Words
When I was in high school, I had a friend named Ron who could say "I have a very large pencil" in something like 13 different languages. Ron was no savant - this was all he knew in most of those different tongues. We were all so amazed by his skills that no one ever asked the obvious question - why THAT particular statement? Sure, it was high school, and saying that you have a large pencil in French, or Russian, or Swahili was kind of funny. But, where the heck did that come from?
We never found out.
Americans are notorious, even in the midst of undeniable statistical proof that native English-speakers are a shrinking segment of the US population, for pretending like English is the only language worth speaking. All those other dialects are a distraction, and the people who speak anything other than the Mother Tongue are to be regarded with suspicion, at worst, and at best are to be yelled at like cretins in slowly-spoken, over-articulated bursts. "MAY I PLEASE HAVE A FORK WITH THAT!!!???" they scream. "I SAID HOW DO I GET TO THE LOO-VER FROM HERE??!!"
Sure, we know a couple of words or phrases, like my high school buddy did. For most of us, the phrases aren't as inscrutable or as complex as Ron's. We can say "agua," maybe, or "merci." If we travel, we do what everyone does, which is learn how to ask for the bathroom, and if we make friends along the way they teach us to swear. I learned a few choice Persian swear words from Ali, a Galveston department-store co-worker who happened to hail from Iran. Lena and Dimitri taught me some great, coarse Russian language when I was in Siberia, along with the essentials - how to get a 1-dollar bootleg bottle of Stoli from our bus driver, and how to say "I'm going to puke."
We all seem to know a couple of Yiddish words, most likely due to the propensity of many TV writers to include an irascible old Jewish dude in many sitcoms over the years. Most of us know what a gefilte fish is, and we're not thrown off by a casual reference to a tuchus, or even a putz. Bupkis is what you get for that knowledge, though, for the most part. The same goes for Spanish, culled over the years from TV shows, movies, and Pit Bull videos. Most of us know enough to get ourselves beaten senseless if we run into Pit Bull's entourage, but that's about it. I remember my girlfriend's mom proudly boasting that the host at her favorite Mexican restaurant called her "amigo," as though she had gained an insider pass to the world of Latin culture. He, of course, called all of us amigo when we walked in to the restaurant. That's how it goes here. We Americans tend to be inordinately proud of ourselves for some pretty useless stuff, and most of us are about as culturally aware as a stump.
Often, we'll take our knowledge of languages other than our own into a sideways direction, and make up our own words. I always thought that "schmeckus" would be an awesome Yiddish word for a kiss. "C'mere and give Uncle Leo a little schmeckus," someone could say. Another friend was grappling to remember a Spanish slang word for breaking wind, and in futility he coined the term "el Blogante," which made us laugh for many more months than that deserved. Or, better, we'll coin terms that have no national origin. When my daughter was about eight years old, she told me one day that she was "peebalized." She used it in the natural flow of conversation, over and over again, and I eventually came to know that it meant an emotional state that fell somewhere between mildly irritated and really angry. Peebalized is a useful word, one that takes its place in the lexicon out of need. We still use peebalized at our house, with regularity, and we all know what it means.
We don't say it in any other languages, though, and if we're like most folks in America, we never will.
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This week's prompt for LJ Idol is "bupkis."
We never found out.
Americans are notorious, even in the midst of undeniable statistical proof that native English-speakers are a shrinking segment of the US population, for pretending like English is the only language worth speaking. All those other dialects are a distraction, and the people who speak anything other than the Mother Tongue are to be regarded with suspicion, at worst, and at best are to be yelled at like cretins in slowly-spoken, over-articulated bursts. "MAY I PLEASE HAVE A FORK WITH THAT!!!???" they scream. "I SAID HOW DO I GET TO THE LOO-VER FROM HERE??!!"
Sure, we know a couple of words or phrases, like my high school buddy did. For most of us, the phrases aren't as inscrutable or as complex as Ron's. We can say "agua," maybe, or "merci." If we travel, we do what everyone does, which is learn how to ask for the bathroom, and if we make friends along the way they teach us to swear. I learned a few choice Persian swear words from Ali, a Galveston department-store co-worker who happened to hail from Iran. Lena and Dimitri taught me some great, coarse Russian language when I was in Siberia, along with the essentials - how to get a 1-dollar bootleg bottle of Stoli from our bus driver, and how to say "I'm going to puke."
We all seem to know a couple of Yiddish words, most likely due to the propensity of many TV writers to include an irascible old Jewish dude in many sitcoms over the years. Most of us know what a gefilte fish is, and we're not thrown off by a casual reference to a tuchus, or even a putz. Bupkis is what you get for that knowledge, though, for the most part. The same goes for Spanish, culled over the years from TV shows, movies, and Pit Bull videos. Most of us know enough to get ourselves beaten senseless if we run into Pit Bull's entourage, but that's about it. I remember my girlfriend's mom proudly boasting that the host at her favorite Mexican restaurant called her "amigo," as though she had gained an insider pass to the world of Latin culture. He, of course, called all of us amigo when we walked in to the restaurant. That's how it goes here. We Americans tend to be inordinately proud of ourselves for some pretty useless stuff, and most of us are about as culturally aware as a stump.
Often, we'll take our knowledge of languages other than our own into a sideways direction, and make up our own words. I always thought that "schmeckus" would be an awesome Yiddish word for a kiss. "C'mere and give Uncle Leo a little schmeckus," someone could say. Another friend was grappling to remember a Spanish slang word for breaking wind, and in futility he coined the term "el Blogante," which made us laugh for many more months than that deserved. Or, better, we'll coin terms that have no national origin. When my daughter was about eight years old, she told me one day that she was "peebalized." She used it in the natural flow of conversation, over and over again, and I eventually came to know that it meant an emotional state that fell somewhere between mildly irritated and really angry. Peebalized is a useful word, one that takes its place in the lexicon out of need. We still use peebalized at our house, with regularity, and we all know what it means.
We don't say it in any other languages, though, and if we're like most folks in America, we never will.
---
This week's prompt for LJ Idol is "bupkis."