Is it possible to overstate the importance of
language in forging friendships across borders? I don’t think so.
The trip from Grindelwald to Chamonix required
five different trains and one bus. As the crow flies, the distance isn’t that far,
but getting through the Alps can be a multi-legged, many-houred proposition. On
one of the middle trains, we watched as a Japanese couple took their places
across from a Swiss gentleman in the seats diagonal to ours. While helping them with their luggage, he began a
conversation in Japanese. The look of pure, unadulterated joy on the couple’s
faces lit up the train. They were on their own, so far from home, and the
serendipity of having selected seats next to someone who spoke their language
was priceless. Animated conversation among the fast friends continued for the
half hour the Swiss gentleman was seated across from them. He pointed out features
of the surrounding peaks as our train proceeded down the valley. They laughed
and smiled together, heads nodding and smiles widening as I imagined the talk
turning to families, travel and Japan. As the train slowed for the gentleman’s
stop, they exchanged cards and with hands at their sides, gave each other the
quick bows of goodbye. It was a heartening and heartwarming scene.
During
our stay in Grindelwald, we met a couple that lived outside Dresden in the former East Germany who
spoke passable English. They told us that nowadays, all schoolchildren are
taught English from an early age but that they hadn’t taken it up until they
were adults; Russian had been the requirement when they were growing up. It
took me aback at first, but then I understood that
of course that’s the language they were taught. The subjugators demanded that
the subjugated learn their language – a sweeping power play, most certainly.
Language is such a delicate art. We’ve been amused on occasion by the charming
use of English by some of the people we’ve encountered. I overheard an Italian
traveler in Rome triumphantly exclaim, “The bull has already entered in the china store,”
and our guide in Dubrovnik, after she asked us if we were familiar with an anecdote
she’d shared about St. Blaize asked, “Is that bell not ringing?” Such endearing
errors highlight the delicate nature of language and translations but should
never inhibit us from giving another language our best efforts. Learning foreign languages has always helped me
listen to English so much more carefully and pay close attention to all the
expressions and constructions that might be a bit difficult for non-native
speakers to understand.
Ah,
languages – we’ll soon be back in the land of the quintessential romance
language – my beloved French. I may at times speak it like a bull that’s entered
the china store, but le français has
always helped keep my bell ringing.
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