#TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.
✨Sam
Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I’m Sam.
✨Rob
And I’m Rob.
✨Sam
In this programme, we’ll be hearing about an issue experienced by many child refugees who are forced to leave their home – the loss of their first, native language, or mother tongue, as they start a new life, learning to speak a new language, in a new country.
✨Rob
Julie Sedivy and her family left their home in what was then Czechoslovakia and is now the Czech Republic during the Cold War, when Julie was a small child. After several years travelling through Europe, they arrived in Canada as political refugees with no English. We’ll be hearing about Julie’s childhood when learning English started to replace her native language, Czech, and, as usual, we’ll be learning some new vocabulary as well.
✨Sam
But first, I have a question, Rob. Julie’s family left their home as political refugees, but every year millions of people are also displaced because of war, persecution, or the damaging effects of climate change. So, according to the United Nations, how many people around the world are currently living as displaced refugees? Is it:
a) 3 million?
b) 53 million? or,
c) 103 million?
✨Rob
I’ll guess it’s 103 million.
✨Sam
I’ll reveal the answer later in the programme, Rob. Like many child refugees, Julie spoke only her mother tongue, Czech, at home with her brothers, sisters and parents who, in the beginning, spoke no English at all. Here she describes to Michael Rosen, presenter of BBC Radio 4 programme, Word of Mouth, going to an English-speaking school for the first time.
✨Michael Rosen
…so, you went into school not, to start off, with really understanding what was going on, is that right?
✨Julie Sedivy
That's right. I just kind of interpreted things as best I could, and my memory of that is that that was not particularly difficult or traumatic. I think by then I'd had the experience of being dunked into various unfamiliar languages numerous times, and I had faith that it would sort itself out, and that everything would be just fine; and it was of course…
✨Rob
At school, Julie was dunked into unfamiliar situations, a bit like a biscuit being dunked into a cup of tea. Often, dunk means to dip something into liquid, but here, the meaning is that Julie was suddenly dropped into a new situation for a while, then taken out, as her family travelled through Europe.
✨Sam
By the time she arrived in Canada, Julie had been exposed to several other languages including Italian and French. She had experienced many difficulties, but never given up hope of finding a new home. Julie had faith – in other words, trust or confidence, that everything would sort itself out, a phrase meaning to stop being a problem automatically, without having to do anything.
✨Rob
Over the following years, Julie faced many challenges: going to school and making friends; helping her parents as they struggled in the English-speaking world; and grieving for her native language which she slowly forgot, and with it, the chance to speak Czech with her dad before he passed away. Julie shares her thoughts on losing and refinding her mother tongue in her book, Memory Speaks.
✨Sam
Through it all, Julie kept alive her belief that by speaking two, three or even more languages, we don’t forget who we are, but instead gain a sense of tolerance, an idea which she talked about with BBC Radio 4’s, Word of Mouth.
✨Julie Sedivy
The idea that you can be both of Mexican ancestry, for example, and speak Spanish, and be a full-fledged American, or in my case come from a country like the Czech Republic, continue to speak my language and to be a Canadian and very proudly so and very invested in Canada as a society. There's a number of studies that suggest that the very presence of people with blended ideas in a society seem to lead to greater acceptance between groups.
