Greeklish arose because the Greek alphabet is impossible so Greek words are converted to phonetic equivalents and, presto, Greeklish.
Yesterday morning I was at the market and two women were talking to each other. One of them was the cashier so I listened while I waited. Old people are hardly ever in a hurry.
One of the women was speaking Spanish and the other was replying in English even when both were apparently Hispanic.
I told the cashier I thought it was charming and then she smiled as she said, "Spanglish."
One of my loves is how people communicate and it's especially evident when different languages are being used. Euros have been hip to it forever since most of the world's primary languages originated there. When they meet someone, they may try a register of languages they know with each other until they find a match.
Often that will come to one of them speaking in a Pidgin form of whichever language but it works. There are some ways in which we see the tribal brotherhood since Spaniards and Italians can probably work it out. English and German have many similarities but Dutch was an offshoot which may be incomprehensible to English speakers even while German speakers can generally understand it.
French is one of the Romance languages with Italian and Spanish but unknown if they have any success talking to each other.
Americans don't typically have any experience with that since there's rarely the need. I haven't seen it lately but attempts have been made to make English mandatory. I haven't heard that much lately, tho.
There's some irony in the isolationism since that's resulting in a decline in the language which is seen in large numbers of people since text talk barely works with Americans much less with people from anywhere else.
Ed: you think it's better to mingle the languages?
Much since it means we think when we talk much more about whatever we're saying. And (gasp) it may even yield some pride in your own language for anyone from anywhere since, wtf, that's the one you know best.
There wasn't even a tiny loss in trying and failing to learn Greek or in trying with some success to learn German. It did result in some pride in English since, wtf, I'm good at it but it also lends humility since Cat won't speak German with me because I'm too damn slow. Everything goes around like that and the Big Blue Ball has been giving us that for millennia. In most cases it's magical but in some not so much.
I love the two ladies on the top since they were strangers in a strange land but they learned how to make that work. Anyone can if you have the will for it and I imagine Cadillac Man has become adept at it but I think his Spanish-speaking skills have gone beyond basic nitwit tourist.
The willingness of humans to evolve culturally in this way is, in my view, one of our finest traits. We will naturally try to get along if we can find any way to do that. Only through interference from misanthropic leaders do we come to hate each other and with no valid reason beyond governmental edict.
We've known of gooks, slants, and ragheads but we wouldn't have known a thing if the state hadn't created the problems each time. The people don't want to fight; we just want to watch the Indy 500 and that's my consolation for the inability to pull the Monaco Grand Prix which is probably running right about now but it's a good consolation because Fernando Alonso. Some of you don't know him but others love him.
Yesterday morning I was at the market and two women were talking to each other. One of them was the cashier so I listened while I waited. Old people are hardly ever in a hurry.
One of the women was speaking Spanish and the other was replying in English even when both were apparently Hispanic.
I told the cashier I thought it was charming and then she smiled as she said, "Spanglish."
One of my loves is how people communicate and it's especially evident when different languages are being used. Euros have been hip to it forever since most of the world's primary languages originated there. When they meet someone, they may try a register of languages they know with each other until they find a match.
Often that will come to one of them speaking in a Pidgin form of whichever language but it works. There are some ways in which we see the tribal brotherhood since Spaniards and Italians can probably work it out. English and German have many similarities but Dutch was an offshoot which may be incomprehensible to English speakers even while German speakers can generally understand it.
French is one of the Romance languages with Italian and Spanish but unknown if they have any success talking to each other.
Americans don't typically have any experience with that since there's rarely the need. I haven't seen it lately but attempts have been made to make English mandatory. I haven't heard that much lately, tho.
There's some irony in the isolationism since that's resulting in a decline in the language which is seen in large numbers of people since text talk barely works with Americans much less with people from anywhere else.
Ed: you think it's better to mingle the languages?
Much since it means we think when we talk much more about whatever we're saying. And (gasp) it may even yield some pride in your own language for anyone from anywhere since, wtf, that's the one you know best.
There wasn't even a tiny loss in trying and failing to learn Greek or in trying with some success to learn German. It did result in some pride in English since, wtf, I'm good at it but it also lends humility since Cat won't speak German with me because I'm too damn slow. Everything goes around like that and the Big Blue Ball has been giving us that for millennia. In most cases it's magical but in some not so much.
I love the two ladies on the top since they were strangers in a strange land but they learned how to make that work. Anyone can if you have the will for it and I imagine Cadillac Man has become adept at it but I think his Spanish-speaking skills have gone beyond basic nitwit tourist.
The willingness of humans to evolve culturally in this way is, in my view, one of our finest traits. We will naturally try to get along if we can find any way to do that. Only through interference from misanthropic leaders do we come to hate each other and with no valid reason beyond governmental edict.
We've known of gooks, slants, and ragheads but we wouldn't have known a thing if the state hadn't created the problems each time. The people don't want to fight; we just want to watch the Indy 500 and that's my consolation for the inability to pull the Monaco Grand Prix which is probably running right about now but it's a good consolation because Fernando Alonso. Some of you don't know him but others love him.
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