On an Aspect of Foreignness

By Hintha - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11570695

Whilst watching the situation in Myanmar, I saw a shot of a hospital ward sign in Burmese, subtitled in English as 'Male Ward'. The Burmese alphabet reminds me of bubble clusters settling on the page (or the sturdier medium of signage...) - there's something light and beautiful about it, yet a sense of purpose and tangibility the same as any other writing system. In the middle of the scene of devastation I was watching, the particular likes of which we don't see happen in 'the west', it felt odd to me to see this little translation, this bit of recognisable English.



http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Airport+Sign/Clive+Owen+Airport+Germany/ZLZz4J8sBoz

I got thinking of airports. I've been lucky enough to get abroad a couple of times in the last few years, and by and large, English has drawn these spaces together, on signage and often in dialogue, too. Obviously there are benefits. It's nice to be able to be understood when you 'don't have the words', but I feel guilty because I know why English has this status, and when I'm in a different country, I want to show respect by speaking the native language, and having English spoken back to me tends to smother the moment. It's no 'biggie', but it leaves me pondering the nature of foreignness. When language is so essential to identity, and to deeper concerns surrounding 'reality', its use impacts heavily upon one's experience - in short, one feels, in a way, like one is not 'properly abroad'. One feels as if the body has moved, but the mind isn't sure if it has kept up. Something like that...

Anyways, here comes the turn. The 'interesting bit', if I may be so bold as to say. I was recently booking some tickets from a French website. French happens to be the language I am most fluent in, after my mother tongue. However, the verbs alone in the usually habitual process of online shopping were alien to me. My school-taught stuff didn't cover the essential units of what I was grappling with. I made a couple of educated guesses, based on what I thought would be the etymologies of the unfamiliar words, because it's reasonable to think that a word that looks very similar to one you know would have a similar meaning, right? Well, after checking with a translator (and a good friend of mine who's a language whizz), I found out I was wrong with most of my attempts.

There were three phrases I stumbled on quite badly. "Ajouter au panier" was the first. I thought it meant 'return to something'. I was confident of 'ajouter', but didn't know what 'panier' meant. It turns out 'ajouter' means 'to add' - so I was wrong on that - and 'panier' is 'basket'. As someone who has grown up around bike enthusiasts, I should have known this, as it's so similar to 'panniers' - only one letter away, indeed - the bags bikers use on the back of their behicles. Second phrase was "je continue mes achats." If I'd thought about this a bit more straightforwardly, the 'je continue' bit must mean 'I am continuing', and I knew 'achats' must be my purchases ('acheter' means 'to buy'). Instead, I abstracted it a bit more to mean 'continue to payment', which is a perfectly normal thing to expect, so much so that I ignored linguistic logic - at my peril! The last thing was 'terminer ma commande'. 'Terminer', I thought, was 'terminate' in the sense of 'get rid of', y'know, 'delete', but in many contexts in English, even, 'terminate' means 'complete' - to terminate an order, or a train terminating at its destination. Let's just say, I didn't want to risk clicking this until I was absolutely sure what I was doing.

It was all a little bit scary. For all I knew, I could've been clicking on the 'charge me a million Euros for a can of French fog' button ('me chargez un million d'euros pour une canette de brouillard français', in case you ever need to know). It was frustrating, too, especially when I thought I knew what I was reading, but the things I was clicking took me to the 'wrong' part of the website. I was blaming technology before I began to think that I might have got it wrong. Also, contrarily, it was fun.

Finally - foreignness!

Irony o'Clock

'Time'

I was recently lucky
enough to go to Italy to one of my friends' weddings. It was a lovely time, and if you're friends with me on Facebook then you can have a gander at some of the pics I took. The purpose of today's post, tho, is to look at what went on during my connection at Munich.

I had about an hour in Munich to spend before my regional flight to Trieste, so didn't feel I needed to hurry. Almost straight out of the arrivals gate, I saw this wonderful wall (not a Wonder Wall, I hasten to add), pictured above, in front of me. I sort of smirked and thought, 'hey, language... That's one of my main interests,' and carried on walking. Then I realised that I was looking at words to do with time, and time is one of my biggest preoccupations, too, so I stopped, went back, and took the photo.

Just out of shot (to the Zeit), was (is?) a wee entry hole, a doorway without the door. I nearly walked off again, because this white-walled area looked like a security station. I got a bit bold, tho, and thought 'well the worst that can happen is that I get looked at oddly by some airport staff, and maybe asked what I'm doing and/or told to piss off', but the possibility of being rewarded by embracing the spirit of adventure, which I am so often too scared/unable to do, spoke louder to me. So I edged my way towards this entrance-to-what, and, without wishing to spin this out to ridiculous levels, saw that what was inside was actually an exhibit.

I was genuinely very excited. As I've said, it was ticking two of my main interest boxes, but also there was the thrill of living in the moment, listening to my gut, and being lucky enough to have this mini-museum there for perusal in what I thought was just going to be a grey old run from gate to gate. To your left - as you went in - there were three mini sand-timers that you could spin round, and I took the opportunity to 'childishly' interact with what was on offer, and watch their contents trickle.

I was still aware, however, that I couldn't spend all day here. I wasn't sure if I needed to get my bags back at Munich, then check them in again. I wasn't sure how big the airport was, how long it'd take me to find where I needed to be, or how big the queues would be around the place. When I thought about it like that, panic revved its motorcycle in the garage of my gut, so I decided to take pictures of all the info boards and read them later. As I turned my camera on and waited for it to warm up, I read the first line of the introductory panel. It outlined the broad strokes of 'the' philosophy of time. I got that pre-tingle one gets when one feels horny and has decided what porn one is going to watch - and I couldn't wait to get to the money shot.

I readied my camera, and was about to focus the first shot, when an airport employee stuck his head through the entrance, said something in German, saw my blank expression, then said in English "Sorry, we are closing."

He apologised again and escorted me out.