Acton In Focus - The Power of Language - with ABUW

001[Music] welcome to action in focus i'm viviane kopsinger virtual your host and today it's an honor to host a team from the acton-boxborough united way to talk about the power of language and i will at this point request each and every one of you to tell us who you are oh and what languages you speak in your household and we'll start with where the first person on my screen is jill morning my name is jill o'brien and i am current board president of acton-boxborough united way and i will say the only language language that is spoken in my home regularly is english i do have a child who is bilingual and she occasionally uses spanish when she's speaking on the phone um but it's to no one else in our family next is grief hi

002my name is hirit thank you vivienne for having us the i am from belgium so we speak in the northern part of belgium flemish which is dutch flemish dutch so at home the basically spoken language at this moment in time is english but this regularly flemish in between and other yeah languages are spoken by our kids like chinese and arabic so there is lots of interesting languages morning i'm bert ware i am a member of the board here at acton-boxborough united way in my household we speak um primarily english although my wife and daughters um speak mandarin and they've studied it here in acton and um i think they do it so they can talk about me without me knowing what they're saying my daughters also speak french and spanish and my son speaks spanish

003as well rami good morning my name is rami saluja i'm a board member at ab united way 2. so i'm originally from india and uh our medium of instruction growing up at school it was english so i speak english fluently yet but i'm from the northern part of india the state of punjab and the language there is punjabi so i speak that but i grew up in south of india in the state of telangana and i i'm not very fluent but i understand the language spoken there which is telugu but everybody in india speaks hindi which i speak so four languages but my daughter and son both are learning spanish but at home primarily we it's a mix of hindi punjabi and english uh katie hi i'm katie neville i'm on staff at the aviated

004way as the communications and volunteer engagement manager and we just only speak english in our household all right good morning vivian and everyone here my name is pubali banerjee and i'm a member of the board at ebw thank you for initiating the conversation about the power of language today um at home i speak three different languages english bengali and hindi and like romy uh when growing up in india and specifically in kolkata we always spoke bengali at home but we studied in english medium at school and i learned hindi as a second vernacular language at school and i've been speaking bengali and english with my children ever since they were toddlers and they know and my older son he knows spanish really well but mostly bengali at home thank you maribel hi i'm maribel mendoza

005i am a first year board member at abuw and in our house we speak english and spanish my i primarily speak to mike i try to primarily speak to my kids in spanish although that gets harder and harder and then my kids are also also speak mandarin um my older daughter a little bit more fluently than the younger one um she started in a preschool in a mandarin immersion school so got a good base understanding and has tried to continue learning it here but uh yeah so we're working on improving the spanish and and doing more of that at home all right cara hi i'm carol busey i'm also a board member i happen to also be from belgium so at home we do speak english and dutch or flemish whenever we used to go

006on vacation to belgium and we would come back it would be almost all dutch or flemish and over time there would be more and more english in there and then after a few weeks it would be all english i still try to speak as much touch or flemish but even in my own language i hear that there's more and more english going in between and when we want to say something that the kids shouldn't hear we would speak french but my youngest is now taking french and spanish at school so we'll need to find a different language thank you linda good morning i'm linda moyneau for those who are visually impaired i am a middle-aged white woman wearing with dark curly hair and a light blue collared blouse in our home we speak english my

007daughter lived in germany so she speaks german and thinking about what bert carol and public said growing up my parents spoke yiddish and it was it was i started uh especially when i was in third grade and learned how to spell and it was mostly so that i couldn't understand what they were saying excellent and lastly myself uh i speak i grew up in a household speaking three languages luganda which is my mother's language runyan kore which is my dad's my dad's language and uh english because we were studying that in school but we we picked up other languages from neighbors and friends so i can communicate in about seven languages but but you know primarily i speak three so even in the household here in acton or i speak uh three languages but you

008know from this introduction we see that you know we recognize the diversity of language in our household even on the board you know this is just the members of the board of acts and boxborough united way which i'd like to believe is representative of our community here in acton and boxborough and in massachusetts so when we talk about all of us communicate in english and that's what we're using right here but then we'll realize that for example in in my english when i moved to the united states was more of ugandan english you know so it has a new one says and we have people from india they might have indian english and we might have the you know the dutch who have dutch english verse lack of a better word so my question to

009you is how has language influenced your life here uh in the united states whether it's through work or social life starting with jill so the influence of language in my house i think i have to give credit where it's due into a child who um in massachusetts and in the united states we give we pay a lot of attention to stem we give a lot of attention to math sciences and as a country my child was observant of being from acton being from the suburbs there wasn't a lot of exposure so as a family we had to listen more to her in her theory of um and her frustration why am i here when my strength is in acquiring languages so it influenced our entire family that we were used to sort of speaking the

