entirely foreign to the people who matter to me in the States. How do I explain something so simple as daily life in Cambodia to someone who has never felt Cambodian heat, sat in an overly cramped van for hours at a time with a duck flapping at your feet, fallen asleep with wedding or funeral music blasting, battled chickens or frogs out of the bathroom, or been yea slapped? How do I properly convey my teaching experience to someone who has never stepped over a termite hill to get to the chalkboard, never shown up for school and found that no one told you it was vacation, never stared into blank faces as you try to teach what you thought was a simple lesson, or never gotten a standing ovation as a beaming class gives you Angry Birds coffee mugs for Christmas? How do I explain my host family to someone who has never eaten my mom’s french fries, never seen my dad climb the wall with his bad hip to place an offering, never heard my niece laugh, never danced with my brother, never joked about meat blankets with my sister, or never been teased endlessly by my cousins? Can we learn others’ common languages without having experienced it ourselves? Or do we simply scratch the surface of these years apart, pretending to understand, and begin to build our own common language all over again?

(posted March 24, 2012)