Lengua Franca, Otra Vez

I find myself a bit at odds with my own culture.

Having received what in my humble opinion is a decent education prior to our move to the United States when I was thirteen years old, I find myself quite capable of communicating in Spanish with a modicum of self-assurance. I still make some grammatical mistakes, some quaint, some outright insulting to an educated ear, but none too terribly distracting from the message—if sometimes amusing. Often, when speaking or writing about things that happened to me before high school, I write in Spanish because that is how I remember it. Memories taste different in Spanish, smell sweeter, and even those of pain are best remembered as they happened; something is always lost in translation. By definition, it must change.

Sometimes, I write or speak in Spanish out of greatest tenderness or anger—unable to control the extremes.

And yet, the lure of the new culture made me hungry to learn the language. I went to great lengths to internalize this new mode of thinking, this new perspective on the world. A language is both a reflection of and an agent effecting change upon a society. Any interpreter (a word far more suitable than translator) will know of the famous shoe-on-the-podium incident at the United Nations when Mr. Kruschev told America what amounted to “we will outlive you” but was translated to “we will bury you,” a subtle but powerful difference that might have plunged the world into its final cataclysm.

So there was Mrs. Novotny, hardly a decade older than me, hotter than anyone teaching 14-year-olds has a right to be, teaching me what “boiling” meant. And Mr. Robles, or Castro, or whatever his name was—a Cuban man that spoke to me in English, French, Arabic and some other African language before trying Spanish when he met me. He taught me not the language, but the structure. I am more grateful to him for that than I am perhaps to any other teacher. Instead of giving me many fishes, he taught me to fish. Still, he wasn’t nearly as hot as Mrs. Novotny, so I can’t really remember his name.

I remember talking to myself in the bus on the way home, talking to myself while doing dishes or cleaning the back yard. I remember talking to my siblings, reading to them from the books assigned by Mrs. Novotny (sigh) and Mr. Whatshisname. I did it all in English. After a while, I didn’t have to ask people to repeat themselves so I could understand what they said—even if I didn’t know what the words meant, I knew what words they’d used. In three months, I knew English. My best friends were Polish and Vietnamese; we could only communicate in English. It was great.

And here I am now, in a world with no borders. This blogging world that lends itself to Hebrew and Arabic, to Russian and English, to Spanish like I spoke when I grew up and 50 other versions all descended from the tongue of Cervantes. What a world! I am fascinated by the sounds and the lines that tongues and throats will make and hands will write to convey a thought. The simple image that something as abstract as an idea can be encapsulated (to whatever limited degree we humans can) within two dots on a page enthralls me. Isn’t it silly? I get outright giddy that someone one day might read this and know what I mean!

Unfortunately, now that I have kids to feed and bills to pay, I have little time to learn more languages. There are more important things to learn. Priorities, being what they are, I have little room for this wild dream. Once I wanted to learn all the languages spoken at the United Nations. Now I can’t. Maybe I will later.

I wish for selfish reasons that I could read and write and speak all the languages there are, so that all can hear and read what I have to say, but also so that I can learn form them. So many stories are now lost when an old man dies! So much of a civilization is lost when a single old woman’s voice goes silent. And oftentimes, this happens when the young die, as in war, or famine, or the myriad other cruelties we inflict on one another.

I have such a little corner of the world. Sometimes I see it in Spanish, and I write, to let out all that has come in. Sometimes, I taste it in English, and English it is when it makes it here. I do not mean to exclude anybody—it is an accident of life, and I do hurt that we cannot all share all that all the others might want to share. As if it were food, I hunger for the tastes I haven’t had yet.

So, yes… this is my apology to those who speak only Spanish and would read what I would write. I am very grateful that you would want to read it, and I am sorry that it’s not always in Spanish. I find myself sometimes at odds with my culture, but not for having expanded it will I admit even hypothetically to having renounced it. Unlike the French, who seek to shut the doors to other languages, I find my Spanish open and receptive, a fertile flower in the Spring. I do not mourn that no one speaks the language of El Cid—it was bound to change, or die. And if you speak English and you come and find my words in Spanish, I am sorry too—for both of us!