Social Media Maestro, America the Bilingual Project
Tags: explorer, enterpriser, chief engagement officer
First, know that she has one of those glorious English accents (or what all of us who are not English would call an accent), which makes her a natural for the audio book narration that she does. Although U.S. born, Caroline grew up in England and studied literature at the University of Warwick (fyi for American ears: that second “w” is silent).
Caroline was a force in the world of IBM, becoming the youngest product manager for the IBM PC in its South Africa division, and later, a Senior Marketing Representative for IBM in Boston.
But the entrepreneurial itch was there. She created a highly successful retail destination in Marblehead, Mass., both in store and online. She’s also an independent publisher who uses her considerable social media skills to promote authors’ books.
Languages
A killer ear for Afrikaans, after living in South Africa
Bilingual Moment— “What’s ‘sukee’?”
“When I was 15, my family welcomed a French girl my age into our home in England for several months. Naturally, we became friends, and I was happy to coach her in her English. ‘Why don’t you come home with me to France and meet my family?’ she suggested when school ended.
“I was, of course, delighted. I’d taken some French at school and was sure that between what I’d learned and my friend’s facility with English, I would have no trouble communicating.
“But the minute we alighted from the ferry in Calais, my friend announced—in French—that there would be no more English spoken while we were in France. And so my unplanned immersion into the language began, very different from the toe in the water I had anticipated.
“At dinner, her father would ask me, in French, my opinion on Watergate (this was the 1970s). I barely had one in English—it was not the kind of thing teenaged girls bothered about—and I certainly didn’t have one in French. And even if I did, I quickly discovered that my schoolgirl French was woefully inadequate for real-life conversations.
“One day, a friend around our age came to visit. He was French, and was learning English. He and I talked—in English—for a while, and finally he said to me, ‘What’s “sukee”?’
“I had no idea, I assured him.
“‘Yes, you do,’ he insisted. ‘You’ve been saying it all afternoon.’
“Sukee? He must be thinking of some other word. But I had barely finished responding to him when he pounced. ‘There! You’ve just said it again.’
“What on earth had I said? And then I got it. Sukee was how his French ears heard my English pronunciation of ‘it’s okay.’
“Had I not been struggling to understand my French family’s conversations, spoken the way we all tend to in our native language—quickly, sliding together consonants and vowels—I might have wondered why this young man couldn’t grasp such a simple word. But my immersion baptism had taught me that what we learn in classes and the way people really talk can be far different. But sukee: eventually our ears start hearing in the language.”