010way people in the suburbs speak and the people in massachusetts speak i don't know that they're like i have a brother-in-law from quincy in his accent if you will even his word choices were different from what we had grown up with and i grew up in littleton and acton um but this having a child that was sort of splashing a light on it influenced everyone else in our family that it wasn't so much about um not being open to you know listening to others but really not being exposed and having to go outside of the confines of school to sort of reach into and want to explore what became what became um like a natural inclination to want to know more that same child there was there was no spanish you know being taught at

011the elementary schools at all at that time and as a you know suburban mom her interest was in this when she was in elementary school in sixth grade there was a woman that came to new from new hampshire to teach my child and two other friends spanish so that in and of itself and this was in like 2006 maybe she was 9 10 11 12 like that's when it she was becoming more and more aware of the lack of the opportunity for her to capitalize on what she was interested in and it's so unique to listen to people that come from other countries including i want to say just about everybody on this panel had an opportunity in their where they grew up whether it was with their because of their parents or because of

012their location to listen to and have an opportunity to explore so as crazy as it sounds there wasn't the opportunity here in the suburbs in acton where my child grew up to explore that and we certainly my husband and i grew up right here as well we we weren't speaking any other language besides english because that was sort of that was the track you were on it was you know women do this and yes i took home eq but was i ever offered spanish or any other language in school no absolutely not so it's a to me it's like a sign of the times and i love it so that's that's sort of the influence of one child on everybody is absolutely there in my home great um i would say for me language is

013very tight to belonging and when my youngest son was 10 years old he said to me don't you speak that language of yours to me and here i had on all this effort uh because my husband speaks english how we spoke english he's american and i was belton so i was determined to speak dutch but when your third first child it's easy to keep your language it's parody the second it becomes harder the third i was exhausted and then they then in your face say don't in a language of yours and i became you can imagine it became emotional i'm like this is my mother how can you deny this but guess what we stopped basically speaking dutch but now he's 16 he says or no he's not 16. he's now he's in college but

014when he was 16 he said you could start speaking the language again of yours and and so it all works out they see the value ultimately not tough not easy work wise um i am acutely aware that i have an accent some people call it exotic which is nice other people find it annoying other people can't comprehend it and that sense of do i belong when i became an american citizen i said i am as american as apple tart apparently you don't say apple tart you say apple pie which again my kids pointed out to me and made them hysterically laugh so by my youngest son saying don't you speak that language of me it also gradually is dawning on me which some of these board members know that i became a minority in my

015own family uh because of the dominant english language and and and that the sports metaphors and so on i am really still not familiar with partially because i'm really not that interested but it it it influences uh you or or where you where yeah how you belong and yeah before i go to the next one gr you did not tell us your last name you just said you agreed uh so greet the scooter which in yeah no which in one job i was told please not to say because could i not change my name because it was just according to my boss a bit too long and too exotic and too much attention demanding if people then started to ask about my name and i said no i cannot change my name i refused to

016change my name which was a hint that it wasn't the right place for me to be thank you bert language for me i mean sort of in my household the influence of it um it's interesting my wife um her mom was from germany her father's african-american and my wife grew up as a consequence in a household where german and english were spoken um [Music] my children have had this fascination with language they chose to study mandarin um because you know at least as my eldest described it at the time and she started when she i think was in elementary school it was interesting and that's where a lot of cool kids went on sunday mornings um over to um the um junior high where the acton language chinese language school is going on um you

017know through my life and given what i do for a living language has always been vitally important precision in language has been vitally important um i grew up down in virginia and it's it's sort of amusing that you speak of um sort of the differences in american english versus english from perhaps europe or or spoken in europe or spoken in africa um there's regional differences too um you may not hear a virginian accent here when i speak um in fact when i grew up in virginia people said you don't sound like you're from here and i always remember thinking about that issue of belonging as a consequence because i grew up in a household where um you know my mom was a school teacher she taught english she also taught home that jill [Music] but

018you know it it was sort of interesting because even though we grew up in virginia precision with the language um how you articulated yourself um your diction your accent was very important within my household my dad you know spent 20 years in service 20 years in the postal service after that and the idea that there would be sort of regional colloquialisms was really sort of frowned on in my household growing up and that may well be why when people would say you don't sound like you're from here perhaps i didn't um they would say you sound like you might be from the midwest you sound like you might be from new jersey or further in the northeast um but it's it's a very powerful influence and the point that greek made about whether you feel

019as if you belong um i think is really at the core of this um and you know as i jokingly said at the beginning i think my wife and daughters have decided that they wanted to mandarin because that meant they could talk about dad behind his back while he actually sat there and say things that mocked him and they never want to fight um i jokingly said to them that if they just did pig latin because i always struggled with that when i was a child um i struggled with that still today because they will sometimes rattle off something that they latin and i said they're not wait a minute i have to break that down word by word to understand what you just said so thank you for bali um language actually vivian that's

