I want to dedicate this entry to all those sympathetic interlocutors in the world. You know who you are. When you've heard someone struggling to vocalize their thoughts, you have been there to fill in the blank. You're The living thesaurus ready to jump in with the right word at the right time. You are there to interject a little bit of context to explain what may seem like someone else's odd or offensive behavior. You are the bridge builder, the peacemaker, and the best friend any Peace Corps volunteer can have.
So what is the character profile of a sympathetic interlocutor? How do you become one? My guess is that the individual has had to struggle learning a foreign language at some point in time, and perhaps has had to adapt to customs and traditions different than his/her own. This struggle has forged a sense of compassion for those who are deep in the struggle. The sympathetic interlocutor feels the pain and the sense of helplessness because he/she too has been ridiculed for conjugating incorrectly, mispronouncing, not inflecting properly, and saying or doing completely inappropriate things without even attempting to do so. He or she has also felt out of place and sometimes alienated by the strange culture surrounding him/her and bewildered by what seems to be an indecipherable mumble jumble. He or she has felt the humbling experience of coming from an environment where he/she felt in control of his/her domain to another setting where he/she is overjoyed by the accomplishment of the simplest of tasks.
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| My Darija-language tutor Ali and I on one of our many sessions |
The sympathetic interlocutor loves playing nonverbal charades and often cares more about communicating than communicating correctly. He/she will often mimic you as you try to contort your lips, tongue, and entire face to say whatever you're trying to say. If he/she happens to be your language tutor, he/she will repeat the same word a hundred times until you finally remember it the 101th time.
Fortunately, I have come across many sympathetic interlocutors, but I have also met a number of not so sympathetic ones. The non-sympathetic ones will sometimes laugh, ridicule, and will show no patience whatsoever. I am encouraged when a sympathetic interlocutor tells the unsympathetic ones to respect the struggle of the language learner and urges them to empathize. I am also grateful to the sympathetic interlocutors for introducing me to his/her circle of friends and family and sharing a bit of history about why, in his/her point of view, people in his/her corner of the world do what they do.
I certainly could not have gotten this far in my Peace Corps service without the help of countless sympathetic interlocutors. One of the many sympathetic interlocutors is my tutor and friend Ali. What's amazing about Ali is that he taught himself English. He learned from a few books, lots of American films, and from interaction with past Peace Corps volunteers. He graduated with a degree in sociology, which he studied in French, another language that he speaks impeccably. I am grateful to know him, to have been his student, and to have shared many a cultural tid bits that only served to reaffirm how similar we all are. For all you sympathetic interlocutors, keep up the hard work of translating, clarifying misunderstandings, resolving disputes, and just making the world a more harmonious place to live in. Thank you and God bless you all.
P.S. You may ask why the formal "sympathetic interlocutor" title. Our Peace Corps language proficiency exam rubric had that titled scattered throughout the various levels and sub-levels of language proficiency. For example, at the beginner level it states that it will take a sympathetic interlocutor to have the patience to figure out what the heck is coming out of your mouth. At the intermediate, you're making coherent sounds, but it will take a sympathetic interlocutor to put your sounds into comprehensible sentences. At the advanced level, your language is flowing, but your English-structured Arabic may not make a lot of sense from time to time so it takes a sympathetic interlocutor to translate your Arabic to a more culturally-adaptable format.
Fortunately, I have come across many sympathetic interlocutors, but I have also met a number of not so sympathetic ones. The non-sympathetic ones will sometimes laugh, ridicule, and will show no patience whatsoever. I am encouraged when a sympathetic interlocutor tells the unsympathetic ones to respect the struggle of the language learner and urges them to empathize. I am also grateful to the sympathetic interlocutors for introducing me to his/her circle of friends and family and sharing a bit of history about why, in his/her point of view, people in his/her corner of the world do what they do.
I certainly could not have gotten this far in my Peace Corps service without the help of countless sympathetic interlocutors. One of the many sympathetic interlocutors is my tutor and friend Ali. What's amazing about Ali is that he taught himself English. He learned from a few books, lots of American films, and from interaction with past Peace Corps volunteers. He graduated with a degree in sociology, which he studied in French, another language that he speaks impeccably. I am grateful to know him, to have been his student, and to have shared many a cultural tid bits that only served to reaffirm how similar we all are. For all you sympathetic interlocutors, keep up the hard work of translating, clarifying misunderstandings, resolving disputes, and just making the world a more harmonious place to live in. Thank you and God bless you all.
P.S. You may ask why the formal "sympathetic interlocutor" title. Our Peace Corps language proficiency exam rubric had that titled scattered throughout the various levels and sub-levels of language proficiency. For example, at the beginner level it states that it will take a sympathetic interlocutor to have the patience to figure out what the heck is coming out of your mouth. At the intermediate, you're making coherent sounds, but it will take a sympathetic interlocutor to put your sounds into comprehensible sentences. At the advanced level, your language is flowing, but your English-structured Arabic may not make a lot of sense from time to time so it takes a sympathetic interlocutor to translate your Arabic to a more culturally-adaptable format.
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