Talking, writing, reading, listening: these are all ways of making sense of the world. Language is the means by which we make sense of things. The richer our store of language, the greater the possibilities. We know that those who are fluent in more than one language have a greater capacity for thought. It is not just a question of vocabulary and syntax but of ideas; of ways of looking at the world, embodied in the language. The Welsh word, hiraeth, gives us a very particular nostalgia for home that I began to understand when a Welsh speaking friend wrote about what it meant to her. It is wonderful to discover that there is a word [Scottish] to describe that hesitation when you have forgotten someone’s name ‘tartle’ and Japanese has a word for the last gleam of light on a river’s surface at dusk, ‘kawaakari’.
As we extend our knowledge of language, so we find we have greater resources to draw from as we speak and as we write. We learn words for things, and then that there can be more than one word to describe those things, perhaps in subtly different ways. We learn the rhythms and cadences of different voices and these become part of style. Our first language comes from those who surround us when we are very young. It expands as we meet extended family and friends. We discover our Glaswegian cousins or get to know our neighbours whose family origins are in Nigeria or Poland. We take on the music and the tones. We hear songs and rhymes, voices on the television and radio, the distinctive voice of traditional stories and skilled contemporary storytellers. The more we are immersed in language, spoken and read aloud, the greater the store of language we can draw upon.
Then we go to school. Here language can grow again as we meet new people and discover more books and poetry and music. Children need to know that the language they bring with them is valued; that all language is valued, of interest and a pleasure. Our job is to fill every school day with language of all kinds; to value language through the ear -songs and hymns, poetry, novels, non-fiction, myths and legends. We need a well-stocked book corner, opportunities for reading aloud, memorising, reciting, storytelling. In science and maths, PE and Forest School there are words and ways of saying things and we can celebrate them all. We do need to look at language closely and it helps us to know about how it works. First of all, though, we need to swim in it, relish it, let it become part of the way we speak and write. In the next few posts we will begin to think about how that can happen in school.
For the time being, here is an idea for writing: family language.
Can you make a list of words and phrases, songs and stories, that are part of your family? Are here pet names? What do your grandparents call you? Do you have special words for certain foods? What do people say when it is time for bed, time to go out, time to stop being silly? Michael Rosen has written lots of poems about the kinds of things that people say, especially in his own family. Could you write a list poem? It could begin “In our house we say….”
Writing Box 