Uvatiarru

Half of the world speaks one of only 20 languages as a native tongue. With the dominance of English in the digital realm, we're on track to even more language concentration.

I have always thought of language diversity as important for transmitting unique ways of viewing the world. For example, Canadian Inuit use the same word for "past" and "future": uvatiarru. This raises many interesting philosophical questions. (I learned that it the book New Slow City (2014) by William Powers.) But after reading the piece "A Loss for Words" by Judith Thurman in the March 30th issue of the New Yorker, I began to think of language diversity as a rights issue.

Thurman discusses forced assimilation of First Nation and native American school children - depriving them of the possibility to learn in their native languages - as a violation of rights. This was widespread practice in the U.S. and Canada, even after Mohawk Indians built Manhattan's skyscrapers, and the Navajo language - impossible for the Germans to decode - helped to decide the outcome of the Second World War.

There are 800 endangered languages in the world according to Thurman  - and NYC has a higher concentration of them than any other place in the world. What can we do to right past wrongs?

Thurman tells an inspiring story of Keyuk, a young man who taught himself Selk'nam, the language of his mother's ancestors, of which there were no know speakers. (He used recordings by anthropologist Anne Chapman from 40 years ago and written records - mainly translations of scripture - from missionaries.) Once he mastered the language, he found an elderly woman in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America who understood him and in fact did know Selk'nam, but had deactivated her knowledge of it. A few days after their encounter, she passed away, as if she had been waiting for that final, authentic connection to her past.

Uvatiarru. The past is the future.

Linguistic Pilferage - Part II

Another installation of my favorite German words. Try them out!

Betreffs-faul  (adj.) - Too lazy to adjust the subject header of an e-mail when the content of the conversation changes. Subject-slackerish.

Rhabarber-Blatt-Öhrchen (n.) - The rhubarb-leaf-like ears of a person who is obviously eavesdropping.

Fremdscham (n.) - Embarrassment on behalf of a person who is unknowingly brazen, foolish or careless in public. Stranger-shame.

Verschlimmbessern (v.) - Lowering the quality of a project or product through unnecessary meddling. Worsening while wanting to improve. Impworsen.

Eierlegendewollmilchsau (n.) - An egg-laying-wool-milk-sow. Wouldn't it be nice?

Verzettelt (adj.) - Imprisoned by to-do lists. Post-It-noted.

See the original Linguistic Pilferage post.
And more lovely words from other languages.

A Market of Fleas

Yesterday as a first-time vendor at Germany's largest outdoor flea market, I left with a jangling money belt and valuable observations of the human species. When it comes to the way we love, delude and despise ourselves and each other, we are as simply programmed but unpredictable as fleas. Here are three stories about the items we sold or tried to sell and the memorable encounters involving them: 

1. Where a pair of shoes can('t) take you

A heavy-set woman with excess curls wedged tightly around her chin spied a pair of children's eco-sneakers at our stand and began to radiate with desire. Knowing her son was unlikely to wear them, she tried everything she could to rationalize buying them anyway: negotiating on the price, comparing the shoes to other shoes, and consulting a friend. While she was putting off the decision by trying on skirts, another mother arrived with her son at the pile of shoes. They gravitated toward the ones in question, whipped them out of the box, slid them on, purchased, and left with the grace and resolve of rising and falling tides. Feeling the envy of the first mother rip through the asphalt, I wondered what kinds of unfulfilled hopes and dreams those shoes represented for her.

2. The depth of our fear

A former subletter of ours happened to be working as a public servant at the time when Christian Wulff, once a German national figurehead, fell from grace. After Wulff's official portraits were discarded at the Ministry of Finance, our temporary roommate seized the opportunity to leave us a one-of-a-kind legacy. Wulff's steel grey eyes and thin smile solicited hearty laughs in our apartment, but he reigned like a cloud of doom over our flea market stand. Few people saw the irony and fewer still asked how we had come upon such a rarity. No one picked up the portrait to assess the designer gun-metal frame, worth more than any item at our stand. A few even stormed off in a demonstrative huff after making eye contact with Wulff. Our human drive to distance ourselves from our enemies appears to be deeper than our material greed. 

