Language has its own powerful influence to allure people's attention. If nicely put together, fallacies can become the truth and complicated matters can sound so simple. Believe it or not, one of the characters that is possessed by activists, politicians and outstanding leaders throughout the world is the ability to influence their spectators by their speech. An example of those people is the distinguished late Malcolm X, the outspoken advocate for the rights of his own race, African American. For the current decade, Barrack Obama would be one of the most dominant speakers, whose slogan "Yes We Can" grows hope into the hearts of the States citizens into making possible of the impossibles.
The clip above was introduced by a couple of my friends, which I found very fascinating and had an attraction of its own. I never deny that the ability to speak a language belonged to another group of people is indeed a huge advantage, no matter how little that is as it draws us closer to those people although that might be our first encounter with them. It creates an intangible connection that somehow builds people's trust and interest in us the speakers.
I started to learn a bit of Irish on my own when I was in third year. Hard that was, but the impact was amazing. It actually came about because at that time I was in the same group as a friend of mine from Connemara who speaks Irish well. He taught me a little but I learnt most of them from the internet. I don't speak much, I can't even make a conversation 'cause I understand very tiny but when I mention a couple of them, people get astonished.
Last time when I told that friend of mine the Irish phrases that I knew, he was so delighted that he said "Your Irish is much better than the rest of the class". That was because the unpleasant fact to admit is that, Irish language is perishing in its own land. They learn the language at school but they forget when their leaving certs are in their hands. Truly, language needs practice.
When I went out to the countryside for a psychiatric home visit with the Psychiatric Nurse, we chatted along the way in his car and kind of out of nothing to talk about I blurted that I knew a couple of Irish words. For your info commonly Irish living out of town would more likely be able to speak Irish language, modern teenagers living in the city wouldn't do so as much. He was flabbergasted that he even asked me to greet his patients at their homes, in Irish. I was stammering but managed to say a few words!
When I went out to the countryside for a psychiatric home visit with the Psychiatric Nurse, we chatted along the way in his car and kind of out of nothing to talk about I blurted that I knew a couple of Irish words. For your info commonly Irish living out of town would more likely be able to speak Irish language, modern teenagers living in the city wouldn't do so as much. He was flabbergasted that he even asked me to greet his patients at their homes, in Irish. I was stammering but managed to say a few words!
The same went when I uttered 'Go raibh maith agat' at the end of my presentations, once at the Paediatrics presentation last year and another at the Radisson Hotel last week. It was so simple but the outcome was astounding, a big applause ;). So now you know the trick ya. Kudos to youtube! :P
Just a bit of a history, the Prophet pbuh as well sent Zaid Ibn Tsabit to learn Hebrew the language of the Jews as part of his da'wah. You see, it is true indeed that being able to speak another race's mother tongue is an excellent way to deliver a message, what more if it's a message of an utmost importance, the message of da'wah. Locally I remember knowing that Ir Nizar, the ousted former Perak MB is able to speak a Chinese language, Mandarin I think; while the current Kelantan MB, Dato' Seri Nik Abdul Aziz is able to speak Urdu and Arabic. Wonderful isn't it?
In a nutshell, language is knowlegde. Language is asset. Let's learn language not to de-ceive but to de-liver.
I like this one, a lot! [is ainm dom = is my name]
And this one too! ;)
