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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1995-10-04, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1995. PAGE 5. Mulroney. That's talking dirty "By hard, honest labour I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved them down till the average is three and a half letters long. I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same money for city." Mark Twain "The present age shrinks from precision and understands only soft, wooly words which really have no particular meaning, like 'cultural heritage' or 'the exigent dictates of modern traffic needs' ". Flann O'Brien Forget the loonie. Forget the Yankee dollar and the Swiss Franc and the German Deutschemark. The only system of currency with any real value is the one we all carry around in our heads. Language. Which is made up of pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters that we call words. Words from one language don't always play harmonically in another. Bob Dylan sang that Spanish is a loving tongue, but to French purists, it is the language of washerwomen. Most Anglophones find the sound of German guttural and unpleasant. Life's little moments I am fully aware of the fact that journalists like to leave the impression that they are always fully in charge of any situation, never at a loss for words and gifted with an immense quantity of savoir-faire which they have had ever since they entered kindergarten. I want to dispel that idea once and for all; such images as I have listed above are to a considerable degree on their wish list and what better place to start than with myself. I have had my moment of embarrassment, total loss of words and the intense desire to find any crack into which I could crawl. One such occasion was the time I was at the Polish-Russian border. I had driven there in a brand-new Renault Dauphine, France's answer to the Volkswagen, and I was sitting in the waiting room waiting for the Russians to check both my car and my passport to make sure that I was not James Bond in disguise. In came an officious guard and asked in a loud voice who owned the Renault bus outside. Never having had my car equated to a bus, I remained silent while he repeated the question. One question led to another and it became apparent that it was my car, after all, that he was referring to. He claimed that he had said car: I knew that he had not, but are you ever going to tell a Russian official he is wrong when you are on his territory? I got berated in front of everybody; the only good thing about it was that it was in Russian and none of the others waiting with me could understand what was said. To them it certainly sounded dangerous and they looked at me as a potential spy with whom they should not associate with in any way. Having lost the argument, I kept a I'm not sure how Germans would describe the noise we English speakers make, but 'barbaric' would probably cover it. Makes you wander if there could ever be a universal language, pleasing to all ears. A half a century ago, a Norwegian author by the name of Agnar Mykle wrote a book called Song of The Red Ruby. In it, he fantasized about creating the perfect two- word introduction between a man and a woman. The man would look at the woman and murmur "Tananarivo?" And the woman, if she was available and interested, would whisper back "Atacama". "Just two words" wrote Mykle, "would be enough to give happiness and smiling freedom to all mankind." Unfortunately, in the nasty Nineties, any guy walking up to a strange woman and muttering "Tananarivo?" is liable to earn himself two rather different words. Some words are almost universal. 'Mama' is virtually identical in all the Romance languages. A psychologist at New York University claims that the nonsense word 'juvalamu' is intensely pleasing to just about everybody, while the word 'chakaka' is horrible to the ears of English-speakers. Isn't there a rock group called Chakaka? If not, there will be soon. You don't have to be a poet to know that the English language is full of beautiful remarkably low profile for the next day or so, even though they eventually let me in. I was sitting at a road-side cafe near Rome with a Swiss friend of mine enjoying a cool drink. A few Italians at the next table were horsing around and some water got flung a couple of times in our direction. The third time I got annoyed and commented to my friend in German that these Italians were magnificent examples of the south end of horses going north (I didn't phrase it quite so elegantly). They were Italians, all right, but they were from a place close to the Australian border and they spoke German as well as they did Italian. They took exception to my comments and in no time at all were over beside me threatening to draw and quarter me on the spot. I was caught off guard; I really didn't know what to say. My friend didn't want anything to do with me; it was he who was looking for the crack. I finally had to back down; the only consolation was that there was no more water heaved in my direction. However at the time I wondered why it was that, when I came out on the short end, I always seemed to have an audience. Once in Spain when I was taking a train trip I got the bright idea of ignoring the questions of a Spanish policeman who was checking passports on the train. I thought it would be fun to pretend that I spoke no Spanish and see how far I could take it. My fellow passengers, all Spaniards, sat there in stunned silence, since I had been speaking fluent Spanish with them only a few minutes before. The policeman finally gave me back my passport and, as soon as he was gone, I literally got hell from the rest of the passengers for trying such a stunt. They told me in no uncertain terms that, in a police words. 