On Language

With apologies to William Safire and Noam Chomsky

“Mais habitez-vous en France?”

“My work here is done,” I thought, a tingle of accomplishment tickling my insides. My amie Liz and I sat buckled into the front seats of the quintessential glass-topped tour bus chatting with the friendly driver before embarking on our educational odyssey around the ville of Lille.

American English is my mother tongue. I approach fluency in Spanish and British English. My French is conversational at best. Our coachman clearly knew that I was not a native speaker, but it seemed I’d done well enough that he believed I might have taken up residence en France. For a girl who has studied and loved all aspects of languages since the age of eight, this was the icing and confectioner’s sugar drizzled and dusted on the delectable mille-feuille Liz and I had just shared at the renowned patisserie, Meert.

Making myself understood, and understanding others, in the language I grew up speaking often proves difficult enough. So many factors might confound meaning: tone, context, body language, ALL CAPS in writing… I’d even argue that sometimes the inherited comfort with, and decades of subtext attached to, a mother tongue might make decoding it even more fraught with complexities than with a newly acquired one. I’m on my best behavior when listening attentively to Spanish speakers, and yes, even my British friends, because the words must travel through an extra filter to allow my axons to decode the olio, especially coated in the spice of unfamiliar accents. I can decipher the other Romance languages with intense concentration, like when my mom and I were trying to make out the grainy images of Neil Armstrong taking his small step on a small black and white rabbit-ear-antenna-topped television on July 20, 1969. We strained, and leaned in toward the snowy picture straining to receive and unscramble the signal, much as I would do with an Italian or Portuguese speaker, believing somehow that added effort and proximity might improve clarity.

From the moment I began to learn Spanish in Mrs. Martin’s third grade class in PS 232, it felt familiar. From the moment I stepped onto the streets of Madrid - after Ms. Vicedomini had honed my language skills like a sword-smith would a katana in Westfield High School - to spend part of the summer of 1976 there, it felt like home. It also opened my proverbial eyes in a way that no travel documentary or textbook could. I had an epiphany standing on the Calle General Mola, looking at a fire hydrant that both resembled - and didn’t - the ones at home. That everyone around the world does and wants the exact same things as we do, but perhaps in very different ways and with different priorities - made me feel at once diminished and expansive. I felt both less important and more important; a citizen of the World as well as America. This perspective creates unity rather than divisiveness, and learning other languages facilitates that connection.

Coming to Spanish, and then French (during a Winter Term at Middlebury College) as a student and not an infant has granted me the gift of grammar. No doubt my elementary school teachers hammered grammar into our resistant, reluctant minds. But we already spoke English. Why would we need to know the rules? To learn Spanish and French, I had no choice. That discipline has helped me immeasurably in writing in my original language. I know what a perfect tense is and when and how to use it. I know a gerund when I see one; an infinitive when I bump into it. This knowledge does not make me a better person, but it does make me a better writer.

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Language, spoken or written, provides a fast lane to connection. Learning someone else’s language shows courtesy and curiosity. It initiates a metaphoric handshake or hug, and allows for understanding beyond a static Google translation to nuanced interpretation of how others think and what they value.

Even a small effort to engage in an unfamiliar tongue forms a symbolic gesture of camaraderie. Learning and using the most basic phrases: please, thank you, how much, where is the bathroom, and another beer, goes a long way to breaking down language - and hence cultural - barriers. They convey more than their literal meaning by telling another person that:

• I don’t assume I’m more important than you

• I don’t assume everyone in the world should accommodate me

• I am friendly and curious about you and their culture

• I want to facilitate rather than impede communication

• I want to participate rather than just observe

A deeper dive uncovers even more hidden treasure. The structure of each language reveals thought patterns and priorities. While “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax” erroneously claims that there are more than fifty words for snow in the Inuit languages (there are nearly two dozen), the point remains instructive: vocabulary, syntax, grammar, conjugations, and idiomatic variations reveal so much about the speakers. Romance languages prioritize nouns over adjectives in descriptions: we know what they plan to describe first, and how they describe it second. So in English, it’s a pretty house, while in Spanish it’s a casa bonita. It’s difficult to dangle a participle in Spanish, but it’s easy to know your level of certainty about something because it uses the subjunctive mood much more rigorously than English speakers. We can also glean a distinction and level of respect toward the subject of a sentence depending on the chosen form of the pronoun you. Subtleties? Yes. Significant? Oui.

Even in England, where we are, as the saying goes, separated by a common language, I notice myself adjusting my inflection and vocabulary as soon as I alight at Heathrow. I have sorted my flat, taken the lift to the ground floor, and stowed things in a boot. Not in some pretentious, Madonna-like, attempt to acquire a false accent or identity, but to blend in and respect the local customs.In Looking left when stepping off a kerb, and Minding the gap in the underground, I adopt local vernacular just as I would when visiting Brussels or Berlin.

I was lucky; I learned my first foreign language before my brain began rigorous synaptic pruning. We are most receptive to new languages prior to early adolescence; the earlier we start the better. But fear not, old perros can learn new tricks. Just as with yoga and pickleball, it’s never too late to jump in and immerse yourself in a new wor(l)d.