Fiddly doodly
Re-reading yesterday’s blahg entry, I was musing about languages. Growing up in my little northern yooperland city, everyone I talked to spoke English like I did. There were undoubtedly some grandparents and parents of the kids I knew who had varying degrees of competence ranging from a bit of an accent to not at all. I’m mainly talking about people who spoke European languages for this post. I’m leaving thoughts about the Native Americans in the area and their languages out of this particular post. It’s important but beyond the scope of this post.
It wasn’t until I began my checkered series of “careers” here on the Planet Ann Arbor that I banged up against people who were not always easy for me to understand. Especially my current career in which I work with a number of people in or from India. “She’s talking to Indi-uh”, I heard The Grinch tell another cousin (in a British-type accent) outside the Lyme Lounge one day when I was working at the moominbeach. Yup. I was on the “phone” with iDeep. Fluent English with a light accent and *extremely* fluent written English. Oxford comma discussions, anyone?
Make no mistake! I fully realize that some of my co-workers probably have trouble understanding my high-energy fast-talking English. A combo of yooperland and Northern Cities Vowel Shift (google it). So it goes both ways. I am capable of slowing down and I do. I mean, if I have questions, I’m not gonna get answers if nobody can understand my gabblety gabblety.
When I was 10 and my brother was seven, our parents took us on a trip around Lake Superior. A trivia note: this was before there was a bridge to Canananada so we rode the ferry to get across the St. Marys river to start our trip.
We stopped at a rest area somewhere up King’s Highway 17 North and my brother made friends with a little girl around his age in the parking lot. He was speaking English. She was speaking French. The Commander asked him how they were talking to each other using different languages. His answer was something like, “You just have to put your mouth a different way.” Which is undoubtedly not un-true. But.
The only spoken language I know is English. When people ask me what languages I know (which they rarely do), I always answer “FORTRAN”. Some people still know what FORTRAN is. My kids both know Spanish. One of my kids is actually pretty talented at languages. She took both French and Spanish in high school and learned some Wolof when she did study abroad in Dakar.
Finally, that fiddle-head is in Hawaii. The title: I used to sometimes tell my kids to “stop fiddly-doodling around and getcher [damn] boots on.” Or whatever it was I wanted them to do. I’m sure they HATED when I said that.
April 3rd, 2025 at 7:41 pm
I wish my daughters had done more with their languages. Ashley spoke French and Wolof and Alison Spanish but they haven’t continued with it. I have French plus a small command of Spanish and German. And Pig Latin.