SDLAP 105
Blog Entry #2
Reflect on cultural dimensions of learning a language.
This weekend, I saw a Bosnian film called Grbavica. It helped me to get a better sense of why some Bosnians are the way that they are and in turn, gave me a greater understanding of the language. Of course, one does not want to generalize. Socioeconomic and historical factors in Bosnia for instance however, are tied very closely to the tone and regular vernacular of Serbo-Croatian. The story features a twelve-year-old girl who lives in Sarajevo and attends a predominately Bosniak school. In order to attend a class field trip free of charge, she needs a certificate from her mother confirming that her father was a Bosnian war hero. They live in a modest area, and her mother works nights as a waitress. They are not a family of means. Sara’s mother, Esma, continued to prolong the attainment of the certificate. Tension builds to the point where Sara holds a gun to her mother in efforts to learn the truth of who her father was. Esma had been withholding the fact that she was raped by Chetniks as a means of ethnic cleansing and humiliation. The Bosnian language I’ve heard spoken is tends to be intense, loud, confident, emotional, and sarcastic. It might seem cold and stoic from the outside, but masks some very deep wounds that arises from the country’s war-torn history. When I speak it and hear it spoken, everything sounds like a forceful, quick, direct, and confident assertion. This is at least what I’ve seen when Bosnians talk to Bosnians. The fact that family is so central to life in Bosnia is also reflected in conversations and behavior. I saw it in the movie. There is the informal, sharp, direct, and sardonic means of talking to everyone outside of the family, and then there is the loving, kind, generous speak reserved for family and very close friends. I’ve found the polarity striking in my own language learning simply because I don’t speak the language like my partner or Bosnian friends do! I don’t mean just pronunciation, but intonation and force. It has nothing to do with confidence either. I think it’s mostly cultural difference! Bosnian speak seems much quicker and to-the-point!
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