Speak my language?

[thrihyrne]

Since my childhood, I’ve been interested in languages. (I even convinced my friends in 5th grade that I had come from Neptune and wrote in squiggles in pencil on a piece of crumpled up waxed paper as evidence of “something mom had hidden in a drawer written in Neptunian” as proof, but that’s another story) We went to Canada a couple of times and I remember keeping my bubble gum wrappers from the trips simply because I thought it was so cool that everything there was written in English *and* French.

This morning I was looking at something I’d purchased over the weekend (a feminine products box; you all know I’m a grown woman so that should hardly be shocking) and it struck me that now almost everything I buy is again in two languages: English and Spanish. Even the aisle signs in the grocery store closest to me now has the aisle contents in English on one side of the sign and in Spanish on the other. It can be a bit frustrating, actually, since going up the aisle I can read it and coming down the other, I can’t. Maybe I’m prejudiced, or I’m just older now, but having everything unofficially bilingual doesn’t have the same fascinating appeal that it did for me when I was 10.

There are also languages within communities; my college best friend occasionally looks at my livejournal and she has commented that sometimes when she does, she has no real idea what I’m talking about, but then we have a phone conversation and she knows I haven’t changed personalities or anything. But it can be intimidating to enter a community (I’m thinking of fandoms in particular, both Tolkien and HP, which really do have their own ‘languages’ of a sort, both due to the tendency toward use of acronyms but also fandom-particular words and phrases) and have to figure out what on earth people are saying to each other. I suppose this happens in particular workplaces as well, or whole enclaves: academe, sales, banking, what have you. Having been involved in HP fandom for not all that long, around a year, I guess, I can still with chagrin remember having to ask someone the difference between OTP and OotP. Oh. And I then had to ask about PotC. Now it seems obvious, but at the time, it was like trying to read a printout of something R2D2 would chirp, without the benefit of a helpful C-3PO to translate.

Last night I attended a Lessons and Carols service, and some of the anthems were in Latin, which is, at least in regards to church music, a very familiar language to me now. I wonder if it seems odd to other people who aren’t church musicians to be still be singing those pieces untranslated after so many years.

That being said, I’m off to write a couple of thank you notes and then get back to the fic formerly known as NBtC (“Never Break the Chain”), which didn’t get as much attention as it should have because I got sidetracked by reading some long HP fic over the weekend. Sorry Cim, George also ended up surprising me and it’s getting a wee bit longer, but I should have it to you soon. Tonight is my stepson’s band concert, so I probably won’t get a whole bunch written, but you never know. During the concert, which will be held in their gym, I’ll most likely be knitting on the scarf that my stepdaughter roped me into making on Saturday. Oh, the sacrifices!!

Comments

[gondoriangirl.livejournal.com]

I took a summer kids camp German class...which was a ton of fun. It also led to taking German in High School. However, that's where it ended. I think I can understand more German than I can speak. This, I discovered when I was there in 1996 for a mission trip.

[thrihyrne.livejournal.com]

I think that probably happens to a lot of people; even now I can understand some Russian if I hear people speak it in Kroger, but I could barely generate a sentence anymore myself.

Hope you're doing well!! How's the job at the fabric store? I ended up putting so much of my paycheck into Piece Goods when I had a part-time job there...