My sister has been spending her semester in Cape Town, South Africa. She is studying to be a Speech Language Pathologist and has had the opportunity to work in a special education school in Cape Town using The Autism Helper resources. I’m excited to share some tales from her work there over the next few Saturdays!
Getting Lost in Language
One of the biggest struggles I have found is the language barrier between most of the children and myself. South Africa has 11 official languages including English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Tsonga, Swati, and Ndebele. In Cape Town English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa are dominant and my students are native Xhosa speakers. The children are taught in Xhosa up until grade 4. This is very beneficial for early learning but then causes difficulties when students are expected to learn fourth grade material while also learning English.
While I love picking up bits and pieces of the Xhosa language, it is a very difficult language to learn, especially coming as a native English speaker. I quickly picked up some of the simple phrases and in my second week even convinced a student that I spoke Xhosa. Our conversation consisted of “molo” (hello), “kunjani” (how are you?), and ***(I’m fine and you). After our short greeting, he immediately ran up to the therapist and exclaimed, “She speaks Xhosa!”
I wish it was that easy, but its not. Xhosa has 3 different clicks (c, q, x) and various other sounds that contradict the rules and norms of English. One good example is lateralizing sounds such as in the phrase “sala kahle” (goodbye). So when saying the phrase it sounds like you have slushy sounding lisp in the middle of the word.
These differences between languages pose as obstacles for the students as well. For example the vowel sounds in the English words “pen” and “pan” are used interchangeably in Xhosa. Vowel sounds are very hard to teach because they vary according to region, even in the States. The therapist I work with is from Durban, another major city in South Africa, and she has to change her accent when working on vowel sounds with students. That means that I really have to change my accent (can’t sound too Chicagoan!).
Despite these challenges, I have been able to use the language barrier as an advantage, giving the students the chance to be the “teacher” and they absolutely love it. Two students, a speech therapist, and myself were playing a sound awareness game with the alphabet letters, once in Xhosa and once in English. The game was simple, pick a letter out of the bag, say the sound, and come up with a word that starts with the sound. The first letter I drew out of the bag was “c” and the therapist and I just laughed (its one of the three clicks in Xhosa). So as I tried to identify the sound, the kids laughed and I told them they had to teach me. So now they were the teachers and I was the student, what kid wouldn’t love that? The next letter I drew was yet another click, “q.” We repeated the same game of them acting as my teachers. Of course, as luck has it, I never drew the “x” the one click sound I am familiar with. When we switched over to play the game according to the English alphabet, immediately they took on the role as the teachers and I had to remind them that that was the language I knew.
I loved seeing how the boys lit up when they were able to help me out. They had so much fun with the game while also learning and practicing their own sound awareness. So as long as it gets them engaged and excited, I will keep making a fool of myself trying to click properly.
If you want to give these clicks a try or hear what they sound like check out this YouTube tutorial! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31zzMb3U0iY
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