020a really good question because language has had a very big influence in my life first of all language is one of the most important parts of my bengali culture it is the way in which we bengalis communicate with one another and create the sense of community and in india growing up it has it's a country which has over 22 different languages spoken in thousands of different dialects so language has been critical in communicating with people from different parts of the country and most importantly knowing how to communicate effectively in english is considered as a symbol of the elite class and almost as a benchmark to judge the level of literacy of the person and even as a mark of economic progression in india so coming from there um i i was very i taught i

021was very fluent in english but when i landed in america 20 years ago i realized that oh my god my pronunciations were so different from what i'd been used to for example when i landed and started in grad school i would give these presentations and i would say biology instead of biology and you know and people would i i could hear the awkward silences in the auditorium and i started going through hours and hours of just practicing how to pronounce without having those i mean to stop those um awkward silences it was daunting i mean i remember um i was so acutely aware of my pronunciations i used to be socially awkward and i would diligently avoid my the tgif parties i i was so embarrassed that i would you know uh sort of feel

022awkward in conversations i mean it was this was early on in grad school and i soon realized that if i wanted to sort of seamlessly uh communicate and sort of belong just like crete said and bert said belong in that culture i needed to learn you know the common american expressions like cool in india 20 years back we never would respond cool that's cool we would never say that but i started to adopt that kind of language even in official meetings i respond saying oh that's cool and that's just a way of saying that's great work these this is kind of the um changes and the the all the different ways i try to adapt to be accepted more in this culture in this american culture because i'm pretty sure uh people from foreign countries

023who speak with a deliberate with an obvious accent will tell you that as soon as you start speaking in the english language with an accent you are immediately categorized right there at the start as a non-native speaker and for some reason as soon as you're categorized as a non-native speaker you are somehow thought to be less competent or less intelligent i i think it comes from the fact that there is a difficulty in the understanding of the accent so that automatically sort of instinctively lets the listener makes the listener stereotype negatively but it hasn't had had an impact on it that has had an impact on my life because it's i'm constantly trying to improve the way i speak everywhere i am so yes it has definitely influenced so much in every part of my

024life you couldn't have said it any better public because i am right with you there in most in all that you have mentioned right now and uh you know this is i think why we need to have this conversation so people can learn and understand that when we speak we are when we're thinking about something in multiple languages and it doesn't come out in the perfect way that the english grammar has set out then it doesn't mean we're not intelligent means we are very intelligent that we're thinking of so many things of things in so many languages i guess exactly and and just uh before i get to the other person uh you mentioned how for example we don't have the word cool you know one of the things i had initially wanted to start

025with is to understand how you say welcome or how you when somebody says welcome what does that mean to you that's an english word because certainly we don't have it in uganda we have if someone would say in san jose which means i am happy to see you so it's more of a statement as because what does welcome mean if i said well so it's something to think about maybe if we have time later we can talk about but this is uh and how do we adopt the new the new language and try to translate how the way we greet for example into the very simplified english language but um then next i think is romney because i knew you want to go oh sure so i think just continuing with the theme right some

026of what everybody has shared um and before you know this session i was just thinking about it you know from a language perspective you don't pay much attention to or think a lot about language so i was just thinking about you know just ahead of this session how do i view language and one of one of my thoughts just like we have some of the non-verbal cues right we have color we have race language is a another way to um another dimension of that right so it's it's it's a verbal cue it's not easily apparent color race culture might be more apparent or how you dress might be more apparent but as soon as in terms of language as soon as you are talking to somebody just like uh somebody would view and judge you

027or think about you based on race or color language is another dimension right that they judge you i know bali mentioned uh greek mentioned some examples of it i've i've been in the country for about 20 plus years and similar experience come from india british english we don't call it elevator we call it lift right in many such instances so as as you are progressing through your career your work you make you you become uh attuned to that very sensitive to that and make sure that you're picking up or assimilating on the local uh way uh uh english is spoken the metaphors the context uh i'm a huge cricket fan but i learned everything i could about the red sox right because that's what you talk about right and learn that game so language is

028another way you know people are an another dimension right so you want to make sure going back to greets um what greater mention about belonging that's another way right where folks whom you're interacting with make a judgment on whether you belong there or not right whether it is uh the workplace or even i'll give you an example right even as friends who are from india get together as as you know in india many different languages spoken how fluently you speak that language has an impact right so even even among uh friends who are from the same cultural background or heritage how how fluently you speak that language has an impact on how that relationship builds right and one last thought i would have i would share is that from being from a language perspective i

