Speaking in Love
How Charity in Speech Makes Us Stronger
Celebrating VE (Victory in Europe) Day in a uniquely DC way of watching WWII movies and reliving the “Churchill diet” this weekend, something struck me that I hadn’t paid too much attention to before. I was sucked into the action of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (which should have won best picture, but Hollywood politics aside, is a good movie regardless) yet found myself pondering one scene in particular.
In this scene, a group of soldiers, desperate to get out of Dunkirk where they have been stranded, find a boat stuck on the beach. Hiding out in this boat as the tide slowly rolls in, one of the men on board suggests that they need to remove weight from the ship in order for the tide to take them away. Quickly, heads turn to see who will be the volunteer. Seeing none, they move to pointing fingers. One of the British soldiers points to another solider who has been quiet, not uttering one word to this point. The British soldier claims he is a German spy since he won’t speak, and therefore must not know English, incriminating him. However, he is only partially correct.
The other soldier admits that he is not British despite wearing a British uniform, but is in fact a Frenchman seeking to flee Dunkirk and the impending German occupation. Still, the other soldiers, primarily British, continue to push for the Frenchman to leave the boat, so that the others may get away from the dangers of the beach.
The absence of a common language in this story leads to a breakdown of trust and due to the extreme circumstances, leads to calls for one to sacrifice for the protection of a group.
In our daily lives, differences in language and even regional dialects can lead to breakdowns in understanding, while at the same time binding those who share a common thread. Sometimes this can be as harmless as pointing out an accent or regional phrase, but it can also cause greater divides as when individuals in the media took shots at President George W. Bush’s intelligence because of his Texas drawl.
For those who have studied ancient history through a biblical lens, this should be no surprise, as the very existence of different languages comes from an explicit goal of divisions in understanding. As a refresher, I’ve included the verses from Genesis.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
Genesis 11:3–8
As we see in this story, man is separated and scattered by God not only physically but also linguistically. To this day, we live with this constellation of languages, cultures, and peoples.
It’s quite apt that I am writing this on Mother’s Day. My mother learned Spanish from my Grandparents before ever learning English in school. In parent teacher conferences, she would translate between the teachers and her parents as she caught on quickly to both languages.
Today, the mix of languages enriches our family barbeques as we hear English and Spanish spoken around the table. However, the language barrier has not always been kind to my family.
Once, early in my grandfather’s career in the United States, he tried to buy a truck at a dealership. The salesman either realizing that he could make more money or perhaps under pressure to sign more leases, abused the language barrier with my grandfather to get him to sign a lease rather than a full sale. Only when he brought the contract home for family to see was it discovered what had happened. This led others in the family to return to the dealership and demand the issue be remedied.
I suspect that growing up with stories like this has made me more attuned to the situation of the Frenchman on that boat in Dunkirk. He was targeted because he wouldn’t (and couldn’t) speak up for himself.
As much as it pains me to say this as a proud American, I think this is a place where we can learn from our modern European friends.
I have been blessed to travel to areas around the Mediterranean, spending additional time on a study abroad in Spain during college. While abroad, I was always encouraged by the locals to fumble through my feeble attempts to speak their language, instead of defaulting to English (which they usually spoke as well). I learned so much during these times because I was allowed to mess up, and I wasn’t mocked for using the wrong word, even when it made me incomprehensible.
I could only imagine, if as Americans, we took a little more time to be patient with those with little or no English skills, providing the carrot rather than the stick to those who try grow their proficiency. While this may lead to some inconvenience, it will surely pay dividends.
I believe it is right and proper that in citizenship courses, basic English is taught, for it is the primary language used in public discourse. I also believe it is right and proper that voting materials are distributed in multiple languages to assist those navigating the system who haven’t gained English fluency yet. These are not competing views. One could imagine the difficultly understanding government forms in your first language, let alone your 2nd or 3rd.
Looking at some of the newest members of Congress like Young Kim (Korean) or Victoria Spartz (Ukrainian) or those on their way like Monica De La Cruz Hernandez in Texas, we see the unique voice that 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation immigrants can bring to our public debate. These advocates bring a powerful voice against the tide of socialism and an appreciation for the American Dream.
While the word “charity” has largely been assigned to organizations doing public good, I think the virtue of charity is underappreciated. In Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, charity can be defined as “lenient judgment of others”. I am a big fan of this particular understanding of charity as a virtue because it instills humility in our view of others.
I am not calling for wholesale acceptance of all things, from anywhere. We are a part of a beautiful American experiment, but if we listen, we can certainly learn a thing or two. Maybe that’s what the framers had in mind in developing a more perfect union. Hopefully, with a dose of charity, in the future we won’t need AI language translators, but instead, we can foster a little extra humanity to help understand each other beyond just words.
