Saturday, October 06, 2007

You weren't much of a muse, but then I weren't much of a poet

Given my lifelong interest in language and my similarly long-suffering side project of mastering both the understanding and execution of a variety of accents [don't ask; it's just something one does, in my family -- though of course if you're truly interested you are welcome to ask; between my brother and myself we have a decent-sized chunk of the world covered. He is better with India, Pakistan,Iran, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Spain and the whole of North, Central and South America (!); I do well with England,Ireland, Scotland, Russia, Italy, New Zealand, Japan and North America], you might imagine the near-panic that occurred recently due to a very realistic dream. In the dream I was with an Australian co-worker who was giving me details about a new print project. But I could only understand about every other word. Said co-worker does have a tendency to mumble, so I thought perhaps it was him -- until a Kiwi co-worker arrived on the scene and, when I asked him to repeat what the other guy was saying, I realized I was unable to get about 50% of his speech as well. It dawned on me then (very cinematically, I might add) that I was losing my ability to understand non-American accents.

Yes, yes, paging Dr. Freud. Stop that snickering, please; it's rude.

For a normal person, this was akin to losing the ability to, I don't know, dial a telephone or open a bottle of wine, i.e.: dreadful and possibly tragic.

Gentle reader, please pray with me that these dreams do not continue.

3 comments:

Marianne said...

No! That is a horrible dream. I also pride myself on being able to follow almost any version of English - and I make the effort partly because I am so grateful for all the Afghan's who pretended to understand me when I try to speak Dari, and all the Palestinians who pretended to understand me when I tried to speak Arabic... Now those are people who know how to make a girl who is murdering their language feel good about it.

Anxiety dreams suck. Hope the day just gets better.

Marianne said...

PS; Love the new banner and the profile picture.

Emma said...

Oh! I'm so glad you understand, Frida. The day did get better, thanks! And I'm glad too that you like the new look. That's a collage on canvas I made a couple of years ago; it hangs in our stairwell.