Saturday 6 January 2007

Whispering In A Foreign Language

If I ever find myself writing a book I want that to be the title. I don't know why, it spoke to me is all, I like it. Anyway I don't have a book in me so ignore that sentence that you just wasted 3 seconds of your precious life on and get back to why this post is titled so. As you may have noticed by my lack of posts over the past week I am still working away from home where civilization barely exists. In this place if it weren't for the people I was working with I would probably be going out of my mind. Its a beautiful place but I don't ever get to see it. When I get up for work in the morning its dark and when I finish work its also dark. All I seem to do is work, eat, sleep. I never ever get to see the light and I'm one of these people who needs a little bit of light in his life. As I'm unable to draw on the light of the sun I'm having to draw light from wherever I can get it in this hellish 2 month long job.
That light is found in the people I am working with. I am currently working with a a few Scots, an English guy, a Kiwi, an Australian, an Indian and a few Poles, oh and a guy from Chile. They are all really nice friendly people and luckily for me they all speak English, but I have noticed that the Poles do tend to whisper in Polish. Why they feel the need to whisper I do not know. British education is pathetic when it comes to teaching languages, there has been no real effort to teach French, German or Spanish to a a good enough degree that Brits could be considered bilingual. I don't know what the take up in Polish lessons are in India, or Chile but I'm guessing its not very high. So I'm thinking the Poles could talk as loud they like in Polish and no one but themselves will understand. They could probably talk about how working in this country is crap, they could moan about how dark it is all the time, the lack of towns, how they can't get a decent radio signal or whatever and no one would be offended because we don't understand. Well the Kiwi might understand but she's a bit of a show off and likes to fit in with everyone and has thus learned, with the help of the Poles, a few words and phrases here and there but if they didn't want her to know what they are saying I'm sure they could talk in a dialect that they hadn't helped her with and no whispering would be required. In truth I don't think it has anything to do with not wanting anyone else to know what they are saying but the whispering is a little bit like when the others are sitting with their ipods plugged into their ears and I can hear enough of the sound to wonder what the music is but its not quite loud enough to decipher it because it mostly sounds like morse code. Part of me wants to know what the tune is and the other part of me just wants to turn the ipod's down so that I can't hear the incessant 'ddddtdtd tttdddtdtdshd dddttdttttd' . If the music was loud enough for me to hear in full, even it wasn't very good and I didn't like it, I wouldn't be as irritated as when I am listening to 'ddddtdtd tttdddtdtdshd dddttdttttd ddddtdtd tttdddttd dddttdtd'.
The whispered Polish is the same, if it was loud enough to hear it would be just like background noise and easily ignored but because its quiet my ears seem to persist in trying to make out repetitive sounds - for what reason my ears want to do this I do not know. I have no hope of ever learning any words in Polish because it might as well be gobbledegook in morse code for all the sense it will ever make to me. How the Kiwi does it I will never know, with me it goes in one ear and out the other. I can't even make out repetitive words.
Anyway whispering in a foreign language has no point to it unless it is the name of a book written by moi, that would be a great autobiography in the making if only I wasn't such a boring bugger.

3 comments:

Girl said...

*snore*
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Maybe the Poles have enountered someone who knew their language? I have a friend that shocked some Indo Canadians, at a garage, by knowing Punjabi. He'd picked it up working summers in a green house.

Not loud enough iPods cause me to glare. Then I think of evil ways to yank the buds out.

*yawn*
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Yazi said...

that will be nice catchy title

goodluck writing book! (:

Tathiana Sobroza said...

Hey Scotsman, how have you been?
It has been almost 15 days without news! Hope you are fine! :o)