English

By BEN OLSON/for The Herald  —  My wife has been busy learning to speak Spanish this winter, with hopes that this will increase her chances of going on a vacation where the language is spoken. I spent much time in my younger days cavorting south of the border, with a very minimal grasp of the lingo. My four go-to phrases were, “How much does this cost,” “A beer for me, please,” “Where is the bathroom,” and “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.”

I’ll let you in on a little secret. They have a different word for everything, and if they do have a word that’s the same as ours, they pronounce it their own special way. There is an old joke that goes something like this: What do you call a person who speaks only one language? An American. Sad, but it’s true, for the most part. 

Next time you’re on the phone with a call specialist who has an accent, remember that they speak their own language fluently and speak English well enough to have a job taking care of technical problems. They may be hard to understand, but their vocabulary and grasp of the English language matches most college grads in the U.S.

Speaking of hard to understand, take a trip to any English speaking country that is not on the North American continent and try to decipher what they’re saying. Idioms, cadence and local accents will stand in the way of catching much of what they’re trying to tell you. 

On my first trip to England, I went into a London pub to get my bearings. The bloke next to me was most jovial and went on at great length to get me caught up with the local news. Although I knew he was speaking the same language as me, I understood nothing. After a couple of days of hearing how people talk, you start to know how to listen. Then you go to another part of the country and you have to start all over again.

Here in the U.S., we all think that the way we talk is the correct way to talk, and that, as you travel about, people in other regions have accents. The perfect English that I spoke in Wisconsin growing up started to sound a little funny when spoken by the farm people in western Minnesota or the Dakotas. Chicago was only 200 miles away but they seemed to have a different way of saying everything.

Encountering a Texas twang, an Alabama drawl or a Yankee dialect conjured up images of grade school teachers speaking in that same manner to their students. Here in Oregon, I noticed a phrase that seemed odd at first. When I bade someone to “Have a nice day”, the reply, “you, as well” sounded too formal, but I’ve learned to embrace the expression.

It is truly an amazing thought that English, which has only been spoken in its present form for about 500 years, by a small group of people on an island off the European coast is now the most spoken language on the planet, possibly the universe. It is hard to know how many Klingon or Ferengi speakers are really out there. 

Although there are 400 million native English speakers scattered around the globe, another billion people speak English as their second language. This makes it a lot easier on us Americans as we travel about. English is the official language in 59 countries, including India, where only 10% of the population speaks the language. Ironically English is not the official language here in the United States.