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My marriage to language began with Sister Maxentia of the Blood of the Crown of Thorns in second grade. She was extremely old and extremely fat. Her black and blue gowns and veils added to her size and the giant sail boat like starched linen on her head accentuated her age. This white headpiece itself was also veiled and draped in blue. Given my knowledge of age now, she was probably in her late nineties and despite her frequent dozing she managed to control over 100 second graders.

Sometimes if she slept too long we took it upon ourselves to wake her from slumber especially when she snored. Her size, age, or disability prevented her from easily removing herself and her garments from the chair. The males always were seated in front of the girls and it fell upon the four boys closest to her to assist her when she wanted to stand or move. My surname begins with B and I was usually one of the four. Two would take a hand and two would go behind and push parts and draperies until she was up. She always stood to teach us diagramming of sentences and this Sister of the Order of the Most Perpetual Pain and Agony of Jesus on the Cross sparked my love affair with language, languages, all language, spoken, written, prose, verse, and structure; a love of words and why they are.

The faculty at St. Azarius the Beheaded Roman Catholic Children’s School dedicated themselves to language in all its forms. In third grade I was introduced to Latin and in fourth grade to German. In fifth it was Italian and by then I saw and heard the connections of language and languages.

Nary a day has gone by that I have not researched or investigated or at least questioned some word or its origin. I have observed that like people or even nature, the languages of the world are more connected than they are not. Even “dead” languages are connected to the words on this page.

In college it was more than natural I majored in English language and its uses, and the history of the words became my hobby. I continued studying foreign languages as well although few languages are foreign to me, I always thought. After college I flew the world as a flight attendant thus sharpening my skills at learning new languages or new words in known languages. I also used my free time to dabble and learn of little used dialects. Some of these are so removed from the parent they constitute an independent language from the parent, Sicilian an example of a child emancipated from its Italian parent.

People have scant knowledge of the intricacies and reasons of language. By virtue of standing upright man connected the larynx to the lungs. The good part of this change is the ability to speak because words come from controlled movement of air but the bad part is man is one of few creatures able to suffocate by something lodged in the windpipe. That is why a dog can bark with his mouth full of food and we risk choking to death. While that biological knowledge might be known, most people are surprised when I say language originated from grunts and groans; thus most of our basic need words, regardless of the language, are one syllable having been born of a simple sound. You, me, they, and them, eat, drink, food, talk, walk, run, jump, and fall; help, hurt, heal, and pray; he, she, him, and her; book, look, took, crook, and cook; fear, fire, fail and no, yes, sure, when, how, what, where, and who; fat, thin, old, young, live, dead, sleep, bed, brain, think, eye, ear, nose, mouth, and teeth. Most of our daily speak is in one syllables.

Sometimes people are surprised to hear that languages like Hawaiian still exist and are actually spoken. Some know not that Tagalog is the official language of the Philippines, this having evolved from a “pidgin” language over many centuries. Pidgin means a language started as a bastard language and becoming common but unique to be a language of its own. The word “pidgin” has its origins from the word “business.” English colonists referred to native speakers whose pronunciation of “business” sounded like “pidgin.”

Language so engages me that I read every cereal box or ketchup bottle top to bottom. While language might be my bride, my mistress is electronics so instruction booklets and manuals are often my bedside reading, be it a one page insert on inserting batteries or a sixty page DVD manual.

With the plethora (which is the origin of our plenty, fill, full, and plentiful) of electronics and their distribution worldwide, a favored pastime of mine is to search through an electronic manual and program the item into the various languages offered via the menu. While people enlist me almost daily to program their set tops or recorders or even their cell phones, I frustrate them by leaving them with the menus in French or Italian.

I have noticed that in the last few years the amount of language choices has grown particularly in the area of DVDs which by their nature allow so much information to be stored on them that an obvious element would be a variety of languages for subtitles packaged in the same box. It might be a small world but for film makers it is quite complex and logic mandates the more languages on the DVD the more it will sell and with small cost to the maker by adding the extra languages.

Languages like Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, French, Portuguese, and Greek are pretty standard. I recently noticed that some less familiar languages have cropped up like Swedish, Albanian, Swahili, Arabic, Polish, Japanese, Icelandic, and Hungarian. Some people might think these languages are either not often spoken or their speakers also comprehend English, but nevertheless I have watched their proliferation and availability.

When I purchased my newest Sony DVD player, I noticed two pages were dedicated to the languages and the codes the unit contained. The book explains that if the DVD offers the language it must be properly coded into the player since only the most common languages are already set within the chip.

Perhaps I missed Sister Maxentia’s lesson on pride because I did indeed pride myself on my knowledge of world language but Sony has humbled me into shame. Beyond the languages of I have mentioned, there are languages in the Sony index indicating countries that even I did not consider spoke a language of its own. Of course, I had not ever considered those same speakers would have the desire to see a film in their own tongue with the proliferation of American entertainment and language but here are a few of the choices the Sony system offers:

Afrikaans, Bulgarian, Bengali and Bangla, Tibetan, Corsican, Czech, Welsh, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Fiji, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Hindi, Croatian, Yiddish, Javanese, Greenlandic, Latvian and Lettish, Malagasy, Maori, Macedonian, Moldavian, Burmese, Maltese, Nepali, Somali, Sudanese, Tonga, and Zulu.

