How do you demonstrate the importance of language to your Geography students? Why should we learn other languages? As Americans, we are so lucky that a large portion of the world has learned English. Many of our students will ask, why should we bother learning other languages? There are many answers to this question, but this video illustrates many of them well.
This is one of the best videos that I’ve ever seen for demonstrating how a desire to learn about someone else’s culture can make a profound impact on others and break down cultural barriers. There is a Youtuber called Xiaomanyc who has figured out a way to learn languages very quickly. He’s an unassuming white guy who looks like an average tourist to most. He records videos of people in foreign countries reacting to him when he surprises them by speaking their language. Most of these videos are very interesting.
My Geography students were enthralled by this video that Xiaomanyc recorded in Africa. He decided to learn Maasai, the language of a semi-nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania that once dominated Kenya. The Maasai have tried to preserve many of their tribal traditions rather than abandoning them for modern ways as many other tribes have done (although they do have cell phones).
So, Xiaomanyc (also known as Ari) learns Maasai and surprises the warriors as they are welcoming him. Their reaction is priceless! (You can see this at 3:30 in the video.) They are obviously ecstatic that a foreigner from so far away would take the time to learn their language.
The rest of the video is really entertaining and heartwarming. One of the warriors even tells him that “You are Maasai” and says to treat the village as if it was his home. If you are going to play it in class, I’d skip the intro, because there’s a long in-video commercial at the beginning. The best place is to start at 2:45. The video is 18 minutes long, but you can use about 3 minutes to illustrate the point. I only showed about five minutes in my classroom and the students asked for me to email them the link so they could watch the rest later. This is a good tool to illustrate the importance of culture and language rather than just have students read about them.
