I live in a landing suburb for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants to Melbourne Australia from all over the world. The majority of my neighbours are non english speakers. Yesterday as I was walking around a local park saying hello to all the other early morning walkers I passed a woman in a hijab with a faded cross tattooed on her forehead and some other symbols on her cheeks. When she circled around and spotted me doing pull ups on the monkey bars she decided to join me. She couldn’t do a pull up but through sign language and a little English we did a workout together on the play equipment and laughed a lot in the process.
I ran into her again this morning and was hugged near to death. We took selfies and jogged and climbed and played and laughed a lot again, particularly over my squat technique (her butt hits grass effortlessly, I grew up with toilets). She is from Afghanistan, a fact which floored me. Imagine having an ornate cross tattooed on your face in the 5th worst country on Earth for Christians. Yikes.
Anyone want to have a guess as to what language she may speak and teach this bogan aussie with no ear for languages how to say good morning in it? I’d assume Pashto usually but the orthodox tattoos make me think her community may have been quite separate within Afghanistan and someone here may have a much more educated guess.
She seems wonderfully open and full of fun and I love having a playmate, middle aged women on monkey bars are usually left well alone around here, particularly dykey ones with rainbow cap and wristband (a stupid same sex marriage survey is happening so I’m waving the flag all over)
Wiki lists a handful of languages for Afghanistan. You could probably go on youtube and quickly find people speaking in each language and maybe see if any of them sound familiar. I have no idea how similar they sound.
You said she speaks a bit of English. Have you tried asking her, even just in short “What language”" or “language?” type questions? Maybe even writing it out (even if you have to give her the paper so she can have a friend translate it for her). From there, if you really want to communicate with her, you can than use translate . google . com to translate what you want to say to her language and hope that she can figure out how to translate it back.
Also, if she has anything in writing, there’s an app that I don’t recall the name of off the top of my head that utilizes the camera and translates everything on the fly. It’s pretty nice considering what it has to do.
(N)ETA, and don’t rule out that she may not be speaking an official Afghani language. It’s entirely possible that she grew up nearby and and is speaking some other “Indian” language that just doesn’t sound like anything you recognize. Though, FWIW, I have an acquaintance that grew up in, IIRC, either Iran or Iraq and move here when he was probably in his 40’s. When I asked him about how well he spoke English, he said that was just part of his curriculum (where he grew up). They learned Arabic (so maybe it was Iraq)/Persian and English at the same time in grade school.
The app is just Android’s Google Translate app. Pull it up, point it at a foreign language and it’s translated on the fly. But from what I can tell the ‘on the fly’ part doesn’t do ‘detect language’, but still, it’s better than nothing.
In my ignorance I assumed I could come home and Google “say good morning in afghanistan” or something and just surprise her if I saw her again. I’ll try Pashto first I think, even if not her native tongue she may know more of it than English. I think I’ve got “hello, how are you?” sorted enough to be sort of recognisable to anyone familiar with Pashto or thrilling American TV Series.
It’s really cool that you’re going out of your way to do this. Maybe she is at home right now trying to figure out how to say “friend” in English.
I’ve been in strange lands where nobody speaks English, then I mangle an attempt to communicate in their tongue, and suddenly they become fluent. It’s sometimes the thought that counts.
If you have a phone or tablet with data, you could try going to https://translate.google.com/m/translate and getting her to type something in. The auto language detect might be able to point you in a useful direction. Otherwise I would look for a refugee organization and see if they have language resources that could help you.
I was down there a few times this week and saw the other (mostly men in turbans) regulars but my new mate didn’t show. I am wondering if someone had a go at her for the active play or told her what my rainbow wristband means. I am experiencing quite a lot of hostility at the moment with this stupid same sex marriage survey confronting the community.
If our paths do cross again I’m ready with both a bit of Pashto and a workout plan. Turning on data and letting the phone help is a great idea I am sure I’ll get use out of living where I do, I have honestly never thought of it. Thanks.