029i view it more as especially from my kids perspective trying to teach them about hindi or punjabi is just trying to connect them you know with their heritage right and i and i also view speaking different languages just another skill uh you if you're from a technology background you learn a programming language or if you you know you're learning some other skill whether it is uh knitting or you're learning how to ski you know language is another skill set it just it just uh provides you additional capabilities right that just help with your your interactions or uh you know how how you're able to better relate to others thanks for that i'll pass it back to you vivian yeah thank you marvel yeah um so i echo so much of what everyone else has said

030uh romy definitely sees language as a really important connector to culture and um it's like i mentioned in the introduction it's been a struggle to continue the language at home with kids um and one for me as i was thinking about this question you know yes it is a way that can um in some ways create a divide right if you don't have the right accent if you're not saying the right words if you don't have the right um uh what's the word i'm looking for if you're just it's just different but it can also be a really great connector and connect us in really powerful ways when i was a kid um you know there was a very small latino community um in the midwest and the thing that connected us was the spanish

031language mass that happened it only happened once a month because every there was only enough uh or somebody that could come once a month to offer uh church service in spanish and so at that once a month meeting that's when the spanish speakers from all the surrounding towns came out and so whether it was from mexico or colombia or guatemala nicaragua you know the whole latin american representation that there was in our community that was the great connector it was that we all spoke spanish and so it was a way to meet new neighbors it was a way to find new resources it was a way to you know the potluck that happened afterwards after the church service it was a great way to taste amazing food and so it was a wonderful wonderful way

032to connect and so growing up particularly in the midwest where there were not a lot of spanish speakers in the place where i lived and grew up um it became even more important that we kept that language at home and for my parents you know worked really hard to say you only speak spanish at home because that way we wouldn't we wouldn't lose it as so many people do and i this is where i struggle with my kids because we started that way but it's been really hard to maintain um and so yeah i see it i saw the power of of able to connect to to people in a really profound way and then you know now transitioning here language has been a really powerful way to connect to to new people to new

033neighbors and the fact that you know i speak spanish has allowed me to connect with with um people here locally that speak spanish whether they're from you know mexico my country or any of the other spanish-speaking countries and it's also been a really great and this is what i've tried to share with my kids it's been a great tool as romy said it's another tool in our tool belt to as a way to help people you know whether that's translating when somebody's in need um you know i remember uh being at an airport and somebody was stranded and couldn't you know communicate what she needed and i happened to be standing behind her in line and was able to help her you know get back on a flight and you know having my kids be

034there and witness that to me i thought was a really important lesson for them of you know there's a wonderful value to connect to speaking spanish because it connects you to your culture it connects us to so many people in our community but it can also just be something that can come in really handy when you know you wanna can offer some help to somebody in need so uh thank you uh carol i call everything uh everybody else has that um except maybe that we probably didn't feel the need as much to do as much effort to try to change our accents because we're not encouraged as much which is very interesting to see is it just because we're right when when people hear my accents most cases i get remark uh where are you

035from and then i say where i'm from and i say yeah my kids have tried to change my accent but it just doesn't work and say oh don't change it it's cute which is interesting to hear that others have very different experiences and that's so sad anyway the struggles on itself are are the same when we came here i had worked for american company in belgium so my business english was okay a lot of the nuances are not always there and so you might use different words that people might look at what do you really mean um but on itself that was fine but in the daily life that's where my my vocabulary was this thing which led to some some funny situations sometimes i remember when we just moved here i was looking for

036cleaning products and and and tools to clean and we cleaned differently in in belgium that we clean here and i was trying to explain to the people in the shop what i wanted and nobody could understand what i was looking for and i had no idea how to see it um or the other thing that was missing was the baby language i had no idea what the diaper was or pacifier or uh or things like that so there was that was really funny and so automatically i would switch speaking dutch with the kids when i would pick them up from daycare and i know in belgium people really don't like that when immigrants don't speak the language of the school at the school or at the daycare they feel like why don't you adapt and

037here i was doing the same because i just didn't have the vocabulary and and here everybody accepts it i never got a comment on why don't you speak english so it's interesting how different cultures are more tolerant or not and it might be based on skin color which is really snake thank you the other interesting thing is how i have been shouting at my phone when you call a call center and you can only see the option you don't have the a way to type in the number and especially in the past in the beginning 15 years ago they would just not understand me we lived in dublin before before moving here and there was even i mean the irish accent is not possible for me so i've been trying to imitate the accent to

038try to get through to a person on the phone and it just wouldn't work luckily most call centers now have the option to also dial a number but even today there's still somewhere i need to try to say it five times before i get through hey carol can you can you give us a dose of irish imitation no it's so interesting some people just can twist their tongue in some ways and can imitate accents very easily and they can make a bossmax antenna and a certain accent and whatever accent you want in an international accent but my tongue just isn't flexible enough i guess i don't know very similar i think to your first comment about not changing your accent i find it really interesting that you have never been told to speak english i

