Humanity spends a lot of time, money and energy on mastering foreign languages, and we do this mostly to enhance our quality of life (and, at times, to kill our curiosity, too!). But there are nations in the world who suffer no need to learn a foreign language for survival – those, for instance, who enjoy English as a native tongue. It is so funny, if not deplorable, that the average Georgian is compelled to use a preposterous amount of resources to learn English, with the purpose of contributing their labor to the international marketplace, to be better versed in contemporary issues, and to be ready to handle the everyday exigencies that can pop up at any time. And yet the average native of Britain, America, Canada, Australia, or of any other English-speaking country, can feel blissfully free to roll on with the help of their own tongue, spoken, by some divine luck, internationally; not bothering themselves with the pain in the neck called “learning a foreign language.”
While a regular Georgian kid will have to spend hours on a daily basis, if not months and years in general, learning English, the English-speaking child can spend the same amount of time imbuing science, art and technology, making overall progress much faster. The difference might sound heartbreaking, but that’s where we live and work. Take a Georgian businessman, for instance, who has to use enormous amounts of will and time to Learn English so as to feel self-confident in the process of regular business talks or wider international negotiations. Meanwhile, the English native speaker can feel free from that imposed obligation to excel. Moreover, no matter how much or how diligently a Georgian businessman studies the language, he will never feel, within that artificially learned language, as comfortable as his English-speaking counterpart, who has a much bigger chance of sounding more educated and civilized than the person who has a problem expressing himself fluently, thus being unable to make a more powerful impression on the other side – all to the considerable detriment of the English-learning party and to the great benefit of the English-speaking side.
When we go abroad, we Georgians certainly want and need to speak English, or any other relevant foreign tongue, for that matter; and vice versa, when we are at home and receive a foreign guest, we feel obligated to speak their language, so as to make the situation amiable and comfortable for both sides. And the reason for this linguistic awkwardness is amazingly simple: we are who we are, and we are born where we are born. English is spoken all over the world, and Georgian is not. This is a disadvantage. The advantage in communication goes to the side who speaks the more popular language, and the advantage is a natural chance to better express one’s thoughts, thus exuding a stronger influence over the circumstances. Yes, there are interpreters who can help, but that’s a horse of a totally different color.
There is one other disadvantage that a smaller-language speaker might suffer. If my English-speaking collocutor finds out that I have no idea who the great William Shakespeare is, he will be surprised to stupor; yet if the selfsame guy has no clue who the great Shota Rustaveli is, no raised eyebrows will follow at his ignorance. Why? Because of the difference between the size, history, importance, influence and recognizability of nations, which means that we are not cut from the exact same cloth. The only noble way out in this kind of cultural debacle is the tolerance that the contemporary and democratically-oriented world is teaching us persistently: Yes, there is a linguistic and cultural discomfort that makes us feel different, even superior or inferior in some unfortunate cases (if compared), but we hope that our good Planet is gradually becoming a better place to live in, and if it does, we will certainly learn how to appreciate each other, taking in stride all those advantages and disadvantages while socializing with each other. If I have to learn a foreign tongue, I will, and will do it without much whining, but it will remain a tremendous pleasure to know that the big-language-speakers are not loath to learn our Kartuli. It helps greatly when in Sakartvelo, if nowhere else!
Blog by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
