Holiday Greetings everyone. I am still getting back on my feet after experiencing the network issue which eventually degraded to an all out rebuild of my system(s). I am still experiencing an annoying problem with my FTPs into GoDaddy. I am not sure if it is a Satellite Internet problem or an incompatibility on the GoDaddy side. Unfortunately, this is limiting my ability to upload images, but I hope to have this resolved soon. In the meantime, I thought I would share some recent observations on the language front.
The other day, I was in Best Buy looking at some laptops they had on sale. For some reason my hearing attention was instantly drawn to a lady employee assisting another couple out. I honestly do not know what the actually conversation was about, but what struck me immediately was her comment “Oh, you wanted to check out the mouses as well”. Before we go any further, I will quickly put a disclaimer that I am not the most English language versed individual out here and if you read many of my posts, I do make some grammar and spelling mistakes from time to time. This is likely a result of choosing physics and computers over English in college. I did have a number of electives in English Literature which I enjoyed tremendously, but in an elective and non-career situation only. I actually asked my wife if she heard the same quote and she actually asked if I was referring to the mouses.
Unable to make a decision regarding the laptop, we headed for home only to turn around again to quickly purchase a gaming console HDMI cable at Target. I finally found what I needed and was putting my my item on the checkout counter when I hear “Where he now”. That officially makes two language errors in different stores within the same hour. I can just imagine how this would go in the texting crazed world – “O U wantd 2 chck/o mouss” and “? he nw”.
On my way home I tried to understand if this was a global phenomenon or whether I was more sensitive to it that night. It then occurred to me that there was probably a catalyst to all of this based on an observation that happened a couple of weeks ago. I was coming back from reserving a Wii Fit and passing through the Alta residential area. In one of the driveways, there was a large white pickup truck sitting in a driveway just off the road. The back of the truck had giant white letters that spelled “You’re In America Speak English” (I was going too fast to verify the punctuation). Interesting, here was an individual that was extremely sensitive to non-English conversations – so much in fact he needed to announce it to anyone he drove past. I almost doubled back to get a picture, but decided it was too cold to be wasting time. The part I found ironic was the very next day we were invited to a coworkers house for a late lunch/early dinner gathering. These people live no more than 2 blocks from where the truck was sitting and are on assignment our European facility. The guy I work with speaks fluent French, Portuguese and English (probably more as well) and his wife speaks French, Portuguese and a good amount of English. They also had some friends over to share the event. For the record, he was from Wisconsin and spoke Portuguese and was working on learning French for a new assignment overseas. I believe his wife was from Brazil and spoke fluent Portuguese and English (also working on learning French). We had an absolutely wonderful time and at various times we heard both French and Portuguese depending on who was communicating to who or if some clarification was needed regarding a translation or explanation of a particular experience. What was astonishing was how well they had grasped a fairly difficult (strange rules yet by their experience basic on the verb/subject combination) language. I would bet that they could give the truck owner a run for his money on any language skills competition and even knew to keep the tricky ‘s’ at the end of multiple deer.
In summary, I think I was more attentive to the spoken word having seen the truck visual and having recently experienced a multilingual dinner. It is more likely that Americans need to spend a little bit more time listening in class and a little less time worrying about losing our national language. If we cannot use it correctly, how can we expect others to willingly adopt it? What was probably the most disappointing aspect was the fact my 3 years toiling away in Spanish class did not provide any help at dinner.
Ciao!
Life Intrigued 