Each language is also the bearer of all those characteristics that make up a culture. Every language is a way along which we get to know and accept the other. The concept of hospitality is indeed one of the features of Bosnian culture. We welcome a guest who brings something new, an insight into a new reality into a different way of working. Learning a new language is a kind of journey into otherness. And it is natural that it broadens the context of understanding, which is essentially the task of a good education.
A new language is a new color in our reality; for children who have a native language in a country where it will not actually be their first language, the situation is more complex. No one in their environment except their family speaks it, because the rules of a language like Bosnian are not at all simple. But it provides insight into the understanding of their parents; all those situations that led them to the crucial moment when they decided or were forced to live in a new country. In this case, this also means insight into a culture with a very complex history.
Parents watch their children grow up in this cultural-linguistic duality, and the children become connected to the land they now inhabit and call home. In turn, through the language their parents speak, the children gain an ultimate understanding of their parents’ history. It is a process that inevitably enriches both ways.
Learning any new language is also getting to know yourself, your possibilities. From my experience as a teacher in Bosnia, I can say that students are very discouraged to express themselves creatively in the Bosnian language; as if it was reserved for some other peoples, or “better” people. I noticed that maybe for this reason, we don’t have many writers, especially for the generation of children I work with. Of course, we have some, but the language of those literary parts can often be complicated or full of expressions that are no longer used. Language textbooks are not in accordance with European standards and are more suitable for children who grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I would like to point out here that grammar is not much easier for those children to learn either.
For this reason, the emphasis in the lessons is on working on literary texts, on interesting facts related to the history, geography or culture of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is about making connections with their own experiences, on creative expression which in a certain way conditions their orientation within a region where they do not know all the paths.
If we know another language, we have more confidence to express ourselves in any language. When we learn a new language, we put ourselves in a position to not sound the best, to make mistakes, to take long pauses, fearing that a certain word will never reach our lips.
It’s a risk we take; knowing that we’ll never sound like someone born in a particular country, we constantly make mistakes, but we don’t give up. These are the principles by which education actually takes place, and all education, including that outside of schools.
So when I talk about hospitality, I’m actually talking about that summoning of everything new that a culture can bring into our lives, making them that much richer. Starting from the understanding of the recipe characteristic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the music, through the history that led to the creation of a sevdalinka to an insight into Mak Dizdar’s poetry and all that it means for the concept of a Bosnian man. And there is the key place when I tell the students about the meaning of the word defiance and the verse “defiant from sleep”.
I know how to talk with students about the way Bosnian coffee or sarma is made; they can tell me about their experiences and how their parents make them. I can tell them how these recipes reached their tables, in the language, in the history and tradition of which they are a continuation.
For many centuries, the Bosnian language did not even have the right to be called that. There are stories about Bosnia, about its writers, about the places where they grew up; there is an ultimate question – who are “my” people and from which tradition do I come. Using the Bosnian language also means fitting into the larger picture of our common story in Bosnia and in us, right now.