039think as a non-white person i have definitely been told to speak english when speaking spanish with my children and in fact most times it's assumed that i can't it's so sad and that is so sad and then try running for office and you have to have speeches in english proper english anyway but that's a different question but uh i mean but i'm so glad that carol you brought out the call centers and because this is a place that is often uh you know not paid attention to because i have certainly struggled uh where you know they probably want to pick up a certain word in a certain accent and uh it can be picked up and this also applies to healthcare because i i had you know i had a visit to our medical one

040of the clinics and some of the tests that they have for say if they are cognitive tests they have objects that are very unique to america you know could be bulls could be other symbols that an immigrant will not know so how do you measure is it because they just don't know the thing or because they don't remember the thing so um those are conversations we can have there and this is all communication and language um but um i think we'll go to katie and then linda me at the end of this awesome sharon it's not everybody um so i i grew up in boxborough and learning a second language has always been this incredible hope of mine and something i worked on at school but it's yet i'd say it yet i still have

041a growth mindset but it's yet to really click um over my four years at ab i took spanish then i took latin then i got my latin teacher for spanish and i really hadn't liked her so i switched to french and then in college i switched to italian um and took six semesters of italian and while i have choice italian phrases that still come out when i'm frustrated with my kids um i've never achieved anything that's that's close to fluency and so it's just sort of remain this romantic dream um but i recognize that that's that comes from an immense place of privilege right i've traveled widely and i've been able to take for granted that i'll be able to communicate where i go um and i know i'm missing so much and not being

042able to interact with our neighbors in their native language right the nuances that come with each different language like to your point about even just the word welcome vivian so i do hope that the yet turns into something i can make happen and that in other ways we're able to discover ways to unlock those nuances to share them across the the awesome diversity of languages within our community well it's great that you mentioned that because that will be our next question and i'll start with you when that happens so linda great responses especially around local differences in language so i'll start there that it's more than just country to country it could be region to region i grew up in new york and we called it sprinkles and here they're called jimmy's and in new

043york we call it a pizza pie and here i don't even know what they call it there's there's pop in there soda there's hoagies and there's subs so even in the united states from region to region there's different language and for me the journey in language probably started in 10th grade when my teacher said to me you're always searching for the perfect word and it stuck with me throughout my life and when i was at the gillette company i was on the i.t in the i.t world collecting information about data and realized that one of the challenges was that different people had a different understanding you know when i would use the word warehouse or distribution center or or your shop floor and so i created gillette's first business dictionary uh to level out what

044i still have it in paper bound on my my shelf over here to help people uh equalize and and communicate better so that when we used a word we all understood the meaning of it uh then there's also an angle that it's it's in addition to what the words are it's how they're delivered whether you're whispering or speaking or shouting or singing and isn't it amazing how the same content can be delivered so differently depending on how we how we deliver it and and not just that mode but i went through a an exercise where you would pick a sentence and you would emphasize a different word each time you said the sentence and how that communicated such a huge difference so right now i just said huge right as the emphasis on that on

045that sentence but i could have said huge sentence and it completely changes the meaning of what you're intending to communicate on that note the other thing about language is is you as the communicate you're the risk there's the tossing the ball and catching the ball and sometimes you think that you you understand what the other person needs to hear and you say it in a way that completely makes sense to you yet it's not resonating for them and we we talked a little bit before about uh this the sense of intelligence and sometimes that could have a downside because if you're out there thinking that you're being really articulate and the people that you're speaking with can look at you and think that you are being um over the top you think you're being direct

046they think you're being rude and so again in the delivery of it how you're coming off um really makes a difference and sometimes you don't you don't realize it until they point it out to you and that sort of circles back to my being from new york right i have a particular way of delivering and i'll go about end with a funny story about when i was in college uh well actually i have two more um so i'll tell you something i have a few more thoughts um when i was in college i went to a party at mit and i was you know around the room talking like this and a guy came over and he says you must be from new york you're talking with your hands so again it was the funniest

047pickup line of my life and again it really has to do with you know regionally where you're from but the other the other topics are speech impediments and you know where that lands people my former husband and the father of my children has a speech impediment and he had several speech impediments and he eliminated several of them but even in business he was asked to go see a speech a language teacher to help him overcome that because it was quote-unquote getting in the way and two others is one is how technology has enabled us to overcome some of this whether it is through babel so we can learn languages more than we are able to in school as well as google translate i was in paris in 2018 and trying to get someplace in the