Quite odd indeed and much to my surprise those are the ones I somewhat identify to their mother land. The booklet, itself in eight languages, offers codes for nearly 200 languages and I wonder what Sister Maxentia of the Blood of the Crown of Thorns and her other Sisters of The Most Perpetual Pain and Agony of Jesus on the Cross might think. After all, they had a hard time convincing most of the boys they needed to know Latin which even they acknowledged was a dead language.

I wonder how those ancient sisters would have diagramed sentences in Catalan, Esperanto, Faroese or Frisian. What geography, concurrent with learning about Jesus, might they have included in the lesson plan for Hausa, Interlingua or Interlingue, Inupiak, Kannada, Occitan, Pashto and Pushto, Quechua, Sangho, Tamil, Telugu, Tigrinya, Tatar and Twi, Volapuk, Wolof, Xhosa, and Yoruba.

Surely even they would have been stumped and asked why. Two language offerings on the code stood out to me as being more than unusual or quizzical although I am sure Sister Maxentia would delight to see them.

The Sony Manual for the five DVD system, compact style, even offers a code for native speakers wishing to watch films in their own language of not only Sanskrit but also Latin.

Odd. By the way “odd” technically means pointed upward, from the notion that a pointed vertical object is a triangle. A triangle has three sides and three is one left after two, hence indivisible by two, which made it peculiar, so it is “odd” as in odd man out.

One more “by the way.” If anyone knows anything about some of the more unusual or obscure languages listed in this article, please add your comments about them. Thanks.

I was six years old sitting at the reception room waiting to be called for my first piano lesson and I was excited but mostly afraid.

The day before, my best friend Rocio, confided a conversation between her mother and other ladies from the neighborhood.The new piano teacher was very ugly and mean “like a witch.” After listening to this, I started to imagine all kind of excuses I can use to not go, and fell asleep in the process.

Finally I heard my name, a door opens and I see a lady walking to us. She introduces herself as Miss Bertha, the new piano teacher and I can’t believe my friend Rocio was so wrong; she is not ugly at all.

As she is greeting my mother, I notice her voice was soft and I am thinking, a “witch” does not have a voice like this.” With a big smile she asks me to follow her and I started to feel better.

Once at the piano, the first thing I learned was the proper way to sit and the position of my hands. But most important how to express myself, both playing and using my voice with the proper tone.

I also learned at the end of my piano lesson Miss Bertha was not a witch.

I still practice to this date Miss Bertha’s method to express myself; using the proper tone when talking and believe me it works.
It is in our nature to react defensive when someone talks to us with a loud or angry tone, from “I want a glass with water” to “You are wearing that?”

If you say the same things with a soft tone, people will react very different. The waitress will bring you the glass with water with no funny surprises inside and your wife will look better next time.

My personal quote for years has been:

“Using the proper tone to express ourselves, can be the difference between heaven and hell.”

By Mardo…

As children we always had pets, we treated them like family members. We had canaries, turtles, dogs, rabbits, hamsters and cats. My favorite pet is dogs, besides been good guardians, I like to teach them all kind of tricks and especially play hide and seek. After my last dog was poison a beautiful one year old white American Samoyed. I had promise myself not to have another pet. Every time something bad happened I suffer terrible.

Three years ago I was visiting a friend, as we are talking I started listening a cry. My friend said it was her neighbor’s seven year old daughter named Anita, she has been crying because they where moving to another city and had to get read of her new pet dog. After a while I just couldn’t stand listening anymore and decided to go outside and talk to her.

When I approach Anita and before I said anything, with tears in her big brown sad eyes she said to me; “I only have today to give away my dog and If I don’t find someone, my father will take her to the animal shelter”. “She’s only four month old and she will die there” she continues saying. I knew exactly how she felt and as much I want to explain that her dog will be placed for adoption, Anita had decided already her tiny fragile dog will die anyway. So without any doubt, I volunteered to take her pet with me. The third degree from Anita started immediately, You have to promise to take very good care, love her very much, bath her, feed her, Anita continue telling me, until I interrupted her and ask her, what is your dog name? Oh! No name yet she respond,

“How about Anita like your name” I said,

“Ok, you can take her with you” she answered,

I could see the big relief lifted from her face and heart. Suddenly, I was the proud owner of a female dog a mix Terrier with

Chihuahua. Of course after I swear and promise a lot.

My dog Anita has a distinguish personality and very intelligent. She’s also very educated and because the way she conducts herself, I often forget she is indeed a dog and I love her very much.

A year ago, new neighbors move in next door, the couple of times I went to welcome them, they never where there. As days pass, I started to notice that every time I call Anita my dog to come to me, I will see from the corner of my eye, the new neighbor’s curtains window slightly opening, I will turn around and the curtains will be closed again.

Finally one afternoon as I was arriving home, I see this older charming lady sitting in the steps of my door. She introduces herself as the new neighbor, with her daughter and son in law had just moved from Australia.

I was in the process to invited her inside when she interrupted me and said, May I ask you something? “Of course” I said. “What is the name of your dog?” She asks me. “Anita” I respond. She continues with “my name is Ann, my daughter’s name is Anita and my son in law name is Andrew”.

At first I didn’t knew what to say and after a pause, we both started laughing at the same time. I love my neighbors, they are good and wonderful people, they loved my dog and take pride when they call her Anita.

By Mardo…