While I've been home, one of the questions I've been getting the most from people is if Manuel and I ever experience any sort of language barrier. I answer that, generally speaking, no, we do not, and explain that Manuel grew up going to a bilingual school -- he even learned his colors in English before Spanish, for some reason.
But more than that, I think it's true, as Manuel himself once suggested, that when you live with someone for a while or are around them all the time, you end up establishing your own (inter)personal mini-language (regardless of whether or not you share the same native tongue), the components of which would not necessarily make automatic sense to the untrained ear, but which are unambiguous -- crystal clear -- to those in-the-know.
For a close group of friends of mine in college, our mini-language involved referring to objects by their colors. If I wanted Rina to hand me the blue blanket off the back of the couch, for instance, I might say, "Hey Rins, will you pass me the blue?" Someone unfamiliar with this way of speaking might respond with a, "Huh? The blue what?" but Rina would know exactly what I meant, just as I would know that if Sophie and I were making omelettes and she were to say, "I need the yellowish orange," I should scan the vicinity for the nearest yellowish orange object and then give her the bag of shredded cheddar cheese.
And so it is with Manuel and me. We've developed our own way of communicating, our own mini-language. For example, sometimes I make nouns into verbs, and he has gotten used to this. Now, it should be noted that, while among native English speakers, I've noticed, this practice is not all that uncommon (and even if I said "water me" or "beer me" to someone who didn't themself -- it should be a word, it really, really shoud -- say things like this, it would more or less make sense given the context), in Spanish (apparently), people just don't talk like that.
Nonetheless, when I ask Manuel, "me aguas?" or, "me cervezas?" he will pass me the water or beer without hesitating, albeit also without being quiet -- he will usually protest my bastardizing of his language by shouting, "Don't say that!" or, "La puta que te partio!" (roughly translated, "the whore who gave birth to you!")
Another aspect of our mini-language has to do with vocabulary. Despite Manuel's near-flawless English, his vocabulary is not without its holes -- for a long time, he didn't know the word "oven" and there are certain vegetables, like carrots and lettuce, that he either doesn't know or just doesn't bother to come up with mid-sentence. And so a lot of our conversations include sentences like this: "Baby, will you turn on the horno for the meat? I'm going to cut up the zanahorias and put them in the lechuga with the tomatoes."
For the most part, we get by just fine like this -- conversations primarily in English with Spanish words thrown in from here to there. Still, there are times when things do get lost in translation and communication does temporarily break down. For example, one night not too long ago, we had just finished a late (though not so late by Argentine standards) dinner and Manuel said that he was going to make some black tea, and did I want him to make me some, as well? I said no thank you, that I was going to go to bed soon and didn't want to have anything with caffeine in it.
To which he responded, "No, I asked if you wanted some tea."
"No, I don't want anything with caffeine in it," I said, not sure why I was having to repeat myself.
"No, no, no," he came back with. "I said, 'Do you want some TEA?'"
At this point, I began to suspect that something was amiss, but, like the toddler who foolishly reaches for the hot stove a second time, not expecting to get burned, I repeated yet again, more slowly and louder (because sometimes it seems like just raising the volume is enough to get your point across), "I. DON'T. WANT. CAFFEINE."
"But tea doesn't have caffeine in it," he said.
"Black tea sure as hell does," I said and thought, have you been living under a rock your whole life?
"No it doesn't," he said. "It has te-eine."
"What the fuck is te-eine?"
"Coffee has cafeina, and tea has teina." And this is how I learned that in Spanish there's a different word for the caffeine in coffee and the caffeine in tea.
"Well, not in English, it doesn't," I said.
In the end, it was relieving to know that it was just Argentina where my boyfriend had been living his whole life, not under a rock, but, as I confirmed with you, Candy, when I went to visit you in Princeton, regardless of the language in which you are speaking, the substances in question in coffee and tea are molecularly identical, so it's not a good idea to drink either one of them right before you go to bed.
In other words, what's in a name? That which we call caffeine by any other name would keep you up all night.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Groggy Thoughts Upon Returning to America
The flight from Buenos Aires to Houston got in around 5 a.m., and I went directly to the gate of my connecting flight to take a nap on the floor. I slept for a while, before being awakened by the voice of a woman nearby who was loudly telling her young child to stop crying (if I'd been in Argentina, I would have perhaps not understood her and have been able to tune it out, but -- sigh -- welcome back to the land of overheard conversations).
Sitting up and looking around, I noticed that the waiting area had filled up significantly in the time I'd been asleep, and I suddenly felt too self-conscious about being sprawled out on the floor in front of a bunch of people to go back to sleep. I decided to go buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee. This cost me less than three dollars, which didn't strike me as very much -- especially for an airport. Despite the small sum, I was allowed to pay with a credit card, which was a good thing, I realized as I fetched it from my wallet, since the only cash I had was pesos.
