‘Language is a means to connect, communicate and participate in the society where you are in.’
It was October 1983. Carlo and I were at the train station in ‘s Hertogenbosch, waiting for our connecting train to Tilburg, where we lived. There were a lot of people also waiting for the train to Tilburg, when we heard from the public address “de trein naar Tilburg, Breda en Roosendaal van zestien uur vierendertig heeft een vertraging van tien minuten, en zal aankomen en vertrekken van Spoor 4”.
We had arrived in the Netherlands in August and did not yet know much of the Dutch language. The transport workers were launching wildcat (i.e. unplanned by the unions) strikes, which were causing disruptions in train services.
Upon hearing the announcement, most of the people who had been waiting for the train with us started moving away. Panic! What is happening? We hurriedly asked one woman who was moving away. She answered “the train will leave from Platform 4”. Thankfully, we were able to catch our train. But the feeling of panic and helplessness lingered for a while. It was such an awful feeling, I never wanted to feel that way again. Never again! It made me realize how important it was to learn the Dutch language.
Learning and mastering the Dutch language has become an important on-going thread, even to this day, in my life as a migrant here in the Netherlands.
When we came to the Netherlands in August 1983 we only had tourist visas. For us to be able to stay longer, we had to change our visas. It was possible for us to acquire student visas IF we are able to enroll in the university the following schoolyear (i.e. by September 1984). We therefore only had a year to learn enough Dutch to qualify for admission to the university. We didn’t follow a language course, but just used the audio lab lessons at the university, and did a lot of self-study. We subscribed to a newspaper (one that used high-level Dutch), watched TV programs which had Dutch subtitles, watched the daily news on TV for children (as the language was formal but simple), and talked to our friends and neighbours as much as possible in Dutch. All these efforts bore fruit as we both passed the Dutch language examinations in all four categories of reading, listening comprehension, writing and speaking in August – just on time to enroll in September.
When we started the process of changing our visas early that year, the Alien Police informed us that I did not need to enroll at once at the university. That if Carlo got a student visa, I could stay on the basis of being his partner. The Alien Police saw that I was pregnant. Even with this knowledge I still continued to learn the Dutch language to qualify for admission to the university. Just in case Carlo will not be able to make it. I gave birth to my first daughter, Ligaya, in March 1984 and decided to forego with my enrollment to the university.
Even if I didn’t have to study in the university I continued to feel the need to learn the Dutch language. As a mother I wanted to be able to understand and communicate with people and institutions relevant to my children, such as the community nurses and the nurses of the well-baby centers where I brought my children for regular check-ups, the caretakers of the daycare centers where my children went to, their teachers when they started going to school, etc. In a way, after passing my Dutch language examinations in August 1984, my progress of learning the Dutch language went side-by-side with the growth of my two daughters, Ligaya and Elena. As a mother I did not settle for just understanding the language. I asked questions and spoke out during parents’ meetings in their daycare center and schools. I also sought interaction with the parents of Ligaya and Elena’s classmates, so that our children could play with each other after school. In the Netherlands children don’t just go to each other’s houses to play. They first have to make appointments with each other, or rather their parents do.
In September 1988, it was my turn to enroll at the university and acquire a student visa. At the start I tended to take notes in English during lectures. But soon enough I realized that it was easier to take notes directly in Dutch, as the lectures were in Dutch, rather than keep translating what I hear to English. During my first exams as a student many of my professors were so kind and told me that I may answer the questions in English. But that part of me who loves challenges decided to do my exams in Dutch. Besides I didn’t want to get special treatment. As the saying goes “When you’re in Rome, do as the Romans do.” My mastery of the Dutch language made some leaps during my student years.
In October 1993 I got my first job in the Netherlands as a project coordinator of a parenting program in an institution for social work in Tilburg, where I lived. Soon enough I was confronted with the feeling that my mastery of the Dutch language was not enough. During meetings I found it so frustrating that I would still be formulating in my mind how to say my points in Dutch, and the meeting had already moved on to the next topic. I then decided that I should improve my mastery of the Dutch language to a higher level. I looked for an advanced Dutch language course and found one. With the information I gathered about the course, I went to the head of my department and to the head of our Personnel and Human Resource Depatment. My employer agreed to pay the tuition fees and books for the advanced Dutch language course I wanted to take, and the transportation expenses, as the course was in another city. I wanted to do the course in my own time, not as work time. I told my employer that the course was not only directly work-related, but was also part of my personal development. I therefore also wanted to invest personally on it as a matter of principle. My mastery of the Dutch language again made some leaps as a result of this course.
Formally studying the language is essential should you want to master it. But a lot of learning and mastering happens in the actual practice when you use the language in your daily life – as a mother, at work and by simply participating in the society where you are in.
It also requires an open attitude to learn a language – knowing when you need to improve your mastery of the language and allowing others to help you. When I just started working in 1993, I asked the secretariat department of our office to check all my outgoing letters for any grammatical errors. I always then compared the original version of what I wrote with the final version made by the secretary, to see which mistakes I made. I also allowed my children, even up to now, to correct my Dutch when I talk to them. And up to this day I still consult every now and then the dictionary; and I even have a dictionary of idiomatic expressions.
Learning a language also requires courage, the courage to use it actively in your daily life and not allow yourself to be limited by your imperfect mastery of the language. When Ligaya was in the elementary school, either in Group 4 or 5(equivalent to Grades 2 or 3), I volunteerd in their class for their reading activitiy. I saw in their school newsletter that they were looking for parent-volunteers for various school activities, and one of them was for their reading activity. I then asked her teacher what the parent-volunteer had to do for this activity. And she told me that they have this so called reading hour when the children can choose a book to read silently. And if there were words they could not understand, they could go to the parent-volunteers present in the class who could explain to them the meaning of the word. “Hhmmm, do you think I can do that?”, I asked the teacher. “Well, I can understand you very well, and I think you have a wide enough Dutch vocabulary. So, yes, I think you can do it. Just try.”, was what she said. And so I did! My insecurities about the language were for no reason at all. There were always more children who lined up in front of me, than in front of the other parent-volunteer. I guess they were just amused with me because of my different accent. I would see them smile while I was talking with them.
Learning to master a language also requires painstaking efforts. During my first few years as a student in the university I would go through my Dutch textbooks at least twice. During the first reading I would take note of all words I didn’t understand. I would then look them up one by one in the dictionary and made notes of the meaning of the words. Then I would read again the text to be studied with my notes of the words I looked up in the dictionary at hand.
I guess I have achieved quite a high level of mastery of the Dutch language. I write reports and other official documents in Dutch and am able to engage in discussions during meetings in my work. I am able to engage in political discussions and debates in Dutch, as I have seen it when I was a city councilor in our city from 2003 to 2010. I even won second place in a speech contest in one of the cadre training/ course of our political party in 2011. I also prefer to read novels and instruction manuals in Dutch than in English. So I am really quite comfortable with the Dutch language, having been able to internalize it to a certain level.
But I know that my Dutch is not perfect. It is also not my intention to have a perfect mastery of the Dutch language. Mastering the language is not an aim by itself, but language is a means, an instrument to connect, to communicate and to participate in the society where you are in. So even if I make grammatical mistakes or speak with an accent or mispronounce some words; these do not stop me from speaking my mind. I would always tell myself “I have made a lot of effort to learn the Dutch language, so it is not too much to expect from the Dutch people I talk to to also try to meet me halfway by trying to understand what I am trying to say despite the imperfections of my Dutch language.”
Being able to understand, speak and write the language in the society where you are in as a migrant is actually very liberating. It helped me to be an effective mother, it allowed me to make my own choices and fully participate in this society.