At our well-appointed “gite”, amongst the piles of tourist leaflets and boxed games for rainy days (that thankfully, we have not needed to use), we found a copy of the fourth Harry Potter book “Harry Potter et la coupe de Feu.”
Keen to practice our French, we had a go at reading it. Half an hour later, even aided by a dictionary and a knowledge of the plot from many re-readings in English, we had only managed three pages, but it had been satisfying!
Getting by in another language is challenging and involves a great deal of concentration. When the children were little, they often asked why everyone doesn’t speak the same language, but nowadays even they seem to speak a different language to me, preserving a unique group identity through their choice of words and phrases. The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 gives an account of how communication brings power. The people in the generations of settlers after the Noah’s great flood, were establishing themselves as a society and had decided to build a tower to heaven as a testament to their civilisation and intellect.
God found their attitude arrogant and confused their language and with it their power and their ability to ignore him and his authority.
But if having a common language is power, then the reverse is true – not knowing it is a barrier to participation. I am thinking particularly the wave of recent Eastern European migrants in Rugby, and the many refugees and peoples displaced and fleeing from war zones.
Thank you God for the power of language to communicate with one another. Thank you for the way language encompasses so much culture and identity within it. Help us to be mindful of the difficulties of others from different language backgrounds who find language a barrier to full participation in society. Amen
Mairi Mowbray
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