Should Have Been My Mother Tongue - III. Pedagogy

Can Western pedagogies work for non-Western structures?  In the three-part lecture series Should Have Been My Mother Tongue, Ahilan Ratnamohan examines the impact of language on society, based on his own learning of the Tamil language.

The third and last part is focused on the learning techniques he has been forced to develop due to the position of Tamil in the global language market and the lack of learning resources, despite its 80 million plus speakers worldwide. The fact that he wishes to acquire Sri Lankan or Jaffna Tamil exacerbates the dearth of traditional, popular learning resources. Confronted with the profoundly disparate grammatical structures, he poses the question, can Western pedagogies work for non-Western structures?  

Ratnamohan presented the first part at Kaaistudio’s and the second during the Passa Porta Festival. Pedagogy takes place at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts.

• Ahilan Ratnamohan, born in Australia to a Sri Lankan and Tamil family, is a theatre maker with an obsession for language. His interdisciplinary work explores language acquisition as a form of performance and vice versa.  His performances have surprising, unconventional forms. In 2021, together with Sulaiman Addonia, he kicked off the series the Wonders of Multilingualism (together with Passa Porta). His solo Alle woorden die ik nog niet kende premiered at Kaaitheater in 2021. For the next three years, we will welcome him as artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater.