Languages in LA

New York is the city that never sleeps, but Los Angeles is not. In the cold sunrise of a Saturday morning, Los Angeles is getting her beauty sleep. She has cucumber slices over her eyes and is soaking her cuticles. Even most of the lawnboys seem to vanish during the weekend, having combed her palm trees and lotioned her terraces from Monday to Friday. 

It has rained recently, which always washes the smog away for a few days, and the celebrity homes in the Hollywood Hills can be seen clearly in the morning light, sitting white and angular against the blue-tinted hillside. Blue skies always add a backdrop of comfortable cheer and wholesomeness to any scene. Even the black rocks of the Viper Room look tidy, and it sleeps off its hangover as the sun comes up. Whiskey a-Go-Go has gone night-night.

 
West Hollywood in particular has elements that would like to appear bohemian, or at least a touch jaded, like Freemason Abbey, but it’s hard to look jaded when all the furniture matches. It’s hard to look bohemian when the streets are so clean.

 
(I just got my first parking ticket this Friday for blocking the street-sweepers, so I’m a little bitter at the moment.)

 
The streets are nearly empty. The Writers’ Guild has put down their picket signs for now. The tourists who will crowd Hollywood Blvd in an hour or two are just getting up from their good night’s sleep, and checking that their digital camera batteries are charged. The little black-clad punk-rockers have left the Troubador and the Roxy, and returned to their suburbs.

 
Los Angeles is asleep. And if I didn’t have three galloping cats who wanted me up at 5:30 this morning, I would be too.

While driving down Sunset Blvd today, I encountered a massive ad on the side of a building. It was a huge, shiny black SUV (don’t ask me what kind, cars all look alike to me) and the slogan above it was Bye Bye Black Sheep.

 
Now, obviously this is Baa Baa Black Sheep and Bye Bye Blackbird put together. But I’m wondering if the average American recognizes either phrase anymore. I mean, I know them because I was raised by my grandparents. My cultural influences span the entire 20^th century. My Grandpa used to actually shuffle around the house singing negro spirituals to himself, despite the fact that he was white, and racist as Archie Bunker. Whenever Grandma called him to dinner. He’d sing, “I’m coming… my head is bending low….” I think that was a rather sarcastic commentary on Grandma being the obvious power source of the house, but nevertheless. My grandmother sang Bye Bye Blackbird to me, and Mom recited the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep.

But I tend to assume that what is true for me is probably not true for most people. Heck, even the neighbors thought we were weird. How can something that is so familiar to my dirt-road Michigan upbringing crop up on the side of a skyscraper in Hollywood?

Are these things really part of the American collective unconscious? Does anyone under 50 besides me recognize these references? Or is this a very expensive car, probably being marketed for wealthy 50 year olds, and it wouldn’t matter if every 20 year old in LA glanced up and thought, “Whoa, is that a racial remark?”

I wish I knew what drives ad executives.

I have a habit of talking with strangers on the internet. I tend toward politics, movies,  philosophy… all the usual topics. Sooner or later, the conversations turn to more personal subjects, and then, eventually, comes the inevitable question: do you chat?

 
They mean that MSN stuff, I guess. No, I don’t chat. I’ve done it a few times and find it about as enjoyable as leafing through old People magazines in the dentist’s waiting room. People are often puzzled as to why someone who will post all over forum groups and email endlessly hates chatting, and I don’t really know what to tell them. I just hate it.

 
It’s like talking on the phone: I feel trapped. I have to concentrate on hearing the other person, and I don’t have my hands free. I guess I could get one of those headset things but I just… don’t…. want to. Chatting online or via phone is just too immediate, requires just too much focus and commitment. There’s too much pressure to respond right away.

 
And chatting, because it’s so quick, so back & forth, tends to devolve from well-thought-out responses to quick one-liners. Correspondingly, the subject matter deteriorates too. A discussion that began with the surge in Iraq winds down to “u like jazz?”

 
I’m not opposed to small talk, but if I’m going to chat about nothing in such a desultory manner, I want a face in front of me, and a waitress bringing me coffee and pie. I also want a window so I can watch traffic.

