The
108 bus – Malden Station, Lebanon St. – was a cacophony of idioms this
afternoon, carrying the Dowbrigade and a cohort of working-class
heroes home from the labor wars. I
boarded the bus at the Malden Center stop – Orange Line – and noticed
Don Julio already aboard.
Don Julio is the uncle of a friend of my wife, a 65 year old Peruvian
baker who, faced with an untenable retirement in an unstable economy
teetering on the edge of political chaos, decided to pay an extended
visit to his niece, a pharmacist working as a cook at a Peruvian restaurant
in East Boston.
Don Julio is a thin, quiet man with a shy smile and eyes which speak
more eloquently than his words. He is currently working three jobs: as
a cook in a neighborhood grill, at the carwash over on Rte. 60, when
the weather is good, and helping his niece in cleaning houses, which
is HER second job. She has already bought a nice apartment in Trujillo,
Peru, a charming mid-sized city on the Pacific coast of South America,
known for its pre-Colombian ruins, Colonial architecture and eternal
spring-like climate, and where, coincidentally, the Dowbrigade spent
many years toiling at the National University, teaching Languages and
Linguistics.
These are the people Rush Limbaugh and Jay Severin want to throw out
of the country, at the very least. Both of them are, technically,
here illegally; although they entered the country on legal visas, they
have overstayed them. They pay taxes, do not use social services, and
work harder as a group than anyone else I know. They know, perhaps
more palpably than the native born, the true value of the incredible
land of opportunity Americans have created.
Back where they come from, the people who have the most, work the least. Conversely,
those who are dirt poor have to work from dawn to dusk just to stay alive. Imagine
how mind-blowing and liberating it must be to finally find yourself in
a place where the more you work, the more you earn. Where you can
actually get ahead of the game, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and
save enough money to finally stop working for a few years before you
ring it up.
Anyway, I sat there chatting up Don Julio in Spanish as the 108 pulled
into the plexiglas bus shelter in front of the Super Stop and Shop,
where all the ancient retirees who live
at the
octagonal Salem Towers get aboard with their pathetically meager shopping
bags of pasta, oatmeal and formula.
Seeing as conversation with Don Julio is
punctuated with long contemplative pauses, I had the opportunity to
eavesdrop on
some of the other conversations going on around me.
The human ear is a marvelous instrument. At a cocktail party,
with 50 conversations going on simultaneously all around, a person can
isolate a single pair of voices and filter out all the rest. Not
even the most sophisticated electronic eavesdropping system can do that
as well as the human ear and brain.
In front of us and across the isle, a pair of burly guys in dirty work
clothes, boots, hooded sweatshirts and ruddy, outdoorsy complexions
were talking
loudly in Italian, discussing the various merits and demerits of their
respective unions. One was in the ironworkers union, the other in some
contractors union. I could tell what they were talking about because
every once in a while they would, almost unconsciously, switch
over to English for a sentence or two.
Behind us, 3 or 4 rows back, were two beautiful young Afro-Carribean
women, dressed all in flowery fabrics and bright, flowing colors, conversing
in animated French, of which I understood not a word, despite 4 years
of high-school French, including tutoring, which were needed just to
pass the two years required by any decent college.
The one sitting on the aisle was, at the risk of sounding sexist, stacked. I mean, she had a rack-and-a-half. I tried not to stare. Let me hasten to add that as a happily married middle-aged man, my interest was purely aesthetic.
Across from them were two old Asian ladies, huddled heads together like
they were plotting to overthrow the MBTA and take over the bus system.
They were far enough away and talking quietly enough that I couldn’t
make out what flavor of Asian they were speaking.
For someone who works all day with speakers of English as a second language,
and who believes in the value-added theory of multi-lingual abilities,
it was a refreshing linguistic concerto. It reminded me of
something I had just read about the Tower of Babel.
That particular story has always bothered me more than just about any
of the other Biblical standards. It tells about how God grew jealous
and felt threatened by the towers of Babel fearing
that
the
people
of Babel
(Babylonia)
would
grow so wise, speaking as they did a single language,that they would
someday usurp his power. In an extremely pro-active response, he took
it upon Himself to bust up the party, sow linguistic dissension in the
human
race, and spawn the process which has resulted in over 450 distinct identified
languages today (over half of which are in danger of disappearing in our
lifetimes).
Besides the fact that it presents a vain and insecure God sowing confusion
to preserve his primacy (sorta like the President), the whole concept
that one language is an advantage or solution is, to me, way out of line.
A language encapsulates and mandates a world-view, and I’ve learned anything
over the years its that the world is wide enough for MANY world-views,
which complement rather than contradict each other.
Would the world be better off with a single language? Only if it included
all of the words, sounds, concepts and structures of the 450 existing
languages. Knowing multiple languages allows a person to approach
and solve problems in a variety of ways, to communicate with a wider
variety of people, and to develop alternate personalities and behavior
patterns for different linguistic environments.
So engrossing were these thoughts I almost missed my stop! Still and
all, American mono-lingualism is and will continue to be a problem in
the globalization process.
|
|