3. The whimsy of our devotion

Dozens of times I vehemently refused to sell a small, sterling silver pill box for under 10 €.

What was it about the woman to whom I sold it for 7 €? Was it her gentle inquiry? Was it her single-minded fascination for that one item? Was I merely attracted to her twisting wrists as she fingered the box? Did I feel pity on her, fantasizing that she was the orphan Anne from Green Gables? 

I just found her simpatico.  

Clubhouse Rulez

"Clear your place at the table." 
"Get a good night's sleep if you want to drive to school." 
Growing up, I wasn't just a fervent rule-abider, I was a rule internalizer.

I like rules. They make sense to me. They make me feel secure. In that sense, I may even be too German for the Germans. 

On the one hand, Germany has a lot of rules. Many are direct: recycle glass bottles before 8 pm;  bikes left, pedestrians right. Others are just strong incentives: if you don't visit the dentist once a year, you'll pay a lot for dental care in the future. Still others are hallowed tradition: a towel at pool-side indicates a radius of undisputed ownership.

For all the rules there are here, however, there is also a lot of resistance to rules, and that can be frustrating for people like me who crave structure, efficiency and agreements that hold. 

In my first shared housing experience, we had a dinner system. Each person cooked one night per week. For me, the convenience of a warm dinner six nights a week vastly outweighed the inconvenience of being tied into cooking for 7 people once per week. When I suggested a similar system in my current shared flat, my flatmate said, "My life already feels too much like one long series of obligations to fulfill." 

At work I try in vain to keep my colleagues from using exclamation marks AND CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis on our website! Not to mention the fight I lost long ago on the usefulness of text styles. I have also been ridiculed for asking people standing under no smoking or no cell phone signs to oblige.

So, where does one go if Germany doesn't offer enough rules? Isn't that like bemoaning the dearth of water in the Caribbean or luxury hotels in Dubai? 

Three paragraphs to explain a ban on climbing up to the roof.

It's not like I am completely out of touch with my inner rebel. I was proud to once be chastised for jaywalking: "Young lady," growled an angry driver, "You are not above the law!" ("Rot gilt auch für Sie, junge Dame!") If I experienced enough outbursts like that, I might muster the courage to do something really radical like ... mow the lawn on Sundays.

Pieces

As an environmentalist, I have always been fascinated by systems and their parts. 

Yesterday's unprecedented 7:1 victory in the semifinals of the World Cup got me thinking. 

To what extent was Brazil's dramatic loss due to its top player Neymar being out of commission (after being fouled and fracturing a lumbar vertebra)? 

Germans, who have a long history of losing to Brazil, were exhilarated by their triumph. 
The whooping and hollering continued long into the night. 

A few conceded feeling a bit unangenehm (lit. uncomfortable, here embarrassed or guilty), given the expectations placed on the Brazilian team as World Cup host.

But suggesting that the absence of Neymar may have been decisive for Germany's win evokes a defensive reaction:

"Brazil has an excellent team, and an excellent team doesn't put all its eggs in one basket."

Even as a soccer Banause (someone with totally crude knowledge), I wager to disagree. 

We live in a risk-taking world in which we are constantly looking for short-cuts. With a superstar athlete on your team, wouldn't it be hard not to - at least subconsciously - use a "get-the-ball-to-so-and-so" strategy? What are the chances that that person would suffer an injury serious enough to keep him off the field?

Furthermore, the morale of the Brazilian team suffered a major blow, even if its cumulative physical capacity hardly dropped. The fans swarming Neymar at the hospital, the death threats to the Colombian player who fouled him: Brazil's collective psyche felt lost without its front man - and sometimes that's all that matters. 

