On Language

Off to a good start: Mango smoothie with coconut/almond milk. Happy Monday!

The other day, I was reciting a poem from my youth to my son, who is seven years old. It was one of those hilarious, nonsense poems meant to simultaneously crack you up and think. I could barely keep myself from laughing while reading it. My son, on the other hand, sat there stone-faced. When I was done, I leaned forward.

“Seriously? You didn’t think it was funny at all?”

He squirmed.

“It was so-so.”

“So-so? It’s a very funny poem! Just listen here…”
I repeated a couple of verses, and my son smiled a little, but I could tell it was for my benefit only. I realized it had to do with language. Or lack thereof.

There are times when I pull at the vaguely familiar loose ends that stick up in the bin of my mind’s Lost and Found Languages. I pull a bit more, but quickly let go when I realize that what was once familiar is now painfully strange and alien. Fluency in a language is such a perishable thing. A language needs constant attention. In order to keep it up, you need to use it on a daily basis.

I remember making a conscious decision to switch from my native Swedish to English. My English was acceptable when I came to the U.S. My first lesson in English had taken place in school years before, when I was nine, with a book called This Way. I loved the sound of English. At least I think I did. The truth is that I can no longer remember what English sounds like. You can only say what a language sounds like when you do not understand it. As soon as you understand it, you can no longer hear the melody or the rhythm of it, you hear only its meaning. I think I fell in love with English because it was quite easy, not too different from Swedish. It was fun. The book had little color pictures in it; drawings of kids with names like Bill, Bob, Mary, and Pat, all of whom roamed around London with Big Ben in the background. I liked the words “umbrella” and “dressing gown”. The latter I had to unlearn when I came to America.

“You mean ‘robe’,” people told me.

But speaking, reading, and writing in English wasn’t enough. If what I wanted was true fluency, I had to reach deeper, into the unconscious location of my dreams and thoughts. I decided to start thinking in English, and began by talking to myself in English. You know that small talk you have with yourself throughout the day, either out loud or in your head:
“If I do the laundry now, I can peel the potatoes while the clothes are in the dryer.”

That sort of thing. My obsession stemmed from my wanting to act and write in English; both of which meant I had to really learn my adopted language. Little did I know it was to take years and years before I was anywhere near my goal. (I'm still not there).

I once met an American doctor who married a French woman.

“French is actually not that difficult,” he told me. “I picked it up one summer when we were there.”

“You mean you learnt some phrases,” I corrected him.

“No, I mean I learnt to speak it.”

Learning a new language isn’t something you do over a summer, nor over the course of a year. Learning a language takes much, much longer and is much more complicated than we will ever understand. Ask any immigrant!

I can pinpoint the exact time I first felt the beauty of the English language. Really felt it physically. It happened in the basement at HB Studio on Bank Street in the Village one Monday morning many years ago now. We were putting up a scene from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. I was standing center stage wearing a long, black skirt, black tights and some sort of a dark gray overdress. I was supposed to be Isabella, the novice. My scene partner Larry and I had rehearsed for weeks and weeks. I had analyzed my speech inside and out, every word had been looked at as if through a magnifying glass. I was very nervous, especially since I had a monologue at the end of the scene. But that’s exactly the moment when it happened. As I spoke Isabella’s words, I felt my mind release itself from my body, as if I were nothing but a conduit for Shakespeare’s words. The words poured out of me, and as they did I heard them for the very first time, and not through some sort of translation or veil in my head, the way I usually heard English. No, I heard them instantly, just as they came out of my mouth. It was a wonderful experience. A beautiful, thrilling moment.

“To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, 


Who would believe me? O perilous mouths, 


That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,


Either of condemnation or approof; 


Bidding the law make court'sy to their will: 


Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite, 


To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother: 


Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,


Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour. 


That, had he twenty heads to tender down 


On twenty bloody blocks, he'ld yield them up, 


Before his sister should her body stoop 


To such abhorr'd pollution.


Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: 


More than our brother is our chastity. 


I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request, 


And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest.”

Measure for Measure, Act II, scene 4

"Isabella" by Francis William Topham (1808-1877)