Language Barrier
I am an American.
Born here. Raised here.
I speak English. Always have.
Although I DID take a full-year of Romanian in college…and enjoyed it, I barely remember any of the language. (It was college, okay?)
Well my stubborness to being bilingual has recently come back to bite me in the rear as a favorite restaurant, Chipotle Mexican Grill, introduced a new marketing campaign in the language of…..Pig Latin!
The Chipotle carry-out bag is slopped full of Pig Latin.
And I don’t understand a damn word of it!
Pig Latin was supposed to be a fun & silly, made-up language of mish-mashed words understood by all.
But this dufus never got the memo & I am lost.
My head pounds as I try to translate Pig Latin into something I can grasp.
It would be easier for me to figure out had Chipotle printed the bag in Spanish for God’s sake.
Even my little niece understands Dora!
Honestly, in Pig Latin, the bag could say “the bearer of this food will soon experience wretching pain & projectile vomiting” and I wouldn’t have a clue.
The Navajo code talkers of WWII could have used Pig Latin to communicate with troops and I would have been baffled.
Lesson learned, I can fully understand the language barrier faced by visiting foreigners & new immigrants to the U.S.
English to them must be as confusing as Pig Latin is to me.
Can you relate?
2 Replies to “Language Barrier”
I am embarrassed to say that as a child I used to speak Pig Latin. It is really not that hard. You take the first consonant, move it to the end of the word, and add “ay” to the end of the word. For example the word “pig” becomes “igpay”. If the word begins with a vowel, you just to add “way” to the end of the word. For example the word “is” becomes “isway”. The writer is not responsible for any inaccuracies in the contents of this message.
Margaret,
Beauty AND talent. You have it all, girl!
(I enjoyed your “disclaimer”!)