The following essay has been written by our featured blogger of the week, Karen Walrond.
Here’s a little-known fact about me:
I can speak in tongues. (No, not the Biblical, eyes-roll-to-the-back-of-my-head-listen-to-this-message-from-God kind of tongues – but how cool would that be? I could walk into my local coffee shop, and when things got a bit too quiet, a bit too boring, I’d just “BLAGDADARHOWRIDSAKRHAIHKWKW!!� to shake things up a bit. Come on, that’d be awesome.)
Anyway, I’m talking about my ability to slip into foreign accents. At will. Seriously.
For example, here’s how I would tell a total stranger that a wasp has found itself tangled in her hair in America:
“Oh. My. God. There is this gimongous bee totally freaking out in your hair.�
In England:
“Excuse me, but a wasp seems to have caught itself in your hair.�
And finally, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad:
“Oh-GAD-Oh-GAD-Oh-GAD!! IF YUH SEE DE BIG BOLOKSHUS WAPS IN YUH HE-AIR! OH GAD!�
See?
Okay, perhaps this is difficult to translate in written form, but trust me, I completely sounded like an American, a Brit and a Trini, in that order.
I would love to tell you that this talent was something that I was born with, but in truth, it’s one that I had to develop in order to survive. You see, I’m the daughter of a former oil company executive. For those unfamiliar, this means that like the daughter of a military officer, it was rare that we spent more than 2 years in any given country. And although we moved from English-speaking country to English-speaking country, it was surprising how different “English� was in most of the countries we lived.
The first time I was shocked into realizing that I had to learn to speak in tongues was when I was about 11 years old. By this age, I had spent most of my life in Mayaro, a small fishing village in Trinidad – I sounded Trinidadian, and I had Trinidadian ways. Then one day, my Dad came home to our family, and announced we were moving to Houston, Texas – which, let me tell you, is nothing like a small fishing village in Trinidad.
So off we went. And when I entered my junior high in the Houston suburbs, to say I stood out would be a bit of an understatement. I didn’t look like anyone else, I didn’t dress like anyone else, and Lord knows I didn’t sound like anyone else. But the worst part was when I learned that I actually didn’t speak the same language as everyone else. Within my first week at school, I made my first faux pas.
I was sitting in my English class, writing the essay we’d been assigned – probably entitled “What I Did On My Summer Vacation� or some other such inane topic. Suddenly, I realized that I had made a spelling error. As I would have done in my Trini school, I tapped the shoulder of the kid next to me.
“Excuse me,� I said, as politely and as clearly as I could. “Do you have a rubber?�
The kid next to me, much to my surprise, immediately began choking on his gum. “Wha-WHAT?? You want to know if I have a WHAT?� he asked, looking at me with shock.
“A rubber,� I said, looking back at him like he fell out of a tree. “I made a mistake, so I need a rubber.�
“Oh,� he said, stifling his laughter. “You mean an eraser. Don’t say ‘rubber.’ Someone will give you a condom.� And he handed me his eraser.
I accepted it, smiling back with confusion. I had no idea what a condom was, but I made a mental note anyway. Eraser, not rubber. Got it.
From that point on, I worked on learning American English with gusto. It was a hood of a car, not a bonnet. I didn’t drink lime juice anymore, I drank limeade. And no longer did the monkey have to know which tree to climb, he was required to comprehend what side his bread was buttered on. By the time I graduated law school, I sounded completely American – most people, in fact, assumed I was.
Years later, I moved with my job to England. Again, I naively thought I spoke English – after all, they actually say “rubber�! They say “bonnet�! This was going to be easy!
Then, soon after I arrived, I was speaking with a colleague, discussing a work-related accident.
“Yeah,� I was saying. “The guy died on the job.�
My co-worker snickered. “He died on the job, did he?�
I looked at him blankly. “Yes,� I said, wondering what could possibly be funny about death. These Brits are a cold bunch, I thought to myself. I patiently tried again. “He died on the job.�
He snickered some more. “Karen, in England, ‘on the job’ means ‘having sex.’ Just say ‘he died while working.’�
Oh, for heaven’s sake. And so, I set out to learn British English. Lift, not elevator. Petrol, not gas. And while I unfortunately didn’t perfect my English accent in the eighteen months I lived there, I did become bilingual: people knew I wasn’t English, but they could at least understand what I was saying.
My ability to speak in tongues continues to serve me well. While I was living in London, I managed to pick up an English husband – and when we moved back to Texas, I often had to translate the things he said into American English. And now, we’re back in my homeland of Trinidad, so for ease of conversation, I often convert our words to Trinidadian.
And then, of course, there’s our daughter, Alex. Though she was born in Texas, she’s learning to speak in Trinidad, and has already begun developing a distinctly Trini accent. “Wo-tah,� she says for water. She likes to go for a seabath. “Oh geed,� she says, when she finds something distasteful. This is cool with me. After all, Trini is my first language.
What I struggle with, however, is how to speak toddler.
read more by Karen at Chookooloonks
Ah, love. I remember what “love� used to mean. Back in the olden days, about 2 years B.C. (“Before Child�), for my husband and I “love� used to mean spending all day in bed. Getting drunk on a bottle of port in front of a roaring fire late into the evening. Leaping around the room and dancing naked and to “The Humpty Dance� blaring from stereo speakers in the middle of the night (DO. NOT. ASK.) Love was all about spontaneity. And romance. And just-the-two-of-us.