Blogpost #1 - Beyond the Horizon: My Language Learning Journey

I grew up on the island of Jamaica. My family and I lived by a beach east of the Kingston Harbour, a mere stone’s throw away from the Norman Manley International Airport. Growing up, I would always watch ships and airplanes come and go, appearing and disappearing beyond the horizon of our little beach, often blending into the skyline beyond where my curious eyes could see.

I would often wonder what mysteries these ships and airplanes carried with them. Where were they from? Where were they going? Why were they going? What did the world look like beyond my version of the Caribbean Sea? I was filled with these and so many other questions about life beyond our Jamaican shores. (My mother has always quipped that as soon as I could speak, I began pestering the adults around me with a myriad of questions. The problem was, at least as it pertained to what lay beyond my small view of the horizon, none of them had the answers.)

I can’t recall exactly when it was that my interest in learning a foreign language began. Maybe it was during my primary education when I had my first set of Spanish lessons, or maybe it was the first of many Sunday evenings spent nestled up in my grandma’s arms watching the first ever Japanese period drama on local TV. It was called Oshin, and I was absolutely enthralled!

While I might not readily recall the when, I vividly remember the WHY. I remember my driving force being a need to satisfy my curiosity about what lay beyond the Caribbean shoreline. It was an ever-growing desire to learn more about that “great beyond”, as well as to connect with the people that existed there.

Don’t get me wrong, growing up in Jamaica, I was certainly exposed to a myriad of cultural influences, even within my own family, as a result of the island’s diverse ancestry and their varied commingled traditions and practices.

So, while I was aware that, demographically and culturally speaking, there was a whole wide world existing as a microcosm on my tiny island, I still yearned to see what the world outside, the world beyond my small patch of the horizon looked like.

Until such an opportunity presented itself I would not … no I could not rest until I knew what was going on!

Given my growing curiosity, I threw myself into my language studies with a fervor otherwise only reserved for “helping” my grandmother in the kitchen (of course, being as wise as she was, my grandmother knew as well as I did that I was really only there to help myself to a precursory tasting of every meal).

As for those primary school Spanish lessons, well they would eventually lead to high school Spanish and French lessons.

At the time, my language learning fervour didn’t make sense to my family as none of them spoke any other languages nor did I get the impression that they wished to. To be honest, I think, with time, they just accepted that I was going to be different and that it was OK for them to not understand it. As such, they made their peace with it.

My opportunity to utilize my developing language skills would come sooner than even I had anticipated. It was while I was still in high school that a South American circus came to town and set up their big-top in our neighbourhood. They were to stay for performances for some months to come, however they had no translator and very little English language skills.

It was one day while tucked away studying for my upcoming major High School exams, the CXC’s, that someone came and got me to go to the “box lunch” shop we had across the street because the circus guys apparently may have wanted something to eat but no one could communicate with them.

So, there I was, an unassuming small-framed teenager who was brought to play interpreter. I greeted the group from the circus in Spanish asking them if I could help and they all erupted with what appeared to be a combination of joy, relief, fascination, and questions. They had a multitude of queries they seemed to have been holding onto since they landed on Jamaican soil. They wanted to know everything, about Jamaican culture, the food, the local language (patois), the music, the flora, the fauna, the women… They had more questions than I believe I ever did as a child. That's when I recognised it. I saw in them my own sense of wonder and fascination with the unfamiliar, my own child-like curiosity. For the next few months, I would become their English interpreter, their Jamaican patois teacher, and the one they came to with all their questions.

I believe this was the first time my family started to understand that my interest in other cultures, the many hours I studied, the foreign-language programs I watched on TV, the general rabbit hole of foreignness that I continued to throw myself down, it all had value. I could connect with people, and in turn, help them to connect with other people. I could help bridge that gap between what people knew and what they wanted to learn, what they thought and what they actually said, what was familiar to them and what lay just beyond their horizon.

As for myself, I was happy to be of service to the community and to our guests. (I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was elated. I was too much of an emo teenager to identify with any emotion akin to joy). But I also felt vindicated.

I felt like the driving force behind my curiosity combined with all the hard work I had put into my language studies, was finally paying off… and, that, I had finally found my purpose.

Today, with each client I coach, I try to tap into that client’s purpose with questions like “Why are you learning English? Who do you want to communicate with? What do you want to share with them? What do you hope to learn from them?”

As a life-long language learner myself, I genuinely believe that instead of just studying hard and trying to master things like grammar and syntax or aiming for linguistic perfection, it’s important to be curious, to find and hold on to that curiosity, to always remember our WHY, and to keep reaching for what’s beyond our current horizon.