I just got a pedicure for the second time since my son was born. Last September. And since I had all that free time to myself to think (and finish The Odyssey, which I'm preparing to teach this year and which I've been reading since April, thankyouverymuch), I closed my eyes, and let my mind drift.
Except that if you, like me, get your pedis in random places, chances are your ears prick up when you hear the impossible, lilting vowel acrobatics of the Thai or Vietnamese beauticians talking to each other from their nail stations, little islands in and of themselves, their mouths forming around vowel combinations I couldn't do if I tried.
And you, like me, can't help but wonder what the hell they're saying to each other. Is it juicy gossip? Or is it about you--or me? Get a load of this white girl's toe situation, I imagine. Yeah, says the nail salon's owner, I haven't seen anything that bad since that time my old man showed up at his birthday party without his socks on.
We're a culture well-fed on reality television, and we like to know exactly what everyone's thinking at every single effing minute of every day (and as soon as they have those thoughts), so it's no surprise to me that I wanted to know what the heck my nail techie was talking about while I was supposed to be pretending that I was wading in the hot springs of a Grecian tide pool (foot bath) and getting the prime massage treatment from Odysseus himself... (a mechanized chair. Please don't tell my husband I almost dreamed that.)
My daughter likes languages, and there just seems to be a barrage of them on any given afternoon. In one day, she may have listened to a Mexican song about witches (on a cd of Mexican music we like), seen episodes of Dora the Explorer (also Spanish) and Ni Hao Ki Lan (Mandarin Chinese), and listened to her brother babble on in his baby talk like he's the (heaven forbid) Rush Limbaugh of infants. ¡Vamanos! C'mon! Say it with me! Dora yells at us on her way to the Lost City. Then, just minutes later, Ki Lan asks us to repeat something that means faster! over and over until our jaws give up.
So my daughter will try to mock what she hears. And lately, because her little ears have picked up all this stuff that doesn't sound at all like the way her family and teachers talk, she's been making up her own language that's something between baby babble, iKung, Vulcan, and, well, Spanish. It unnerves me, for some reason--maybe because I know that these should be the days/months when her vocabulary could really pick up and explode. Is she going backwards? Is the verbal regression more unsettling because I want her to go to the college of her choice on scholarship or because I CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT?
Worse, she talks to her baby brother this way, so at some point during the day, there'll be a conversation in our kitchen between two kids--my two kids, mind you, the ones I birthed--that I cannot understand. It's sort of like what it felt like when I was little and my mother and grandmother would squawk at each other (purposely) in Yiddish so that I couldn't understand them. [Side note: I secretly signed up for Yiddish classes in Hebrew School, when I was 14, so that I would understand them; turns out that a.) you don't need to put garlic in the cavity of your Thanksgiving turkey, but it helps, and b.) Mr. S.--- was indeed a prick who shtooped Mr. R.'s wife sometime during the sexual revolution.]
One of D's favorite nighttime book pics is the Aleph-Bet book, which depicts a Hebrew letter that corresponds to a picture. We look at it, sound out the letters, look at the pictures. I don't know how much of it sticks. Then there's the Japanese toy blocks our friends in Tokyo graciously sent us after the birth of our boy. The kids play with the blocks, one side the Japanese character/sound, the other, the corresponding picture. I secretly hope to find my one-year-old studying these in the living room one day (scholarship!), but what a tall order for a kid who can't even seem to sit through a reading of Pat-the-Bunny. With all the tongues of the world seemingly living in harmony in our living room, I guess it's no wonder that our toddler walks around the house making up her own sounds, her own meanings, her own worlds. The other night, in the car, she was singing something my husband and I couldn't identify. We asked her what it was, and she casually replied that she was singing her brother a Spanish lullaby. (My husband and I agreed it sounded Nordic.) I'm hoping that of all the languages in our ears, which on some days seems like an auditory assault and on others the UN, we can keep our thoughts, and our daydreams, straight--and to ourselves. Anything more would be like a loch en kop.
