Inability to speak can be frustrating

I sit outside on a lawn chair this lazy summer afternoon, my feet propped upon another lawn chair. Finished with the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, I sift through the pile of magazines on the table to my right, looking for just the right group of words and pictures to pass the time.

Something catches my eye -- the latest issue of Time. On its cover are two children of some sort of Hispanic/Latino/Mexican descent. The headline reads, "Welcome to America." I wonder if those children live in America or Mexico, and I wonder if they speak English, Spanish or both.

Then, I flash back a week to Ocean City, N.J., where an unsuccessful search with my friend for curly fries ended after three straight confused replies to our inquiries about the availability of this particular type of fried potatoes were provided by non-native-English-speaking workers. My friend, frustrated, wondered aloud -- eerily reminiscent of so many people here at Penn when their Math/Science/Engineering/Economics professors sport any sort of accent.

"Why can't they just speak the language?"

I tried to explain it to my friend then, but my explanation was weak and half-hearted. At the time, I did not really know, and I did not really care.

Now I think I know the answer, and I do care -- and I laugh painfully.

Yes, painfully. It really does hurt to laugh. My jaws are basically wired shut after an operation, and I have not been able to speak -- I have not been able to even see my own tongue -- in a week. The only way I can communicate with anybody is through grunts, hand gestures and the reliable, old pen-and-paper.

But, oh do I want to communicate right now so that I can tell my friend the answer to her question. Well, I could say that it takes quite a bit of time to learn the language, and that would be correct. But that is a self-evident and shallow way of looking at the situation. We tend to forget that people who are trying to learn English in America do not learn in a vacuum. And we forget that they are people -- real people with real emotions.

When you get up out of your seat and walk out of a classroom before the lecture is finished because you cannot understand the professor who is sporting a heavy foreign accent, how do you think that makes him or her feel?

When you walk away curtly after a worker from Mexico responds to your question about curly fries with silence and a confused stare, how do you think that makes him or her feel?

When your son tries to say something through his virtually wired shut jaws and you can only smile in an incomprehensible way, how do you think that makes him feel?

These people are merely trying to communicate, trying to use the English language, but they cannot -- either because they are unable to speak it or understand it well enough yet. And because these individuals see how other people are easily irritated and become impatient with their learning process -- well, for these people, that makes the learning process that much more difficult.

I have given up trying to talk. I have thought it hopeless, most times. And I am tired of communicating through writing. It is so difficult when you know what you want to say, but have to go about it in a different, time-consuming way that does not get across my emotions or my tone of voice. Then, if my penmanship is not good enough, people still cannot understand me, so I am back at square one.

My plight is not much different than that professor from Bombay who knows what he wants to say in his native language, but has to translate it into English. However, if his English is not sufficient, people still cannot comprehend what he is attempting to say.

My reaction to all of this is to retreat into silence and solitude, into relative comfort and away from the frustration and ridicule. So I can see how the professor, or the Mexican worker, or anyone trying to learn English here in America, would want to retreat into his or her old language, into relative comfort and away from the frustration and ridicule.

According to the 1990 census, 13 percent of people living in the United States, who are five years and older, speak a language other than English at home. While the 2000 figures are not available yet, you can be certain that figure will rise. America is becoming more linguistically diverse.

Still, the predominant language remains English. This means that more and more people will have to go through what that professor from Bombay, or that worker from Mexico, or that jaws-wired-shut guy from Jersey have to go through -- the emotions and frustrations of not being able to communicate.

I count on my fingers -- still eight more days until I can open my mouth. With a relegated sigh, I go back to finding just the right words and pictures to pass the time on this lazy summer day, to pass the time until I can speak the language again.

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