Monday, August 16, 2010

Potrzebie St. Market

I've been wondering lately how English must sound to people who don't speak English. It's common for us to trivialize another language by blathering the most common syllables in a random pattern- common AND historical. The Greeks would refer to their Phoenician neighbours as "Barbars", no doubt because in their semitic languages, everyone was called Bar (son) of something. Like Johnny Bar Mitzvah, the ancient world's finest (and manliest) sailor. Soon, the word "Barbarian" came to mean anyone who didn't speak Greek. But hey, those grape leaf eating homos may have been referred to as Losers, since many of their words end in *-lous or similar. Fuggin' greeks.

Moving on, we're all happy to refer to the Chinaman as Ping Pong, since the tonal languages use a lot of those particular syllabic constructs in their linguistic morphology. Also, let's face it, they play a lot of ping pong. Similarly, I'll readily characterise German speakers as EisenScheizens, because that's all I hear when they speak. And I think they like to eat shit.

By the way- if you're into poo eating, does it have to be your lover's poo? Or does a poo-eater look at a soiled kitty litter box like I would a Whitman's Sampler? Let me know, if you're a poo-eater.

So what does English sound like to the barbarians who don't speak it? What are the familiar bits and pieces that stick out to the hateful francophile, or the simple-minded Eskimo? Would it be the hard, Anglo-Saxon R's and K's from words like firetruck, traction and motherfucker? Or the middle german ERs and INGs that end so many of our words? I can't for the life of me take myself out of the English speaking world enough to imagine what it could be.

How does this sentence look?

"The best fish in Krakow are to be bought at the Potrzebie St. Market".

Which syllables stick out? Does it sound like this:

Thay bes vish ink krakowre tobee botatsh potrzebeestre mark"

Because in that, all my brain would hear would be the syballine S, the softer SH and the hard sounds of those Rs and Ks. I guess as an irreverent Afghani, I might imitate American soldiers like this:

"Shper per, grabben shiken gow now smith jonson krakker"

Then all my cave-mates would laugh, except for the Afghani hipsters, off-put by such a dated stereotype of foreigners.

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