When I was teaching English to adult students in London, one of the topics that we mutually enjoyed and learnt from was language and culture. I was living and working in a vibrant multi-cultural inner London borough (administrative district with its own elected council) and my students reflected its diversity. I had three different groups in small classes, averaging around 15 students, one of whom estimated that in all they represented some 30 different cultures. They came from four different continents: Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. Only a few students shared both the same ethnicity and place of origin. They were either refugees (the majority) or immigrants plus a few migrant workers and, in one atypical case, the daughter of a Spanish migrant worker supplementing her school studies. She was 16 (the minimum age for our classes), while the others ranged in age from their 20s to their 60s. Most spoke more than one language other than English. We used to start our language and culture sessions with my writing a simple sentence on a large and thick sheet of paper. The students then, in turn, translated their sentences into their own respective languages noting any changes, for example the word order, or omissions, such as the verb. To illustrate this they then literally translated their sentences back into English, And while they had been writing, we had already observed similarities and differences between the different languages and English. As with Arabic, some are written horizontally from right to left, not left to right, while others are written vertically. For some written languages, the use of a line is very important, while others, such as Chinese, do not have an alphabet but consist of characters. This led naturally to exchanges about their respective cultures with interesting and sometimes unexpected points arising. One such discussion was initiated by a Nigerian, who referred to English being used as an official language in some former British colonies and dependencies after they had attained their independence, including Nigeria. This was new to some students to whom it was explained that, regardless of the merits or demerits of the decision, such decision can be motivated by the myriad languages spoken in one nation state, reflecting its discrete cultures. English may be chosen rather the language of a majority group or a minority, but dominant group to facilitate cultural and linguistic unity. For instance, there are more than 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria speaking some 500 languages. An Indian student explained that English was also an official language in the vast country of India, but had the status of a secondary official language. Hindi, is the first official language and both Hindi and English are spoken in parliament and used in the media. English, however, is the language specified for legal texts and documents. Many of the students were surprised to learn from a Vietnamese student, who had earlier lived in Wales and had a Welsh lilt to his English, that English was not the only language spoken in Britain. Wales, one of the Celtic countries in the British Isles achieved Welsh becoming an official language in 1993, after long years of hard and sometimes bitter campaigning. The country now is officially bilingual, but in another Celtic area of Britain, Cornwall, in the far south-west of Britain, a similar Celtic language died out as a spoken language about two hundred years ago, but was revived in the 20th century. Notably in this region, the great majority of the place names are of Cornish origin, essentially descriptive in nature, which have preserved the language. Variant forms of another Celtic language are also found in the British Isles, namely Irish and Scottish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic, the language of the small Isle of Man. Later I learnt some Arabic in Cairo and had to grapple with its challenges, not least trying to acquire some Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) "to get by" while studying Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Language reflects history as well as culture, and while the language of an occupier may be resisted, it and the languages of other foreign groups can infiltrate, such as ECA, especially in Cairo. In addition to words of Coptic and Pharaonic origins in everyday conversation, French, Greek, Italian, Persian and Turkish all make an appearance as well as other languages in ECA. English was used as the medium of instruction in the Arabic classes that I attended, in which the Japanese students truly impressed me with their adaptability. Writing variously in Arabic, English and Japanese in their notebooks, they moved with dexterity between the three languages and their very different cultural concepts. Faraldi has lived in Upper Egypt and then Cairo, since 1991, working in higher education and as a researcher, writer and editor.