048cab and you know even if you know english they really want you speaking french so i you know popped up my google translate and i was hoping that how it translated was what i meant but i kind of went with it and and then the last is a line from one of my favorite books east of eden uh john steinbeck and there's a point where uh there's this word timschel and it's the cane able story and they look at the word and they you know and they're looking at the translation of the word and i think the king james bible and they travel from the midwest this is what 1700 hundreds and they traveled to to to the west coast to meet rabbis to go back to the original text to see what it translated

049as and the difference was is that one in in the king james version it was thou shalt you must do this and in the other version it was thou mayest it's a choice so the last thought i have around language is how we interpret the words and and how um how we might each be interpreting the words differently and how that affects our communication with each other a perfect way to segue into our next uh our final question and about what linda has just spoken to the language how it's interpreted and how it can be used to cause harm in some ways so uh we know that language from what our stories it influences how we perceive the world and how the world perceives us so looking forward as community leaders how can we use

050language to bring the communities together to manage diversity better here in accent and boxborough or and also in our commonwealth and just as we talk about language actually linda introduced another part of communication and language which is the internet um we know that it's causing harm we know that opportunists are also using it to love a one group of people against the other using language so as we think about our responses can we also think beyond the what we speak but also the internet usage um and i'll start with uh katie i promise to start with no maybe rami is about to leave us so we'll start with romy and uh you're off the hook katie oh thank you i i think in terms of how to use language i would say you know just

051like we are having conversations in terms of race and color it's okp to be different it's okay to speak with different accents it's okay to speak with different pronunciations we have to get past you know that speaking in a certain way uh implies something right so i think that would be the first step where we all coming from very different backgrounds very different cultures we all speak english but differently and you know going past that right and accepting that i think that would be uh my initial thought and then in terms of practically we all we we cannot speak many different languages we are in the united states and english is our at this point up how how we communicate right so going past the differences but then leveraging the language and and in terms

052of what linda had mentioned in terms of tone in terms of uh how we frame our uh topics for discussion or how we have that dialogue uh emphasizing that right so using the language to focus on what's uh what's common and what's helpful as opposed to what's divisive and you know uh and what highlights the differences katie i 100 echo what romy just said um and i think that our schools are doing a much better job than they were 30 years ago when i was in them of embracing the many cultures and languages that are reflected in our community um i think it's something like 72 different languages are spoken in homes enacted in boxborough so i think trying to figure out learning either part of what the schools are doing in terms of sharing

053across cultures um and thinking about how we as media acting tv having this forum is a great start and we as a community organization through active box for united way can build language in to to share just what what romney was saying um like we have our storytelling event with acton-boxborough united way and for people who are telling a story that's not in their native language how is that coming across differently and what can we do to help bring some of the nuances of their native language and share that with the community so just thinking about in each event that we do how can we bring that in all right thank you bert jill and then maribel in that order you know you had mentioned the question about um the technology and language and it's

054it's interesting my eldest um has done some work where [Music] trying to figure out how you [Music] use particular platforms um on the internet um for example you know we read left to right um there are several languages that read the other way and your computer can be set up in a fashion where if you are not cognizant of that you can't just take what we do here and drop it into a different culture and expect that that will work in fact it will likely be offensive or it will not have the kind of commercial um success that you're hoping you're trying to sell a product and you come up with a particular thing um i i was chuckling because she was telling me the other day about there was a slogan that coca-cola used

055to use um coke brings you to life and when you translated it into several different languages you would get things like coke resurrects you from the dead um which may not be the best way of selling your product if that's what you're hoping to do um but you know that that was a piece of this whole thing but at least for me i think the biggest takeaway around language and its use turns on your willingness to be open to try and understand that you don't understand um you know it we were talking about how different accents affect people i i am a um huge fan of my at my job on my way in i would often listen to bbc on the radio as i was commuting in and it always cracked me up because

056i realized that my colleagues worked in london who grown up in britain and they would speak with british accent and i realized as i suspect probably most americans we kind of have a certain fondness for what that language accent sounds like and you can say the most insulting things in that accent but most americans will be like oh that's delightfully just called me an idiot but the way you said it sounded wonderful um and if you say the very same thing in american accented english people will take offense to it they will immediately bristle but you say with british you know particularly an upper crust british accent and it's delightful recognizing that we have those biases built in and understanding that you need to make a conscious effort to try and understand that you have

057those biases interrogating yourself and then if you don't understand what the person has said being open to learning what was intended and they need to be open to sharing what they intended and you're trying to work across that bridge to figure out how you can get it done i mean it's we were talking very early on about the differences in regional languages here in the u.s um you know as i said i grew up down in virginia there's certain things that we have that are colloquial things that you say in virginia that when i remember coming to massachusetts to go to undergrad you would say these things and people kind of look at you and go okay i have a clue what that was supposed to mean but if i said it in my community

