The Greeting Fluency Initiative Launch – Sam Sullivan and the Global Civic Policy Society
23 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in Doing Good, Linguistics, News, Simon Fraser University Tags: Global Civic Policy Society, Greeting Fluency Initiative, Linguistics, multiculturalism, Sam Sullivan, SFU, Simon Fraser University
A story:
Once upon a time, there was a very small child who had just learned to speak. This child had a perfectly sound vocabulary for a three year old, and on sunny days, would talk to other kids in her neighbourhood, using every phrase she knew. It sounded something like this:
“Hello. Good morning! How are you? I’m fine, thank you. My name is Beverly Wu.”
Then, horror of horrors, she ran out of things to say, for you see, this child’s first language was Cantonese, not English. In a valiant effort to continue the conversation, she wracked her brain for any other English she had ever learnt:
“A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z…”
… 
I mention this story because today, I attended the launch for Sam Sullivan and the Global Civic Policy Society’s Greeting Fluency Initiative. How did I manage that? I went representing Simon Fraser University’s Linguistics department, as my Mam (Mayan language spoken in Guatemala) professor, Susan Russell, couldn’t attend the event.
A little about the project’s mandate from the flyer they handed out at the meeting:
The greeting Fluency Initiative seeks to encourage citizens to learn simple phrases of greetings in the languages of their neighbours. This simple act communicates a profound respect for other cultural groups and opens a window onto the rich cultural experiences that ar a part of our own community.
I think this is a great idea. It’s a small effort that can go a long way in making people more comfortable in many different contexts, even if only a few phrases. If we can all get super comfortable and lose all our shyness about using these few phrases, it will be a very good start.
I mean, a lot of us know how to greet people in several different languages…
“Hi, how are you?”
“Bonjour, comment ça va?” (French)
“Ni hao” (hello, Mandarin)
“Jo sun” (good morning, Cantonese)
“Salaam” (hello, Farsi)
“Namaste” (I greet the divine within you, Hindi)
“Konnichiwa” (good afternoon, Japanese)
“An nyoung ha seh o” (hello, korean)
“Jeeka, ma tzuula!” (oh, you’ve arrived!, Mam)
but personally, I’m super shy about actually using them when the time comes! Why?!
I could talk for an hour all on the challenges of Second Language Acquisition, but I’ll save that for my undergraduate honours essay (starting September!). All I know is that even though I’ve learned so much about SLA during the course of my degree, it doesn’t make it much easier when it comes to actually bearing down and trying to learn a language, as I’m doing with Mam this semester at SFU Surrey (FNLG 231, if any of you are interested.)
So, long story short, it would be very exciting if we could all leave our language inhibitions at the door, and just try. Imagine if our children grew up with these phrases as part of learning their first language as babies! That would be truly wonderful.
…
On a side note, apparently it was THE lunch to be at for all sorts of politicians, philanthropists, and other important people today. I met Sam Sullivan and my MLA for Burnaby-Lougheed, Harry Bloy. It’s good to finally meet, in person, the people who have, or are currently representing our cities/neighbourhoods in public office.
Unfortunately, I totally forgot to take a photograph of something, anything at the event, so this post will be unfortunately not all that visually pleasing to look at.
Check out the Greetings Fluency Initiative, at http://grettingfluency.org
xoxo
-b
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