Identify yourself! ... by your language

What happened?
In language and identity, we were confronted with our own language and how it identifies us. Deuheu, look at the title of the course.
We were each given a portrait of a person. In that portrait, we had to place the languages that we speak in a specific color at a specific place. We then had to justify why we used those colors and why we placed them at that part of our body.

I chose these for languages: Dutch (Flemish), French, English and Danish.

I placed Dutch in my hands and my heart, because it’s my mother language and I use my hands when I’m explaining something or when I’m very excited about something. I chose the color red because it’s a color of passion.

I placed French in my head because I can speak it, but then I have to think a lot about the grammar of the language. When I have to speak French for an hour, I become very tired. I chose the color blue because I find French to be a cold language.

I placed English in my head and my stomach. The English language comes quit naturally to me, because I grew up with English programs on TV. Therefore, I have a gut feeling when it comes to speaking the English language. On the other hand, when I have to write in English, I still have to switch on my brain. So I placed it in my head as well. I chose yellow because it’s a warm color and it makes me happy. =)

I also included Danish in my language portrait. This lesson was given during the second week, so my expectations about learning Danish were still pretty high. I placed Danish in my eyes, ears and mouth, because it’s a difficult language to speak. During my stay here, I tried to keep my eyes and ears open to learn more about the Danish language, and to pick up some words here and there.

After the language portrait, we had to make an ‘Elfchen’ about one of the colors we used in our language portrait. Afterwards, we had to present it to each other. By linking colors to words, you notice the different meaning of each color in other cultures.

What can we learn from this experience?
In Belgium, we have a multicultural society. Some children have Flemish as their second language, and only speak it at school with their friends and teachers. The further you go into town, the more nationalities you meet. Sometimes, there are only 2 or 3 children out of 20 who have the Belgian nationality. In those types of classes, it is probably useful to do this exercise. It teaches the foreign kids to be proud of their heritage, and it teaches the other children to respect other cultures and nationalities. There’s a big chance that I’ll end up teaching a multicultural class, and if I do, I’ll certainly use this exercise!