The languages we speak

            In my house, the five of us (six, with my dog,) speak many, many languages. Our languages aren’t the conventional “language” categories. We speak English and some Spanish, but those aren’t our favorites. Each situation we find ourselves in dictates which unconventional language we must use, and I personally remember many times when one of us has combined multiple languages so that they fit the circumstances. Growing up with these languages around me and using them for myself, possibly even creating a few variations, I have become attached to them. Just as the languages have become a part of my speech, they have also become a part of me and my family. These parts within us manifest themselves at certain times, quite often.

            One night my family was sitting around the table eating dinner, and I was about five minutes into explaining why time travel wouldn’t ever be possible. My mom was clearly out of it, my oldest brother had a look of bemusement on his face, my dad was nodding with a “I’m going to disagree in a moment” expression, the dog was waiting for dropped food, and my other brother, who had long ago stopped paying attention, reached for his phone because he thought nobody was looking. Sure enough, my father did in fact have an objection to my theory. In the next minute he interrupted, saying in Lawyer, “That argument is specious.” Confused, I responded in English With an Accent: “Don’t rightly know what ‘specious’ means, mate, but cheers for the disagreement, ey?” At that point, the dog chimed in, speaking Dog, of course, and brought to the table the counterargument of “Bark, bark… grrr… woof, roof, ruff!!!” My oldest brother, Andrew, said “on that note, I’m gonna go get some water.” On his way to get there, he stumbled and caught himself on the counter, clearly dizzy. This consistently happens to my father, my brothers, and me whenever we stand up too fast. Disoriented, he asked, “why does this happen so much?” My mom responded to this in Doctor, saying, “well you don’t drink anything all day, you’re probably hypovolemic,” resulting in blank stares from the rest of us. Times like that, where a few of us have no idea what the others have said, are more common than you’d think. But, with each time, we learn each other’s languages and add the knowledge to our vocabulary. I now know that specious means reasonable on the outside, but due to either faulty logic or already proven facts, it is false, and that hypovolemic means that you have a low blood volume.

A month or two later, my brothers walked up from the basement and I heard (and mostly understood) the end of a conversation, speaking Sports, regarding their latest FIFA game.

“…then he did a rainbow and bicycle kicked it right past the keeper, it was great!”

“Yeah, can’t wait to try that one myself, it looked awesome. Meanwhile, I’ll stick to juggling while they’re trying their hardest to win. A demoralizing tactic if ever I’ve used one.”

Not a week later, they were using Sports again, this time debating the merits of potential players the Phillies might target in “free-agency.” “Batting average is nice and all but it’s becoming an outdated statistic, OPS is much more indicative of a player’s offensive value.” I decided to break in and confuse them by talking about the computer that I built. I decided that Nerd was the best language for this task. “Hey guys, wanna play a game on the new computer? It’s got 8 Giga-bytes of RAM, a quad-core i5 2500 at 3.3 Giga-hertz and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 with 4 Giga-bytes of video RAM.” They both stood there, looking quizzical, waiting for an explanation.

“…Fine, it’s really fast and good at doing things.”

“OH, that sounds cool, yeah, lets have a look!”

In the essay “Borderlands” by Giona Anzaldia, there is a section in which she talks about how certain things have became tied to her identity. For her, these things are food, the smell of something from her childhood that brings her back in time. I share that similarity with her, although my tied identity-pieces aren’t food or smells. The things that bring me home and have built up who I have become and will become are the languages that we use in the house. My family’s inconsistent code-switching and cornucopia of languages will keep spontaneity and creativity a part of who I am. I’m ready to take on newer languages and learn their ins and outs, and I’m eager to further my knowledge on the vocabulary of each new language. Outside of our house we keep a mostly constant language. I, myself, tend to speak Nerd to my friends, as we do all go to SLA. My mom speaks Doctor to her Med-school friends and co-workers. My dad speaks Lawyer in his law office, and my brothers speak some sports with their friends. But in our family, ask any one of the five of us what species Crookshanks is, and we’ll tell you half Kneazle, half cat. Which person in all of Hogwarts has both a first and last name that are colors? Lavender Brown. What is the name of Padma Patil’s twin sister? Parvati. As any witch, wizard or muggle in our house can tell you, the Lingua Franca is Potter.