I am surprised that's Neymar's injury didn't overshadow Germany's jubilation more. I suppose athletes often face injuries and this one doesn't make Germany's victory against Brazil artificial. On the other hand, anyone who has ever played KerPlunk knows that taking away one sliver from what looks like a solid nest can result in a loss of all the eggs.

Reflections on Home

The young man seated next to me on the plane from Dulles asks if I'm headed home. We're about to land, and I know he's just making small talk, but I answer, "Not quite sure where home is anymore."

Is home the place I just left, the place where my whole family was gathered over the past few days? Or is home the place I am about to be met with bursting anticipation and a bouquet of wildflowers?

Is home the bedroom full of my school essays, childhood photographs and all the letters I have ever saved, or the one in which I built a loft with my landlord, the one I painted chartreuse, the one whose four walls free me?

I have lived in the same shared flat for 6 years, longer than my brothers have owned their respective homes - combined. And yet it feels temporary, a step towards I-don't-know-what. Its creative potential enchants me, but I sometimes long for retreat.

My professional persona is German. I never held a serious job, signed a lease or put money into savings anywhere but Deutschland.

I don't speak English or German as fluently as I would like. 

I vote in Virginia, but am out of touch with its politics. 

Referring to the German World Cup team, I slipped and said "we". But I feel most at home ensconced in an intellectual disdain for professional sports.

I feel at home on a bike, in whichever country. The flavors of ginger, maple, mint and garlic ground me, in whatever kitchen.

I feel at home in water or a warm embrace. 

I feel at home in the heavy Virginia humidity, but once every five years might be enough of its summer. 

Bonn welcomed me back with its long, crisp solstice twilight. But as I unpacked my clothes, I delighted in their sweet, damp scent: the smell of muggy mid-Atlantic afternoons before a thunderstorm.

A few of my German friends are so in tune with me I think of them as sisters. But only when I watch my nieces play does our whole family mosaic repeat itself in miniature. 

"I've lived in Germany for eight years, but I am from the States," I explain. 

He seems satisfied.

I wonder if I should have said, "I'm from the States, but I have lived in Germany for eight years," and I let the daydream take the upper hand. 

Listo - Bitte

Who didn't learn in grade school about the "30 different words for snow" that don't exist in your language.

But how often have you been awed by a language for the words that it doesn't offer? 

Here's a tribute to the beauty in simplicity. Why not have fewer words and let those words have multiple meanings?

For example: the distinction between "loan" and "borrow" is superfluous. In Spanish and German the word is the same (ES: prestar, DE: leihen). You just have to ask "Can you loan me..." instead of "Can I borrow..." and wuddyaknow one word less in the dictionary. 

Another example: I never understood why German has two different words for neck: Hals (the front) and Nacken (the nape). It deprives the neck of its right to be a complete whole, the beam that supports the head. This is not only superfluous differentiation but muddling differentiation.

Having fewer words allows words to bring ideas together that belong together. 

The word ensayo in Spanish, for example, doesn't just mean "essay", but practice (e.g. band practice), training and trial (as in "ensayo y error"). If only I had known that while struggling over my ensayos in grade school. No sweat, kid, it's just practice.

I also like that chico in Spanish means both "little" and "child".

Copyright Goethe Institute Chicago                

Take this to an extreme and you get what Mark Twain called "exceedingly useful words". For example, Zug in German. I quote:

"Strictly speaking, Zug means Pull, Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition."

Indeed, he asserts: "That thing which it does not mean, when all its legitimate pennants [prefixes and sufixes] have been hung on, has not been discovered yet."

There is a special category of exceedinly useful words that should be the first thing covered in any foreign language curriculum. They allow for immediate and meaningful interaction with native speakers. 

Take the Spanish word listo, for example. 

The following could be a legitimate conversation:

A: Listo?
B: Listo. 
A: Listo.
B: Listo. 
A: Listo?
B: Listo. 

It means: 

A: What do you think? 
B: Great idea. 
A: Alright.
B: Let's do it.
A: Ready? 
B: Ready. 

Incidentally listo also means clever.