On language

A rant I wrote in the pre-blog era, recently transformed into a reflection...enjoy

Language is a funny thing. Simply changing from one language to another can change the meaning of a sentence entirely. French, for example, is often referred to as the language of love. Supposedly you could describe, in graphic detail, the art of making haggis and as long as it was in French you could make almost anybody run red hot. On the other hand there is no language that conveys anger better than German. Had Hitler and the Nazis been speaking Swahili they would never had been able to pull off half the stuff that they did, if for no other reason than because very few Germans can speak Swahili!

I've been thinking about language recently because I was awoken at seven one Saturday morning by two men standing in front of my building arguing in Mandarin. Allow me to emphasize this; at seven on a Saturday morning, a random sidewalk in front on a non-descript Milwaukee apartment building became the scene for a pitched battle of wills for two men from the middle kingdom. Had I been capible of emotions at this point in the morning surprise would have definitely been at the top of the list.

At first I thought I was dreaming, perhaps flashing back to some time when I actually was in China. Next the thought occurred to me that this was the dog that lived with the morons across the street. This dog (for a slight tangent) cannot breathe without barking at decibel levels on par with a landing DC-9. The 4 people who live in this house, whose combined I.Q. maxes out at 86, like to let said canine out frequently (I wouldn’t want it in the house either) most often at 3:30 in the morning. I thought perhaps my brain was so sick of that damn mutt that it had, on a subconscious level converted his utterings into something, anything else! Thirdly and finally, with the cobwebs starting to clear and thought returning to my head, I begin to ask the obvious question JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON DOWN THERE!!!

I leap out of bed cursing my god of the month "Damn you Ra" I cried as I stumbled towards the bookcase. I pulled off my well-worn Lonely Planet China guide and quickly flipped to the language section in the back looking for "shut up", "fuck off", or anything disparaging about their mothers. Alas the guidebook's language section is cleaner than a Mormon prayer meeting. I could have shouted "one ticket to Xi'an please" or "do you have an English menu?" But that just didn't fit the mood. I also looked for "your personal squabble is a sign of western decadence and is inconsistent with the socialist policies of ChairmanMao!" On all counts Lonely Planet failed me, and if you don't have the little red book handy to wave that last phrase is pretty much meaningless anyway.

I rushed to the window to appraise the situation thinking of objects I could throw at the pair, to find only one Chinese person standing below me. He was on a cell phone having a very animated conversation. Now anything sounds animated when you say it in Mandarin. The Chinese appear to be a perpetually pissed-off people, and their language reflects this. Asking directions to the theater sounds like a declaration of war when you say it in Mandarin. Either way weather this guy standing on my sidewalk was talking about how to bake a cake, or how to invade Taiwan, whoever he was talking to was obviously not winning because this schmuck did not come up for a breath of air the entire time. This messed with my plans because there was no sleeping with him below my window and I had iron-clad plans to stay in bed until at least 10:45. This guy had to go!

Just as I was putting on clothes to go down and confront him, he hung up his phone and walked away. Depriving me of the confrontation I had, by this point, so richly deserved. realizing this meant I could sleep again, I conceded defeat and crawled back into bed. Where just before I drifted off to sleep once more, that goddamn dog. Ra curse thee...