Playing with my three-year-old nephew and my one-and-half-year-old niece, I’m appreciating more and more the nuances of language. My nephew has a wide range of words though I can’t always understand his youthful accent. But I’m learning, the more I play with him. Especially as he’s quick to correct me when I don’t repeat what he’s said the right way or when I misunderstand and reply with something (obviously to him) nonsensical.
The other day, seeing a missed call, I video-called him back and when he answered he looked at me with a serious expression and told me a long sentence with chastisement woven in. I made some vague reply, catching the reprimand while not quite catching his words so my brother, in the background somewhere, had to translate for me. “I called you and you didn’t answer,” he’d said. After I apologized and told my nephew my reason for not having answered, I said, “But I’m calling you now. Is that okay?”
“Okay,” he said, but by his tone I felt he didn’t understand fully my explanation and that I’d somehow broken a part of his heart. Of course, we soon began to play together (over video-call which is always an adventure, “That looks like a shark.” “That’s not a shark, that’s a dolphin.” Which then might have either tried to bite me or give me a kiss through the screen until a dinosaur got involved, then the phone was put down and I mostly got to see the ceiling fan and the edge of a blue bucket and hear the wild chase going on beyond what the phone camera was capturing) and all was forgotten and most likely forgiven. May I not disappoint him again.
While my nephew can talk and knows a lot of words and uses more or less complete sentences and complex thoughts, my niece is a whole other animal of language. She speaks in long, emphatic phrases, motioning, smiling, and sometimes also throwing herself to the ground in a fit of displeasure. Like when the cat sits against her leg and won’t move away. Or when she’s told not to eat dirt. She believes that she’s talking just as well as the rest of us, carrying her part of any conversation. Her incomprehensible language delights me. The way that her tongue touches the back of her teeth, the formation of her vowels, and repetition of consonants makes me think of the Ewok language in the Star Wars movies. She’s as cute and cuddly as an Ewok too (though not as furry) so that makes it all the greater of a joy to be around her. I try to capture her language on video as much as I can because I know this stage will be a fleeting one while also trying to be with both children in the moment, undistracted except for our play.
Being with them has reinforced my appreciation for what a gift language is. The ability to communicate (though how well we do this is always up for debate) is a powerful tool, a choice, a necessity, and sometimes our downfall.
I can see the frustration on my nephew’s face when what he’s saying is not understood and know what that feels like for myself. For over the years, I’ve dabbled in learning several languages and have also tutored English as a second language for a handful of people. I can speak enough Spanish to have conversations but not well enough to express all that I feel or think in the way I would like to be able to. Once when exploring Hamburg with a Russian navigational cadet she told me that English was hard and that speaking it made her feel like a child. And I knew exactly what she meant because I’d felt that way when expressing myself in Spanish. Additionally, I read (barely, just?) enough French to feel that I can (sometimes) catch the gist of what’s going on while simultaneously getting lost in the subtleties and the idioms, but my confidence isn’t as grand as my niece’s, to talk no matter what language comes out or as serious in trial as my nephew’s, to repeat what I’m trying to communicate until it’s understood. With French, I’m only comfortable reading for now. Je ne connais qu’un peu de francais.
The other day, while reading (in English) I stumbled across this bit of dialogue between two characters. One was trying to establish if the other had truly learned an entire language in a day as a legend about him suggested:
“Did you learn the whole language?”
“No. Of course not,” Kvothe said rather testily. “Only a part of it. A large portion to be sure, but I don’t believe you can ever learn all of anything, let alone a language.”
And I paused at that point. Set the book down and stared off into space to think. For though I feel comfortable in my native tongue. Though I help others improve their vocabulary, pronunciation, and grasp of grammar, there is still so much of my own language that I don’t know. That I will never know. Can anyone fully know a language, all of it? For languages change too. Words fall out of style, meanings shift, and new words are adapted, adopted, and created. Whole field-specific vocabularies are outside my scope of knowledge. Still, I was oddly comforted by this dialogue, jealous of the character’s learning ability, and newly thrilled by the reminder of the depths and breadth that languages hold.
Language is malleable and ever-changing. Having an ear to hear and a voice to speak is a gift. Recently my nephew was over and we played our animals up face to face sometimes roaring and saying, “I am going to bite you!” and sometimes saying, “Will you be my friend?”
Later, my nephew playing alone had his dinosaur go from animal to animal asking, “You be my tren?” to which the animals nearly all replied, “Yes, I be your tren.” And that, if nothing else can demonstrate it, is the beauty of language.
*P68 The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
