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A multicultural society
Meanwhile,
back
in Britain,
society was
becoming more and more multiracial
as people from tiie old Commonwealth
came seeking work and began to settle in
the
eitles. It was during the Seventies
that I became involved with
Afro-carib-
bean, Indian and Pakistani children,
and with their communities. Children
from St. Vincent or
famaica
turned up in
English schools speaking Creole, which
their British teachers couldn't under-
stand. 1 was fascinated by this dialect
which had a number of African words in
it
and its own grammar For example, the
lamaican proverb
'Darg no nyam darg'
('dog doesn't eat dog') has a West African
word 'nyam'. And as for the children
from the Indian sub-continent, they had
to be taught English from Scratch. Any
language teacher soon begins to learn
something about his pupils' mother ton-
gues from the particular difficulties they
have with the target language, in this
case English. Why do 'a' and 'the' seem
such a problem? Why can't they pro-
nounce 'v'? And why do they confuse
'yesterday' with 'tomorrow'? To confirm
my suspicions about Punjabi, the lan–
guage most of the children spoke, I per-
suaded an Indian colleague to collabora-
te with me on a comparative grammar of
Punjabi and English.
I discovered, for instance, that the Punja–
bi word for 'yesterday' was indeed the
same as that for 'tomorrow', and that the
word for 'the day after tomorrow' was
the same as that for 'the day before yester–
day'. This was useful for language
teachers to know: they could get children
to practise 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow'.
But for me it revealed an
ancient Hindu
way of looking at time,
not as a straight
line moving from the past through the
present to the future, but as concentric
rings moving outwards from the present,
like ripples that follow from a stone
thrown in a pond, needless to say Indi-
ans have absolutely no problem distin-
guishing the past from the future. A mo–
dern nuclear engineering industry could
hardly be built on traditionally static Hin–
du philosophy!
Contacts with ethnic minority people
certainly diversified my experience. Vi–
sits to
Services
at a
local Sikh temple
were followed by refreshments in
the
foyer, where the Sikh wives served rice
from huge, steaming ums. Caribbean
evenings usually involved Reggae music,
to which you swung your hips, and whe–
re you got very hot, the exercise doubling
the effect of the curried chicken. And
then the politicsl We had a Community
Relations Council with members fromall
the ethnic groups, including the English,
in the area. For some years this worked
very well, possibly because all the groups,
apart from the English, feit insecure and
needed mutual Support. As they became
more settled and more confident, a
struggle developed for control of the Com–
munity Relations Council. A Sikh from
India (an ex-army man working in an
English post-office which was too small
and boring for him) led the attack, forged
an alliance with the Muslims and drove
the English, West Indians, Hindus and
East African Sikhs into reluctant Opposi–
tion. It was sad to see how the whole
purpose of the CRC was lost in the strugg–
le but fascinating to see the different
reactions to the crisis. The East African
Sikhs were shocked by their Indian bro-
thers, the Hindus protested gently and
were ignored, the West Indians shook
their heads and conspired with the
English. For a while cultural barriers be–
came barricades, and in the space of two
years the Organisation was destroyed.
However, there were some who said that
an association like the CRC which made
such deliberate efforts to create mutual
understanding among the various races
and religions, had served its purpose and
was no longer necessary.
At ease among the Portuguese
In the late Eighties 1 gave up my College
teaching post and set out with my wife
for Portugal to teach English in Lisbon.
The year we spent there gave us a won-
derful opportunity to get to know those
people, whose mild good temper and
family-mindedness had impressed us
while were on holiday there a few years
earlier One of the first things we noteced
was how melancholy Portuguese adults
looked on the buses and trains, and then
when a friend came along, how their
faces lit up now that they had somebody
to talk to. They are born caf6 people,
never happier than when drinking coffee
and eating cake with their friends. As for
the young, they rush off to sunbathe on
the 'praia' (the beach) as soon as the
season and their work commitments al-
low. Food has a higher priority in Portu–
guese culture than it has in the British.
We discovered that the
Citizens
of Lisbon
Started
their art appreciation at the Gul-
benkian museum at midday, when the
restaurant opened. Having brought my
trombone from Oxford, I was lucky
enough to be embraced by a local wind–
band of enthusiastic amateurs and every
concert we gave in the outlying villages
was followed by a banquet with wine for
the adults and coke for the youngsters.
On the whole we found life in Portugal
easy enough to adapt to. The language,
however, presented real problems. While
it is easy enough to read, if you know
French, Spanish or Italian, its pronuncia
tion is bedevilled by the fact that half the
Sounds aren't pronounced at all, so 'Por–
tugal' becomes 'Prtgal' and 'profissional'
becomes a sort of hiss 'frfissnal'.
Shortly after returning home from Portu–
gal, we learnt that our |apanese daugh-
ter-in-law was expecting her first baby
in October, so it wasn't long before we
were packing our bags again and setting
out for Tokyo. This was to be a very
different experience from Lisbon. We siept
on the floor in a small flat, got used to
lapanese food, drank warm sakö, and
struggied with the language. Our son
patiently taught us
hiragana,
so that we
could at least read the Station names on
the Tokyo subway but for any real con-
versation we had to rely upon our lapa–
nese acquaintances' knowledge of
English. Now that )apan is one of the
economic power-houses of the world,
there is an immense amount of interest
in Japanese culture, psychology and busi–
ness practice. And many are the books
that will teil you what to do and what not
to do when you are with Japanese busi–
ness people. Some ot the best are the
little pocket books published by the Ja–
pan Travel Bureau. The illustrated
'Sola-
ryman' in Japan
is a must for any visitor
wanting to gain a quick insight into the
commercial world. You learn, for instance,
that there are three types of manager, all
compared to famous warlords. Tokuga-
wa leyasu, the founder of the shogunate,
is the first, famous for waiting patiently
for the right opportunity The second is
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, self-confident and
decisive, who dealt with all challenges
positively Oda Nobunaga, a brilliant ge-
neral, brought peace to Japan by elimina-
ting his enemies before they could finish
him. Their attitudes are summed up in
little poems showing how each deals
with a silent bush warbler
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