As I sat in the food court eating my doughnut, the feelings that came to me were mixed: comfort and convenience (the ease of my small talk with the immigration officer, paying with a credit card!), along with something akin to queasiness. The latter(est) perhaps had something to do with my lack of a good night's sleep, or the fact that my stomach had grown unaccustomed to dougnuts in its South American sabbatical, but it brought to mind the way I feel sometimes returning home from work when all the windows in the apartment have been shut all day. There's a closed -- cerrado -- quality, if not a smell, to the air.
Airports, I suppose, do physically have something in common with a shut-up apartment, but I had a feeling this feeling was more related to the announcement I'd heard as I was coming through security reminding all travelers that the current security warning level was "orange." For this reason, it was very important that everyone do their part by reporting any suspicious activity or behavior.
Perhaps I've been out of the country too long -- maybe it's all the Spanglish I've been speaking -- but I found it hard upon hearing this to get a clear idea of just how dangerous orange danger really was. Isn't it always a good idea -- common sense, even -- to report suspicious activity or behavior?
The only thing orange made me think of was how someone once told me that the most popular color for decorating doctor's office waiting rooms was orange because orange was a "neutral" color, that in general people have neither strongly positive nor strongly negative feelings toward the color. If this was true, did that make the current security warning level "indifferent"?
Was there some sort of color wheel involved in this system, I wondered, in which orange was more dangerous than yellow (and much more dangerous than purple), but less dangerous than red?
All ROY-G-BIVing aside, it ocurred to me that perhaps a good ole' fashioned numerical scale of 1-10 might provide a clearer reference point and leave less room for confusion. Case in point: While I was walking through the airport, a guy with a bunch of explosives strapped to his body passed me, but I was so caught up in my thoughts about doctors' offices and rainbows that I wasn't able to alert the proper authorities in time before he blew up the whole airport.
That didn't really happen, and I'm not writing to you from beyond the grave. It was just a joke. But as I was putting my shoes back on after going through security, I heard another announcement informing all passengers that any inappropriate jokes would not be taken lightly. And this is why, I think, the Houston aiport evoked my stinky cerrado apartment in the evenings -- though, who knows? Maybe the same kind of announcements are made in the Buenos Aires airport, where it's just easier for me to tune things out.
P.S. You know you've been out of the States too long when you get back and find yourself peeling apart two-ply toilet paper before using it. Because to not do so just seems wasteful...
Sitting up and looking around, I noticed that the waiting area had filled up significantly in the time I'd been asleep, and I suddenly felt too self-conscious about being sprawled out on the floor in front of a bunch of people to go back to sleep. I decided to go buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee. This cost me less than three dollars, which didn't strike me as very much -- especially for an airport. Despite the small sum, I was allowed to pay with a credit card, which was a good thing, I realized as I fetched it from my wallet, since the only cash I had was pesos.
As I sat in the food court eating my doughnut, the feelings that came to me were mixed: comfort and convenience (the ease of my small talk with the immigration officer, paying with a credit card!), along with something akin to queasiness. The latter(est) perhaps had something to do with my lack of a good night's sleep, or the fact that my stomach had grown unaccustomed to dougnuts in its South American sabbatical, but it brought to mind the way I feel sometimes returning home from work when all the windows in the apartment have been shut all day. There's a closed -- cerrado -- quality, if not a smell, to the air.
Airports, I suppose, do physically have something in common with a shut-up apartment, but I had a feeling this feeling was more related to the announcement I'd heard as I was coming through security reminding all travelers that the current security warning level was "orange." For this reason, it was very important that everyone do their part by reporting any suspicious activity or behavior.
Perhaps I've been out of the country too long -- maybe it's all the Spanglish I've been speaking -- but I found it hard upon hearing this to get a clear idea of just how dangerous orange danger really was. Isn't it always a good idea -- common sense, even -- to report suspicious activity or behavior?
The only thing orange made me think of was how someone once told me that the most popular color for decorating doctor's office waiting rooms was orange because orange was a "neutral" color, that in general people have neither strongly positive nor strongly negative feelings toward the color. If this was true, did that make the current security warning level "indifferent"?
Was there some sort of color wheel involved in this system, I wondered, in which orange was more dangerous than yellow (and much more dangerous than purple), but less dangerous than red?
All ROY-G-BIVing aside, it ocurred to me that perhaps a good ole' fashioned numerical scale of 1-10 might provide a clearer reference point and leave less room for confusion. Case in point: While I was walking through the airport, a guy with a bunch of explosives strapped to his body passed me, but I was so caught up in my thoughts about doctors' offices and rainbows that I wasn't able to alert the proper authorities in time before he blew up the whole airport.
That didn't really happen, and I'm not writing to you from beyond the grave. It was just a joke. But as I was putting my shoes back on after going through security, I heard another announcement informing all passengers that any inappropriate jokes would not be taken lightly. And this is why, I think, the Houston aiport evoked my stinky cerrado apartment in the evenings -- though, who knows? Maybe the same kind of announcements are made in the Buenos Aires airport, where it's just easier for me to tune things out.
P.S. You know you've been out of the States too long when you get back and find yourself peeling apart two-ply toilet paper before using it. Because to not do so just seems wasteful...
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