Language(s)
by Janet Berliner
Being multilingual has enriched my life. I had many languages left to learn when my hearing took flight, which saddens me greatly. While I could still learn a new one, I couldn’t do it my way. The easy way.
Language, to me, is music. You hear a new piece of music, with strange and wondrous chords and lyrics, and that’s what it is. A strange, new piece of music. If you listen to it many times and, without angst, let it wash over you, magic happens. You begin to anticipate the chords, to sing the lyrics, to move to the melody.
Language is no different. If you remove your angst and let it approach you, you will suddenly find yourself beginning to understand the meaning of what’s being said. Will you know every word? Doubtless not. But you’ll understand.
Which leads inexorably to the next step. You walk into a café, sit down, and find yourself greeting the waitperson in their language, ordering in their language.
It’s a trip, for them and for you, a neat way to segue into my brother, who is a tour guide in Israel. Well, right now he’s a medic on the front lines, but when he’s not that, he’s a tour guide. His training for that took five years at the University. He speaks nine languages. My mother spoke seven, fluently. I’m the dummy; I only speak five, and not all of them fluently. I wouldn’t try to write in any one of them except English. That’s tough enough for me. When I speak Dutch, for example, I speak like a kindergartner. But I can communicate. In Portugal, I had to point and wave. Did it work? Yes. Pretty much. But it’s not the same.
All of which leads to–well to a lot of things–but the first one is the issue of bilingualism here, in America.
Now here’s the thing. If everyone spoke English the way she should be spake, I’d be all for it. Heck, let’s have bi and tri and quadrilingualism (making those up as I go). Unfortunately, we all know ’tis not so. Not judging by the manuscripts I read on a daily basis for several agents. I
remember one particular author, nice lady, who sent me a manuscript in the early eighties, when I was agenting. The Romance genre had
recently started to blossom, and that’s what hers was. Straight line Romance, no diversions, no sub plots. Her use of language, however, made me cringe. The example I’ve never forgotten is: “She (her heroine) had to go back to square root one.”
I was pleasant to her, but sent her to someone I knew who handled only
Romances.
That “Someone” used the square-root one manuscript, as is, to obtain an eight-book contract. The nice lady has been selling her books within the genre since that time, and not simply one per year.
So what do I know?
Probably not much, but that doesn’t stop me having a strong opinion.
Maybe I’m being too rough, too blunt, too “mean,” but I don’t think so. If you’re trying to write and want to be published in English, the fact that you made a sale despite inferior use of language, doesn’t make it okay, and the fact that English is your second or third or fourth language is irrelevant.
But here’s the real problem. The BIG problem. Many of the readers at publishing houses, the ones who tell their bosses not to bother with our work, don’t have a frigging clue. Yes, some of them are Vassar grads, but others are coffee boys, unschooled and recently promoted. Not only that, don’t count too heavily on the likes of Vassar.
I recently took on a one-on-one editing/teaching job. The book we’re working on is a Civil War novel, the writer someone I taught more than twenty years ago. He’s an extremely bright and well-educated man. As someone educated in the “Colonies,” my focus upon the Americas was minimal (as was any American’s when it came to Africa). I knew next-to-nothing about the Civil War; Americans know as little about the Boer War.
My point?
I choose to learn as much as I can about as much as I can. Most other people (no, not you) don’t necessarily make that choice. I’m Jewish but chose to learn about many religions; I try to read translated books along with the originals (Mein Kampf was a case in point when writing MADAGASCAR MANIFESTO.)
Most people just plain don’t do that, nor do they care about speaking or writing correctly. They’re not taught to do it and they’ve never learned
to care.
Once upon a time, in the long ago and very far away, I was learning English at an all girls’ school called Micklefield. We wore pastel pink dresses. Any style would do, as long as it was pink. Navy blazers and panama hats topped things off. As part of our syllabus, we did a damn fine production of Macbeth. I was all of 8. I understudied Lady Macbeth but was cast as one of the witches. Fine type casting, if you ask me.
Thirty or so years later, my daughter was reading Romeo and Juliet in an advanced lit class at Jr. High in Cupertino, California–the very heart of Silicon Valley. She was required to write a paper and did so, without any help from me. It was definitely a solid A paper, but was given a C-. She
Was mighty upset. Not me. I was livid. I suggested she ask her teacher to explain why he had given her a C. She wouldn’t ask him, so for the first and only time in her schooldays, I marched myself into the classroom.
You’ll love his answer: “She answered the question from the play not from the movie. I showed them all the movie. She should have answered it from that.”
Resisting the urge to strike him dead, I asked: “Mr. Pimplehead. Have you actually read the play?”
“I don’t need to,” he said. “I’ve seen the movie.”
Yes, Friends, he was fired, but most of his clones are not. They’re right there, in the classrooms, teaching generation after generation how not to speak or write or understand the English language.
I have four grandchildren. One of them is reading, another is beginning to sound out words. I write little stories for them, but those won’t be their primary influence, nor will the fact that my daughters speak and write English well (one is a technical editor) and read a great deal. That’s all wonderful, but their greatest influences are bound to be their peers, their teachers, books and televisions.
Unless something changes dramatically in this society, I can only say, G-d help them all.