058back in richmond virginia ninety percent of the people in the room would immediately understand and they could almost finish the sentence or finish the thought because it's so common um so i found myself doing a lot of these okay this is what that means in my culture even though we share a common language or at least arguably a common language um the same thing you know as i was just saying with regard to british english versus american english or canadian english versus american english same thing happens there where there are things that are foundational within those other cultures that we sort of hear and we're like why do you call it a lift why do you call it you know any number of other different things that you hear and you know i i will

059own up to the fact that um particularly with my colleague who was based in london when i was um previous job we jokingly said to her we said you know you could literally read the phone book aloud to us and we would sit here and we'd just be completely charmed um somebody here in the us read the phone book and like come on let's just move on and do something else but elsma's accent was so delightful when she would say things and she could literally explain that someone had made the dumbest decision ever as far as particularly business choice and the person to whom she said that would be sitting there going home okay that's fine however if i said the very same things that very same words very same emphasis i'm saying bert was

060so harsh with me when he said that ellsworth is sort of chuckling to herself because you know i said i'm going to bring you in to just insult people for me if i need you to do that because you can get away with it much more so than i can so i feel like this is actually the perfect segue for me as well um i am a mother of four kids who i don't know that they've heard me yell by probably anyone's definition more than five times that yelling has never been something that has come naturally to me so i have been accused of yelling and thought i how and not just by my children but by other people thinking how did they hear that that was yelling one my voice doesn't hurt i feel

061that hockey games your sporting events is different and you know and those who know me know that i am not very well versed with controlling my language if you will um that i can swear and i don't necessarily apologize for it to me it just adds the the lack of yelling if i insert another word it carries weight but i also know that from teaching that pausing can carry a lot of weight as well so leaving you know i am so mad probably most of you know what i meant that i didn't have to swear and say i am so blanking mad but it's understood so it's but i said nothing so i it literally just left a blank in teaching um it was body language that carried so much more weight so i particularly

062worked with junior high kids between sixth and eighth grade primarily boys that's just how my years fell and there were a lot more you know i you know large eyes hands you know i learned sign language very very minimal sign language because of like this is sit down yelling sit down and just looking with wide eyes and doing this you know children hear what you're saying without you even saying it i think adults do the same my fear in moving forward in the world in general is with everyone technology doesn't pick up tone so you can read an email or a text from a friend i'm not on instagram or snapchat you know pictures speak a thousand words well they really don't because they can be you know altered in ways that one person you

063know sees an image and they construe it in a way i think the same is with technology that there leaves a lot of room for interpretation and even in this forum a small forum we're all coming at it from various degrees of travel and family life and life experiences and tragedy and so when we see words they can be construed in a completely different way than was than the writer intended as well as from the person you know right now in our brady bunch style than the person to our left or to our right or below or above us so i worry about technology in that way i know that it also is very valuable it can connect people i've you know seen that happen in a in a fantastic way in my own life

064recently with my son um so it while it holds a lot of value i still am of the the theory that there's nothing better than connectivity face to face this is wonderful zoom but face to face because you get to see an entire body so people pulling back people wearing a lot of clothes and kind of you know again i had students that would wear their winter jacket even when it wasn't cold that was a physical sign of wanting to kind of turn inward with what for whatever their reasoning was you know it could be that mom and dad got in a fight that day it could have been that they that they as an eighth grader were up all night drinking i mean i you see that you run the gamut but a physical

065exposure to people is also speaks volumes so technology takes away from that so that would be my you know while we cheer technology for connecting people it also connects or might be misinterpretation of that connectivity so that would be my example um so yeah i definitely echo again what others have said i think the other thing i was thinking about is um you know i mentioned for us how important the language connectivity to culture is and i think in terms of using language to connect we can think about how do we how can we and i don't i don't have a solution i was just thinking about you know as a community how can we use maybe those differences to to connect and connect not just on language differences but on on learning more about

066each other's culture when i was in grad school i was in business school and there was a course called conducting business in china and it was uh i mean this was many years ago but um it was wonderful because we talked about the differences and we talked about why culturally things are done differently and then spent two weeks in cities across china so that we weren't and this class was conducted in china so it wasn't the let me learn from a book and it i mean there was some of that let's talk about it those presentations um but then it was also let's go experience it let's be in the culture and while we can't do that we can't you know travel around the world but i think we can we could think about maybe

067how do we get a taste of that how do we share the cultural differences um so that maybe there's less misunderstandings of when you say something in in you know you know like joe you mentioned you don't yell my kids often tell me that i speak spanish very loud that's just the way it comes out like when i'm speaking in spanish my decibels are two decibels higher than uh louder than when i speak in english and even in english i speak pretty loud so um yeah i think there's just some cultural things that that you know i'm not i'm not yelling because i'm mad i'm not yelling because i'm just talking and that's just the way it comes out it's just naturally louder so um i think like i said i don't have the solution