'Flange' is one of my favourites. I also like 'quiver'. Somebody once asked American linguist Wilfred J. Funk for his opinion on beautiful English words. He responded with a list of 10: Chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring and tranquil. As for ugly words, well, English has those too. A few years ago, members of the National Association of Teachers of Speech came up with a list of the 10 ugliest words in our language. The nominations are: cacophony, crunch, flatulent, gripe, jazz, phlegmatic, plump, plutocrat, sap and treachery. All of which makes me suspect the NATS suffers from pickle implantation in an anatomical region suffering from negligible sunshine — what's so ugly about jazz? Or plump? Or even treachery, for that matter? You want ugly? How about 'victuals'? Try 'flak'. Or 'glottis'. Or 'kibosh'. Of course, I have an unfair advantage over the National Association of Teachers of Speech. NATS is an American organization, whereas I am Canadian. We Canucks know the true meaning of ugly words. Didn't we give the world a brand new word that sets a whole new standard for foul mouthing? Mulroney. Now that's talking dirty. state one did not fool around with the secret police. He could just as easily have hauled me out for further questioning. They were right: I had lived there long enough to know better. I just got carried away, but I never did it again. Now for something a little lighter. There was a time in my married life when my wife decided that we would not travel on the same plane just in case it crashed and our children found themselves parentless. So it was that on a business trip which I had to take to Atlanta, she had been invited by the wife of my client there. While I flew London, Cleveland and Atlanta, she got there by way of Toronto and Pittsburg. She was suffering a bit of tendonitis in one arm and I agreed to take all the luggage with me. Her suitcase was one of those sky-blue pink creations that defied description and when I proceeded to go through American customs in Cleveland with the two bags, the official took a look at the bag, then at me and asked me to open the pink one. You can guess what he found! He looked at all this dainty female clothing and, in a loud voice, exclaimed, "You are not one of those people, are you? Of course there was the usual considerable audience, all looking at me and wondering what I looked like in a dress. I tried to explain to the official how it was that I came to be carrying my wife's baggage. He listened and all he said was, "O.K. I'll believe you this time." I got out of the customs room with the utmost speed just hoping that there was nobody there that was going to take the Atlanta flight and spot me again. I presume that you have all had your moments when travelling but now you can rest assured that even seasoned travellers such as I, have our moments too. In spades! The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp Gifts so precious It's long been a concern in most small communities these days; thatiof keeping their youth there after they finish school. After receiving their education, frequently, many young adults leave for what they hope will be greater job opportunities in the greener pastures of the urban market. Definitely a modem problem. In Brussels, however, it seems too often of late, the community has not been given that option. It was 1976 when I moved my young family to this close-knit community, which quickly wrapped us in its small town security banket. Its peacefulness, its friendliness provided a protective aura in which to bring up childen. Sadly, though, I have come to learn that even the shelter of small town existence can't keep you safe. In the close to 20 years that I have lived here, several young people I have come to know, have been taken senselessly and tragically. Parents are only human. Our kids can frustrate us and we may at times take them for granted. But our greatest fear is of losing them. When our babies are born we live with the knowledge that they are a blessing on loan to us. We live with the shadow of an underlying fear that they might be ripped out of our lives in a breath. When they're little we worry that they may be hit by a car or fall prey to some psychotic predator. When they reach adolescence, we worry when they're out too late. We worry about who they are with and what they are doing. Though we can't let it consume us, it sneaks into out thoughts unsettling our sense of security, of invincibility. When our children become young adults it is almost with a sigh of relief on our part. Now responsible, having lost some of the careless abandon of youth, we relax somewhat. They fly from under our wings to start their flight of independence, sometimes far away, establishing their own homes and careers. It is a sadness that comes with satisfaction. Then when we least expect it we are brutally reminded that this tenuous grip on life's line can be let go at any time. Last week another Brussels youth lost his life. It was a misstep, a moment in time that you wish with all your heart could be taken back and done again. And while his family had to cope with this tremendous loss, his younger brother lay critically injured in a London hospital. Though the support and love of a community goes out to them, though as parents the rest of us try to imagine their pain and extend our sympathies, we can not, and pray never to, fully comprehend. It matters not how old the child. The loss of a baby, a son, a daughter is a grief that has no equal. My 94-year-old great-aunt lost her only son to cancer recently. She has lived a long time and come to accept much, but the death of her 'baby', now 64 was beyond tolerance. The lives we have created are more than precious, far too much to ever take for granted. What's important is not whether their rooms are clean. It's not about whether they become everything we think they should be, whether they leave us, but rather that we have them to talk to, to hug, and do those very things every day, every time we can. Arthur Black International Scene