I remember the first day in Barcelona when I was no longer outside the conversations going on around me. It was lunchtime at Out of China, and suddenly I realized I could understand what the people next to me were saying.
The truth is that they weren't saying anything very interesting. Any idea I might have had that the Spanish and Catalans who frequented Out of China were talking about highly sophisticated matters of art, culture, politics or sex went out the window right away. So did the bubble of white noise I was accustomed to walking around in. All that speech that I had sometimes wanted to understand, but often simply wandered through, was now flowing into my mind in a more or less intelligible form.
It was exciting and disappointing at the same time.
Now I often find myself in places with languages of which I will never understand a single word. This is usually pleasant; if I'm able to communicate the basics, and speak with my colleagues, all is well. In fact, it's very peaceful to be floating among people, hearing the music of their speech, but not being involved by it.
Inside English there is no escape. The beauty or ugliness of others' words is not white noise, it seems to come into me through my skin. It can be a refreshing sensation of being able to really understand everything quickly, with all nuances intact, all the humor in original version. It can also be a shock to the system, like hearing just how loud and unpleasant an American soccer fan sounded at our local bar during the World Cup. And he wasn't swearing to nearly the extent I might have been in a different setting.
After almost ten years in Barcelona, I realize that the sheer effort we make to communicate across language and culture has a beauty of its own. Maybe I'm not my full self in Spanish, or in the English I speak with non-native speakers, but maybe I'm my better self, and sometimes I sense the same in others: a softer tone, a more naked approach, a vulnerability that we don't have in our native language spoken at full force...
The truth is that they weren't saying anything very interesting. Any idea I might have had that the Spanish and Catalans who frequented Out of China were talking about highly sophisticated matters of art, culture, politics or sex went out the window right away. So did the bubble of white noise I was accustomed to walking around in. All that speech that I had sometimes wanted to understand, but often simply wandered through, was now flowing into my mind in a more or less intelligible form.
It was exciting and disappointing at the same time.
Now I often find myself in places with languages of which I will never understand a single word. This is usually pleasant; if I'm able to communicate the basics, and speak with my colleagues, all is well. In fact, it's very peaceful to be floating among people, hearing the music of their speech, but not being involved by it.
Inside English there is no escape. The beauty or ugliness of others' words is not white noise, it seems to come into me through my skin. It can be a refreshing sensation of being able to really understand everything quickly, with all nuances intact, all the humor in original version. It can also be a shock to the system, like hearing just how loud and unpleasant an American soccer fan sounded at our local bar during the World Cup. And he wasn't swearing to nearly the extent I might have been in a different setting.
After almost ten years in Barcelona, I realize that the sheer effort we make to communicate across language and culture has a beauty of its own. Maybe I'm not my full self in Spanish, or in the English I speak with non-native speakers, but maybe I'm my better self, and sometimes I sense the same in others: a softer tone, a more naked approach, a vulnerability that we don't have in our native language spoken at full force...
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