Old School: A Foreign Language

By Carol McEwen

When we were young, all of us had goals, some achieved and some not. One of mine was to be bilingual. My target language was French, since I fell in love with the "la belle langue" during the three years I studied the language in high school. During college, I took another course, but came to realize my imitation skills – essential to sounding even remotely authentic in a foreign language – were not great. 

That started me thinking about other “foreign” tongues. There’s that burbling language of Baby Talk that only a mother (and sometimes a dad) can understand, when that little tyke finally begins to express herself/himself. We have someone in our family who called her Aunt Elly “Patchenella.” We all loved those cute expressions and enjoyed our ability to translate them. I’m told that twins, when they’re little, have their own unique Twin Language that only they can understand.

And the language of teens, on the rare occasions they actually TALK to each other live, is definitely a foreign language to us oldsters. When texting, they use a complicated assortment of initials to shorten expressions. God forbid they’d actually write something out! In my knowledge of this genre, I never got past LOL and BTW. 

There’s also the special jargon used in the workplace. Each one seems to have its own combination of shorthand, either with initials or shortened words. Sometimes it’s a function of location instead of workplace. My first indoctrination to this was when we moved to the Washington D.C. area, aka Alphabet City. We all knew what it meant if someone worked at OMB, DEA, or DOJ. 

But there’s one language I had passible proficiency in when I was a kid. Remember Pig Latin? I thought it was the coolest thing, since the adults, who probably used it when THEY were kids, couldn’t possibly know what we were saying. 

During a boring class, I’d pass a note to whatever “best friend” I had at the time, filled with things like: “I anplay to alkway home after oolscay. Wanna come too?” So riveting! As our proficiency grew, so did our vocabularies. Suddenly words like “ovelay and arcay” seemed like small potatoes and we got fancier: “I atehay this stupid assclay and I wish this eachertay would utshay up!” 

So if you’re thinking of taking up the language, be prepared to rethink your entire vocabulary. I say ixney to that!”

Carol McEwen is a reporter for Sandestin Living, Mirimar Beach, Florida, and wrote the weekly Old School column for the Arlington Sun Gazette/Gazette Leader.