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| Whatchoo say? |
And you, like me, can't help but wonder what the hell they're saying to each other. Is it juicy gossip? Or is it about you--or me? Get a load of this white girl's toe situation, I imagine. Yeah, says the nail salon's owner, I haven't seen anything that bad since that time my old man showed up at his birthday party without his socks on.
We're a culture well-fed on reality television, and we like to know exactly what everyone's thinking at every single effing minute of every day (and as soon as they have those thoughts), so it's no surprise to me that I wanted to know what the heck my nail techie was talking about while I was supposed to be pretending that I was wading in the hot springs of a Grecian tide pool (foot bath) and getting the prime massage treatment from Odysseus himself... (a mechanized chair. Please don't tell my husband I almost dreamed that.)
My daughter likes languages, and there just seems to be a barrage of them on any given afternoon. In one day, she may have listened to a Mexican song about witches (on a cd of Mexican music we like), seen episodes of Dora the Explorer (also Spanish) and Ni Hao Ki Lan (Mandarin Chinese), and listened to her brother babble on in his baby talk like he's the (heaven forbid) Rush Limbaugh of infants. ¡Vamanos! C'mon! Say it with me! Dora yells at us on her way to the Lost City. Then, just minutes later, Ki Lan asks us to repeat something that means faster! over and over until our jaws give up.
So my daughter will try to mock what she hears. And lately, because her little ears have picked up all this stuff that doesn't sound at all like the way her family and teachers talk, she's been making up her own language that's something between baby babble, iKung, Vulcan, and, well, Spanish. It unnerves me, for some reason--maybe because I know that these should be the days/months when her vocabulary could really pick up and explode. Is she going backwards? Is the verbal regression more unsettling because I want her to go to the college of her choice on scholarship or because I CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT?
Worse, she talks to her baby brother this way, so at some point during the day, there'll be a conversation in our kitchen between two kids--my two kids, mind you, the ones I birthed--that I cannot understand. It's sort of like what it felt like when I was little and my mother and grandmother would squawk at each other (purposely) in Yiddish so that I couldn't understand them. [Side note: I secretly signed up for Yiddish classes in Hebrew School, when I was 14, so that I would understand them; turns out that a.) you don't need to put garlic in the cavity of your Thanksgiving turkey, but it helps, and b.) Mr. S.--- was indeed a prick who shtooped Mr. R.'s wife sometime during the sexual revolution.]
As if it isn't enough that we're bushwhacked with words everywhere we go, from graffiti on bridges to Twitter on your smartphone to the running text at the bottom of the screens of our talk shows/news programs/etc., there's now a new kind of verbiage to sort through on another level: how to talk to one another and make sense.
Even in my English-speaking world, I'm constantly trying to decode meaning and subtext and innuendo. Even when the television is off, our brains are working overtime to deconstruct language to find meaning. My daughter used to ask me what the Spanish witch song was all about (it's ripe with innuendo, so I have to make it up); now, when we listen to any kind of music--even wordless, classical music or jazz--she asks: what does it mean?
One of D's favorite nighttime book pics is the Aleph-Bet book, which depicts a Hebrew letter that corresponds to a picture. We look at it, sound out the letters, look at the pictures. I don't know how much of it sticks. Then there's the Japanese toy blocks our friends in Tokyo graciously sent us after the birth of our boy. The kids play with the blocks, one side the Japanese character/sound, the other, the corresponding picture. I secretly hope to find my one-year-old studying these in the living room one day (scholarship!), but what a tall order for a kid who can't even seem to sit through a reading of Pat-the-Bunny. With all the tongues of the world seemingly living in harmony in our living room, I guess it's no wonder that our toddler walks around the house making up her own sounds, her own meanings, her own worlds. The other night, in the car, she was singing something my husband and I couldn't identify. We asked her what it was, and she casually replied that she was singing her brother a Spanish lullaby. (My husband and I agreed it sounded Nordic.) I'm hoping that of all the languages in our ears, which on some days seems like an auditory assault and on others the UN, we can keep our thoughts, and our daydreams, straight--and to ourselves. Anything more would be like a loch en kop.
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