About a good teacher - or a true friend

When I was 30 I took up skiing. Right in my first winter I had an accident and hurt my knee severely, which resulted in six weeks of leg in plaster and a lot of pain.

The year after, we went skiing again and the skiing school  put me into a group of people who had been experienced skiiers, but had not done the sport for some time and needed practice. It was the wrong group for me, for, despite my obvious talent and skills, I was so scared that I really panicked at one point. So they "downgraded" me to a group of slightly advanced beginners and here I met the best instructor and teacher of my life.

He was a young Norwegian and he listened to my story of the accident with little visible sympathy (which I had gotten used to) , nodded and told me to get going. Whenever I fell, he waited until I was on my feet again and asked : "And what did you do wrong this time ?"  I soon realized that the accident had not been the work of some cruel fate, but my own fault. Which meant, I could learn to avoid this mistake and not have an accident again. This was one of the most important lessons of my life.

Sometimes I feel as if a giant wave of despair and bad luck is washing over me and I feel like drowning. In this situation there are friends who pull me out of the water and provide me with a towel and hot tea and a box of tissues. But the really precious friend is the one who teaches me to swim.

If you have a friend like this, you are lucky. I am that lucky - although I sometimes swear at the tiring lessons...

Photo: Sam C. Chan

Viva México !

VIVA MÉXICO!!!!

Today is the 200th anniversary of the day on which the fight for Mexican independence started.

Happy Independence Day to all my Mexican friends... I wish I could celebrate with you !!!

Esperanto

The other day I read an article  on Esperanto. This first part of four dealt mainly with the idea that Esperanto is a suitable means of worldwide communication  due to its ability to express even complex and litarary contents and the fact that it is easy to learn.

This made me think about English, which is considered "the" world language. I teach English, I converse in English with most of my international friends and I love this language.  Of course, English is also a rich language, one that can express a lot of thoughts, emotions and facts (like all languages that are spoken by thinking human beings).  I realized that "English" (like all languages) has so many facets. For me it is not the language of the US political, economic and military leaders, for me it is first of all the language of literature that I love very much. The language of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Paul Auster. The language of books like "To Killl a Mockingbird", or the language of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." The language that created immortal lines in "Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet".

English got this image of "world language" not because it is spoken by so many people. If that was the criterion, we would all be learning Chinese or Spanish. It is true that English grammar is easier to memorize than French or Spanish verb  forms, but the details of expressing things can be just as complicated and delicate. English is a flexible language, one that has absorbed words from a lot of languages, and it is a language that is used and adapted to individual needs in its local varieties.

But the main reason why English is considered a  "world language" is one of power, history and politics. The British Empire also spread its language (made easy by the facts  I mentioned above) and today the USA are the remaining superpower... American politics, economy and culture rule and so does the language.

And when I got to this point, I thought that a "world language" that has nothing to do with power and oppression, but was created as a means of peace could maybe really help us. I should find out more about Esperanto ...

The article mentioned at the beginning is:
Guillermo Macías y Díaz Infante: Pasado, presente y futuro del Esperanto (Primera de cuatro partes), in: La Jornada Aguascalientes, 2nd September, 2010, p. 6  (written in Spanish and Esperanto)