Language is a way of communication, a way to connect, express and share. A way to understand and to live. Some say the origin of language is from emotions. It is estimated that the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000.
You might wonder why I am talking about language. It’s because it is the basic need for survival, especially when we are going to new places and dealing with new and different communities. When I found out that I was going to travel to north India for the first time, I was excited but at the same time hesitated. My interaction in Hindi was poor so I started to watch a lot of Bollywood films to strengthen it.
Could I live among the people without knowing their language? How would ask for an address? How would I ask for money? How about food? The questions were endless. I remember when I was travelling from Mumbai to Udaipur in the train, two grandpa’s who sat in front of me talked for 6 to 7 hours with me in Hindi, I was replying with ‘ji’ to everything. I think they figured it out that I don’t know the language properly as they began laughing when I said ‘ji’ for something.
In the social sector, where people are the core of every process, language plays an important role in connecting to a community and to each other and building and strengthening the trust and the relationship. As I am working in Samastipur in Bihar, where Hindi, Maithili, Bhojpuri languages are in use, I was wondering will I be able to interact with the community? Will I be able to build trust? And interestingly I came across a VSO (global volunteering organization) volunteer Jake Smith from England who lived among the Bihari community there for three months and was able to build trust among the community which peeked my interest. We had a long interesting conversation about the community, child education, and so on, and since I was curious about how he survived in those three months with a language barrier, I interviewed him to know more about his experience. Here are some of the insights gained with his answers
read the full blog at below link
http://www.indiafellow.org/blog/2017/09/overcoming-the-language-barrier-learning-from-one-another/
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