One of the exciting realities for RELOVUTIONARY is the multiculturally distinctive growing, Core Team, which is a redemptive marker of the Christian’s future.
With this in mind, we welcome Mrs Pastor Dan – Lizy Schwamm – to this platform. Dan and Lizy have a growing list of potential posts, and this is Lizy’s first offering on a very specific subject; outside most reader’s living requirements inside Aotearoa.
In the navigations of her journey, which began in Peru; then left for Turkey; studied in the US of A, and now call New Zealand home, Lizy, has traversed through many different cultures, with many different potential language challenges.
In light, she shares this story.
Enjoy!
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By Lizy Schwamm
It’s been a roller coaster. I was first introduced to English when I was 2. It was in a Peruvian school through Peruvian teachers. When I was 10 my parents moved me to a fully English speaking school. That’s where the struggles increased. I’d already found it hard enough having to learn English without the addition of now having to speak it outside of the classroom. Now, I was in a school where everyone, even friends during lunch time, only ever spoke English. When I was 15, the learning journey seemed to have come to an end as my family and I moved to Turkey. I thought, “hey it’s Turkey, English is everyone’s second language.” Little did I know, I was going to befriend a Turkish girl who was going to help me improve my English by pointing out my Latino accent.
From the very beginning of our friendship we made fun of each other’s foreign accents. She didn’t know Spanish and I hadn’t yet learnt Turkish, so English was our means of communication. And so we would sharpen each other’s English. We took the language and made it ours. This is where my journey took a different route. Some learn a second language and it remains just that, a second language. However, for me, the experience was different. Yes, for me, English is another’s mother tongue, but it’s a tongue I’ve ended up adopting as my own. You may even say that it’s dethroned my mother tongue and made itself the ruling means of communication within me.
English began to pervade my life and experiences. My Turkish friend and I spent much time watching movies together in English. I started only watching TV in English, even without Spanish subtitles. I found myself thinking in English, and recounting stories from my day to my family in English as well. To give you some perspective, up until this point only Spanish had ever been spoken in my house. The change was gradual, but by the end of my first year in Turkey, I felt like English was my mother tongue.
By around 18, I had decided I didn’t belong to the Spanish community anymore. In 2011, we went to Peru for a month, and that’s where I realised how much my Spanish had changed. I realised that I couldn’t think in Spanish anymore. I hadn’t forgotten it. I still understood “all of it”, but I was stuck in the past. My language had moved on with the culture and the times, but I had lagged behind. I heard old friends saying phrases I understood syntactically, but I didn’t comprehend their meaning. They’d laugh and I’d just stare back. I felt like an alien. I yearned to be home; in my English community, where I could be part of the laughter and also joke back. The switch within me had settled, and the roots were soo deep that my identity was forever changed. That year I decided I was going to stop caring about Peru and my Latin past. I felt betrayed by my own mother tongue. How could it have so easily removed itself from me? I embraced English as my new way of being.
My fluency has only progressed from my early years till now, and I feel like a new person. I’ve gone from being soo shy that I wouldn’t dare raise my hand to ask my teacher “may I go to the bathroom, please”, choosing instead to hold it till lunch break; to now, not caring whether the word I just said was pronounced properly or not, and being willing to be laughed at by my friends. Even though I’ve completely embraced English as my means of thinking and communication, there’s always a new phrase I haven’t yet heard; that’s when I find myself quietly asking the person beside me what was meant. Perhaps one thing that we who’ve adopted a language as our main tongue experience is the bittersweet taste of betrayal. The very language you’ve adopted and grown to love will still sometimes throw a phrase at you that leaves you staring blankly. Do I resent English? Do I resent the circumstances that made me adopt it? Did I even have a choice…?
I was exposed to it soo much that I became saturated in it, my daily events and consequently my thoughts and speech reflected it. Spanish is still there, but it doesn’t own me. Yet neither does English. What is a mother tongue anyway? I once had a tongue that was my mother’s. Later on another mother, through my experience and the culture around me, came and embraced me; and to greater degrees, each day, I make it my own.
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Thank you, Lizy, we look forward to your future words on this very platform, and for all you and your experiences will bring to this life-movement.
As you reflect, Reader, think on the importance of language for communicating the Gospel. And consider whether or how the Gospel is your daily living, Mother Tongue, or, do you more move between the religion of your own record to earn your status before God? This will be our default when we are not intentionally living out the lines of the Gospel. This does not lead to flourishing!
Our goal at RELOVUTIONARY is that every Reader would increasingly make the Gospel their own, as you apply it into all of life, and increasingly live out these lines. It is with this intention we walk on.