Yes, Virginia, language barriers do exist amongst people who speak the same language.
A waitress in L.A. once told me, “We Americans like our coffee strong!”
I responded like one of those insecure caveman on the TV ads. I sneered and said, “What?”
All I did was ask for more cream. What did that make me, Icelandic?
My French friend, Guy, who lived in Muenster Cheese, France (not the real name of the town but that’s how I remember it) was visiting me in Playa del Rey, CA and wanted to buy a trendy, American product, a t-shirt with the inscription, “Yoo-Clah."
Oddly enough, our mutual understanding of the English language was acting as a language barrier.
I said, “Sorry, I don’t get out much. I never heard of that inscription. Is it a sneaker company or a rock band?”
“No,” he said, and he seemed disturbed that I was so out of touch with my own culture, like I wasn’t as hip as I should have been, despite being a big-city, film school product. I told him I was too busy writing, playing ball and dating dangerous beauties to be “hip” like him, a guy born on a farm in the middle of nowhere and raised by a cheese plate and a bunch of grapes.
At least, in Wisconsin, they have the Green Bay Packers, and they can do all that cheering. What can you do that’s hip in a town named for Muenster Cheese? Go slicing?
Guy had bought me breakfast (12 croissants and a vat of grape jelly; I’m not exaggerating) so I offered to take him to dinner. We went to Westwood, CA. While on the streets of Westwood, a Frenchman insisted Guy was German. (Muenster Cheese is close to the German border so Guy’s French accent might have sounded a bit odd to a European.) Guy was not amused. A fight was brewing, right in front of a clothing store in ultra-hip Westwood.
I broke up the combatants and noticed something in the storefront window.
“Look!” I shouted to Guy.
I pointed to a t-shirt in the window that read, “UCLA.”
“Yoo-clah!” he shouted happily, then he went into the store and bought 12 UCLA t-shirts. (I had to carry home the vat of grape jelly.)
Another time, at a bar in Marina del Rey, CA, Guy’s friend from Paris, Lotti, asked me if it would be OK for her to mingle. I said sure; no one was going to bother her but everyone was probably going to annoy her. She didn’t understand the difference. It was evident that her solid grasp of the English language was hindering our conversation.
A few minutes later, Lotti returned to our table, looking distraught. Apparently, I had been prescient. While no one bothered her … the guys had definitely annoyed her. One even made her sick. He told Lotti that he taught French to youngsters in a local school. When she said something to him in French, he didn’t understand a word. He explained this by saying that he only taught English to French children. (So he only spoke English.) Then he asked her if she wanted to leave with him.
Lotti wanted to leave, all right. She wanted to be on the next flight back to Paris.
For those of you with ADD, and that includes a lot of people I know, this blog began with a question about my being Icelandic. Speaking of global destinations, I took passports photos yesterday at the Monolithic Drug Store. In these photos, my skin, for unknown reasons, was reddish tan, like a Native American, and my hair was blonde, like an Icelander. If these pictures had sound, I probably would have sounded Hawaiian.
I read that, in the near future, our accents will be so pronounced that we won’t understand our cross-country cousin’s dialect.
And now, a paragraph later, the future is here. Go from NY to LA or vice-versa and say the words water or oranges and see what will happen. (I know what will happen. The other person will say, “What?” like a caveman or cavewoman and won’t understand what you mean.)
Language can also be used as a way to profile or stereotype. Example: If you tell an Asian girl that, since she’s a girl, she’ll do worse than boys on the SAT test, she’ll do worse. If you tell her that she’s Asian, and should do better than other groups, then she’ll do better than other groups. Language carries the power of suggestion, big time. As writers, I hope you understand your responsibility.
One of my college students didn’t know the difference between are and our. Sure, the words are and our sound alike. I just thought the student should of learned the difference between are and our in third grade, that’s all.
Maybe she’ll go on to become a teacher. And then she can tell guys she meets in clubs, “I only teach English. I don’t actually speak it.”
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