Although studying abroad in Cape Town this summer was my top choice, one of my regrets was that I would miss out on learning a foreign language while abroad. (While I’ve loved my time soaking up the South African accent, I admit that it would be a stretch to convince Yale that my newfound vocabulary of “Howzit?” and “Lekker!” would be sufficient to fulfill my foreign language requirement). My backup option had been a language immersion program in Paris. It came as a surprise, then, when for a brief hour last week my time in South Africa seemed to approach something resembling exactly that.
We were at a symposium at the Human Rights Media Centre for World Refugee Day. A filmmaker from Madagascar, Misa Herintsoa Randrianasolo, had flown in to screen his short film illustrating the challenges facing stateless people in his home country. Unfortunately, as he stood up to introduce himself, it became clear the challenges would start before the film even began.
“Bonjour. Je suis Misa Randrianasolo, réalisateur Malgache. Aujourd’hui le film qui sera présenté traite du problème de l’apatridie dans mon pays.”
The room stared back with uncomprehending eyes. Uh oh. Had they not bothered to get an interpreter for him?
Luckily, it turned out that there were a couple of people in attendance who had some knowledge of French, myself included. During the Q&A, a university student and a representative from the Rosa Luxemburg foundation alternated relaying Misa’s comments to the audience, with me occasionally chipping in to translate questions back to him. It was a bit throw-together, but in the end I think we succeeded in getting his message across.
I’ve been thinking about the power that language has to both bring people together and fracture them. There have been studies done that show that a common language, more than race, religion, or gender, is what elicits the greatest feeling of group identity among people. More than a way of communication, it signals that you’re thinking on the same wavelength. Even with my rusty vocabulary and strained accent, it was remarkable how much Misa’s expression relaxed when he spoke to me compared to when he was speaking French to a hall of people who didn’t know what he was saying.
Nevertheless, languages have also been weaponized as tools for assimilation and control by colonial powers. Growing up in Canada, I learned French throughout elementary school and high school. Even if in British Columbia, the province I’m from, only 1% of the population speaks French at home, all schoolchildren are required to learn it because it is one of the country’s official languages. Before Canada adopted its current “multicultural mosaic” attitude of celebrating diversity, it was imposed upon Indigenous children in residential schools as part of a coordinated effort by the colonial government to “kill the Indian in the child”. The French gave their North American colonies to the British more than 250 years ago, yet their former rule continues to have a lasting impact on my home country. Madagascar was also a former French colony. Without the common denominator of having grown up amid colonial histories, it would be hard to see how Misa and I—two people of Malagasy and Chinese descent, respectively—could end up conversing with no go-between.
This history is not unique to Canada or Madagascar. Throughout colonization and later in apartheid, Afrikaans and English were instituted as the common languages of business, political administration, and instruction across South Africa, at the expense of native South African languages like isiZulu and isiXhosa. Speaking the language of the colonizer was a symbol of status and authority, and fluency in English and Afrikaans continues to signal wealth and education in the country today. Even as major protest movements against language marginalization, such as the Soweto Uprising, contributed to the end of apartheid, efforts to incorporate “home languages” into primary and secondary education remain stymied by a lack of political will and training for teachers.
The effects of this disparity are hard not to notice in Sea Point. Here, most of the tourists, predominantly White, speak English or Afrikaans, while many of the workers at the hotels, stores, and restaurants, predominantly black, talk to each other in (presumably) native South African languages. While informational plaques and brochures at viewpoints and attractions are filled with blurbs in English and Afrikaans, I’ve yet to see a publicly displayed description of the Cape of Good Hope in isiZulu, or a sign welcoming visitors to the penguins at Boulder’s Beach in isiXhosa. In a country in which more than 80% of people speak neither English nor Afrikaans at home, choices like these make it apparent for whose benefit and enjoyment these places were made to serve.
After the end of the symposium, over some hamburger sliders and orange juice, Misa found me among the attendees and greeted me with a firm handshake. We had a short conversation that touched on filmmaking, the world cup, and exchanging our contact info. Before I left, he made an interesting observation. “Your name is like mine, except in verlan,” he said. “Misa, Sam.” I laughed. “Wait, you’re right!” I replied. “What a crazy coincidence.”
Let me explain. Verlan is a type of French slang formed by reversing the syllables of a word. The way it’s constructed is reflected in the word verlan itself, which is the reverse of l’envers (meaning, you guessed it, “reverse”). Originating in the late-19th century, it was used by an urban youth subculture as a signal of group identity, although many verlan words are now incorporated into mainstream French vocabulary. Through colonialism and globalization, verlan had found its way across two continents to a Madagascan and a Canadian in South Africa. Misa and Sam—we were mirror images that only noticed their symmetry through a common language within a common language.
Like verlan, there is always a mirror face to language. There lies the potential to refashion the destructive power of the tool of one’s oppression into something more constructive. Having been entrenched as the foundations of world systems, colonial languages like English, Afrikaans, or French, aren’t going away. However, while we should continue to take advantage of their wide reach to use them as tools for common understanding, we must intentionally make space for the languages that their intrusion pushed aside. I wonder when someone will be able to attend a symposium in Cape Town like the one we went to and hear speakers, with interpreters, not just in French and English, but also siSwati and Sesotho. Or better yet, when audiences won’t need interpreters to understand stories told in the words most familiar to the speakers.
Having not spoken French since coming to Yale, the fact that my first reintroduction to French conversation in two years took place in South Africa was a little jarring. It’s funny how niche slang used by students in the suburbs outside Paris becoming popular on the island of Madagascar was partly responsible for my connection with this stranger. But then again, I think of how we were all viscerally affected by Misa’s film that day, even though it contained no word of English, nor French for that matter (the actors spoke Malagasy). As this program progresses, I’m excited to explore how we can use film as a language that bridges the boundary between people’s ignorance and their capacity for compassion. A mirror that shines a light on what we hold in common, if you will.