Heh. Appropriate!

Matilda's upcoming language immersion trip plus an incident that just happened to me prompted me to bash this out. Posting it before I lose my nerve.

Coping with limited vocabulary

Back in 1979 when I was fifteen years old, my step-mother and I lived in Lahore, Pakistan. She was the director of the Berkeley Urdu Language Program in Pakistan (BULPIP), an immersive language program run by the University of California (at Berkeley, obviously). I was in 10th grade at the Lahore American School.

We had a chokidar -- a night-watchman. Very traditional for Pakistan. I am ashamed to say that I don't remember his name. I do remember that he came from a small village very far away, somewhere down near the border between Punjab and Sindh.

He spoke a few words of Urdu, and a few more words of Punjabi, but his native language was something only spoken in the remote area where he grew up.

I spoke some Urdu, mixed with some Punjabi, but I was never fluent.

My step-mother spoke very fluent, very formal, very upper-class, very proper Urdu.

She couldn't understand the night-watchman at all.

She would turn to me and ask, "What did he say?" I could usually interpret for her, because his limited vocabulary and my limited vocabulary had a lot of overlap. In addition, we were both accustomed to leveraging what few words and little grammar we knew, plus gestures and expressions, into getting our meaning across.

But my step-mother could never break out of her formal and proper language mind-set enough to figure out what the night-watchman was saying. I think it was due as much to his accent as his lack of grammar, but she found it immensely frustrating. Also, she could never figure out how to "dumb-down" her Urdu enough that HE might understand HER.

To this day, I think it is funny how I ended up having to translate for both of them.

That skill at utilizing a limited vocabulary (along with gestures, expressions, and a lot of empathy), served me well again today.

There was a knock at my apartment door. I answered it. "Yes?"

There were two men there, my height or a little shorter, wiry, dark-haired, in work clothes.

"Carpet?" one of them said, and showed me a work order, pointing to some lines at the top. From the way he said it -- his tone and his expression -- it was clear to me that English was not his first language. I suspect his primary language was Spanish, and while I know a few words of basic Spanish vocabulary, I probably spoke less Spanish than he spoke English.

"No, not here," I replied.

The work order was for apartment 203-1. I am in apartment 203-203. (The numbering system is weird. The building only has ten apartments.)

"Ah!" I said. "Bottom floor." I pointed straight down with my index finger.

That was enough to convey the information he needed. His eyes lit up as he understood.

"Sorry," he said.

"No problem," I replied, and they trotted off down the stairs.

I still wish I had inherited or absorbed some (any!) of my parents' language skills, but I can usually find a way to get by.