Defined by Language

How Polyglots Tell Stories

A few years ago, I was riding in a taxi in Tel Aviv. My cell phone rang. It was my boyfriend in London, wanting to check in. As we chatted, the cab driver called to me in the back seat that he had decided to change his route. We had a short exchange about traffic in Tel Aviv and I returned to my call to find my boyfriend worriedly asking if I was all right.

“Of course,” I said, puzzled.

“It sounded like you were arguing with the guy,” he said, “why is he so angry?”

I had to laugh that a regular conversation about directions and traffic jams in Hebrew sounds like an argument to a Brit.

As a speaker of five languages (I can get by in a sixth), I have come to understand that language is as much cultural as it is semantic. Though my Salvadoran mother taught me Spanish, I have never lived in Spanish. While I speak the language, I have little identification with any specific part of the many cultures associated with it. In Spanish, I am an observer, though my ease with speaking and understanding offers a unique vantage point. Like the waitress in Deia, Spain, who offered to lend me her car when I told her I planned to go sightseeing the next day but had failed to rent one.

“Pero Usted no me conoce,” I reminded her - she didn’t know me.

She replied that we understood one another. “Nos entendemos,” she said.