Life in Bosnia: A Bosnian Student Dropped the ‘N’ Word on Her American Teacher

Life in Bosnia: A Bosnian Student Dropped the ‘N’ Word on Her American Teacher

By Alinesarajevo

I’ve started the school year at a small school in Sarajevo after spending ten months teaching teenagers in Southeast Asia. Teaching assertive Bosnian students takes some getting used to. Typically, half my class time in Bangkok last year would be spent coaxing trembling students to speak more loudly and loosen up. Many of the Thai children were anxious about embarrassing themselves, to the detriment of their language learning.

So much of the process depends on a certain self-assurance and buoyancy, despite the inevitable mistakes that will be made (and must be made, in order to improve) – sometimes I felt the culture’s emphasis on ‘saving face’ was at the root of this inhibition in the classroom. It seems I am now living in the other extreme: a country without a single timid citizen. At least one shy Bosnian student must exist somewhere, but I have yet to encounter this wallflower in my classroom. I am continually astonished by the children’s confidence and willingness to contribute – even the weaker students are ready volunteers.

The Bosnian kids are not afraid to dive into things. And many of their accents are impeccable, which they attribute mostly to Cartoon Network and other English-language TV programming. We’ve had lots of Justin Beiber and Twilight Robert-versus-Jacob discussions. Two of my classes have requested to talk about American slang for a few minutes at the end of every class, sessions that proved extremely diverting, one of which led one teenager to say a word so ugly and forbidden in my country that I was temporarily speechless (it starts with an ‘N’). The students saw me blanch and were confused. “What part of what I said was not OK?” asked the girl. I explained that were I to repeat the word in public back home; I would be instantly fired and maybe sued. “People my age were raised to know that we can’t use this word because of its terrible past,” I told them. “It’s just something you are always aware of growing up. Your language has forbidden words, too.” This made them even more mystified. “How can that be true?” another student asked. “It’s not forbidden. It’s in half the American songs we listen to, and lots of the movies we watch. The word is everywhere, and also, the way it’s said, it seems like it does not have a negative meaning.”

The discussion was now in a pretty heavy territory, but the kids were completely rapt. I still don’t know if I’m satisfied with how I dealt with it. I wrote the phrase ‘Reclaiming a word’ on the board and began talking about the cultural processes by which a minority group might re-appropriate a word use to oppress them. I talked about how a word might be both a pejorative and a term of endearment, depending on the source. When I started talking about the NAACP’s official stance, I remembered that I was teaching an Upper-Intermediate English class, who needed to review auxiliary verbs.

“Any questions?”
“Not really,” said the girl who had first said the word. “But it’s really strange for us. In Bosnia, a bad word is a bad word for everyone.”

What do you say to that? I kept thinking about my class’s reaction when I got home. We had stumbled into a complex issue, but the fifteen-year-olds were more than equipped to handle it – I love that they aren’t afraid to debate the teacher, and question baffling cultural practices. People are not afraid to speak their mind.