068but i think acknowledging first that there is a difference that there are some differences that maybe would lead to some unintended misunderstandings um we can say okay well you know in some cultures we tend to be very direct in some cultures we tend to be a little bit more you know take longer to get there and and just acknowledging that um yes cara before you get there i'm gonna but i just wanted to comment what jill and maribel talked about oh i'm not yelling uh so we the people the bachelor where where my father was born where i was born the the joke is that because they lived in the hills they had to shout so that the person in the valley came here because that's how they would communicate hey how was your morning

069you know so that is the peach at which the bachelors speak and it if you find them triggers the bachelor together speaking you'd think they're about to fight and lounge on each other but so it's funny it's interesting that you mentioned that so to carol and then linda i want to build on what maribel said the more we know about each other the more we will accept people the way they are the way they speak their accents their imperfect language so what can we do we have so many opportunities in our community with so many different languages be uh being spoken what can we can we do to get to know each other better and to help our kids who are all so many want to learn language but just from school it's so hard

070to learn the way that i learned my french was going on an overnight sports camp with the french-speaking people in the country year after year and that's how i learned we have so many languages here what is it that we can do can can we help connect the kids who learn spanish with spanish-speaking charity organizations can we what can we do for the kids learning uh chinese which the who are not uh uh from from native chinese families i'm in helping them i know that the chinese school is very open to uh connecting with with people not originally from china how can we work closer together there must be ways to do things maybe the haitian community with the kids learning french how can we take this as an opportunity linda thinking about this from

071a business perspective and as an abuw organization or any organization having that common language for example a vision and a mission that you can all coalesce around can can help bring people together and there's a course that i participated in called the language of leadership where all the leaders joined together and came up with sort of a common set of language that worked among them so that they would be sort of all on the same page and that was a really powerful and it wasn't just taking the course it was the fact that we all took it together so going on the language journey together uh and and learning at the same time and equalizing as you learn could be valuable to the group because sometimes language is helpful to us as individuals but it

072also can advance us as an organization or a team or a group finally grip uh acton-boxborough united way's mission is to belong and drive and um i think we know today was that other beautiful mosaic of we touched on lots of different aspects i definitely see an incredible role as community organization in becoming again more aware of the importance and the power as you said vivian of um language uh in uh as anything in life whether it is technology or physical gestures you can use things for good or you we have choices we all make choices and i think we need to make as an organization a choice to be inclusive and a choice to build trust and use this tool to build trust and uh as people were speaking one uh so our community

073circles is actually really trying to talk uh to one another so that's the tool that we are offering the community a new way of trying to get deeper and understanding each other and not coming from the mind but from the heart so i think there needs to be an openness i love that romy said it's okay to be different it's okay uh to not feel okay i love that phrase but at the same time i'm like i want to go a step further it's not just okay to not feel okay or it's okay to we can celebrate being different it's not just okay so there's a beauty in this incredible richness that we actually are right living here with one out of four people being foreign born and can we um do that and then

074lastly one element we have not spoken about is um i would say language and trauma um i had drama as a young child and the word curiosity triggers for me whereas i find the most beautiful word but for many years i could not use the words because it brought me in pain in trouble and curiosity uh is i think what we do need to have for each other to to to to see what is behind this and then come with an open and kind heart and not come with an assumption of negativity or yeah try and be more aware of our own biases and then for the people speaking another language i think vivian and all of you i think be brave uh just that you run for office i find incredibly brave and and

075that's daring to say it's okay i'm going to try and do your best and don't give up thank you uh thank you all it's such an honor as a host of this panel and this show it's you know just hearing all these voices and these perspectives about language i think the community needs to hear your voices hear these perspectives and also it will help the community reflect on how as a how we all uh how language influences our lives and perhaps how language influences our biases um when we we encounter people who speak other languages or who communicate in different ways so i'm looking at this uh as really the intro into this very uh deep conversation about the power of language with the hope that i'll ha it can become a series and because

076there are so many things that have been mentioned here and it could take another session to different sessions to talk about the specifics uh it could be tech another session or just technology another one on just uh interpretation and new one says so uh but for just for today i want to say thank you i want to say thank you to united way active vascular united way for taking the lead in uh managing diversity in advocating for diversity equity and inclusion and i look i certainly look forward to continuing this partnership and to being a part of ab united way and with that i'd like to invite our viewers to share this message with whoever um everyone in their network so that it can catalyze continuous conversations about language and diversity in our community thank

077you for watching acton infocus till next time you