 
The nice thing about today’s technology, however, is that there is a method of communication for everyone’s needs. From moderated forums that operate with message-in-a-bottle languor to chaotic chat rooms, now is a great time to be some level of ADD. All you need is the internet. Life is good.

Many a night I have sat at a posh restaurant at Sunset Plaza and listened to my two best friends argue about the correct phraseology of certain kinds of government assistance. One of my friends is taking care of her elderly mother, Ms. H., a very sweet lady with a list of medications that should entitle her to at least a Christmas card from Pfizer.

Because she is a senior citizen, and because her medical needs strap even a well-employed daughter, Ms. H. qualifies for Medicare and Medicaid. This is known as being medi-medi.

My other friend, who works for those who translate bills from doctor’s office into governmental assistance language, insists that this cannot be so, that Ms. H. must be getting one or the other, and our friend only thinks her mother is medi-medi.

I have no interest in the logistics of the argument. What I enjoy is listening to them bat the phrase medi-medi back and forth. It’s amazing the different ways we refer to government assistance (the more blunt term being welfare.)

My school is called a Title One school. Sounds rather prestigious, doesn’t it? It’s not. It means that the majority of our students qualify for “subsidized meals” (foodstamps, essentially.) The school gets more money for each student that qualifies, so we are under pressure to get the students to turn in applications for foodstamps. Many’s the time I’ve heard a student protest, “We don’t need this,” only to be required to tell them, “The school still needs the application on file.”

More disturbing is when children do indeed qualify, though they don’t consider themselves poor. It’s quite a shock for them, sometimes, to be handed a sheet of foodstamps during homeroom. You can see the sudden dawning of understanding in their eyes: I am considered poor even though we pay our bills.

But I’m sure their self-esteem is a small price to pay for our school’s ever-increasing budget. And it’s not charity. It’s not welfare. It’s Title One. Not as catchy as medi-medi, but still, quite nice, yes?

Many people complain that political correctness curtails speech, but I’ve come to the conclusion that they are wrong: there is nothing you can’t say in America today. You just have to say it the right way.

I learned this in college and it’s come in very handy in the Los Angeles Public School system. You see, even if you are working with the least promising, most difficult children this side of open savagery, it is strictly verboten to confess that they seem hopeless and you have just about had it. You cannot say that.

But you can indicate that the students you are working with present a unique challenge.

You don’t say Gabriel is so hyper and uncontrollable that you would need a staple gun to keep him in his chair. You say he is a kinetic learner who is working to improve his impulse control, but is unfortunately suffering from ADHD. (Never mind that Gabriel isn’t the one suffering, you are.) Speak of his energy in an admiring voice, and all the other teachers in earshot know exactly what you really mean. “Oh yes,” they agree knowingly, “Gabriel has difficulty focusing during direct instruction.”

You cannot say that Jessica is the dimmest child you’ve ever seen. But you can indicate concern that she has difficulty processing auditory input, is dyslexic, and struggles with spatial relationships. In other words, she doesn’t understand anything she hears, reads, or sees. Add that she would benefit from learning compensating skills for her weak motor coordination and you can hint that she walks into walls as well.

Finally, do not say that you are barely holding on till the weekend. Smile and say that you look forward to coming back rested and restored on Monday, eager to seek new solutions and fresh strategies.

Then go home and quietly collapse.

I remember, long ago, it was widely believed that Eskimos had a dozen words for snow. No, it was even more, perhaps a hundred! They had a word for every different kind of snow there was, be it wet, soft, dry, new, or old. They had a word for snow in different shapes, such as drifts and ripples, words for the different-sized flakes, even. Because snow was such a large part of their world, you know.

Geoffery Pullum, linguistics professor at University of California, did his best to clear up the misunderstanding, explaining that Eskimos had an agglutinating language (where words “glue” together to form new words). Therefore, in their language “drifting snow” would be all one word. So, well, in a sense they had many words for snow, but they were no more profound than our many phrases for snow, like “dirtysnow” and “slushymess”.

What is interesting, though, is how many people ran with this legend when it first made the rounds. Why yes, of course, the Eskimos would have a hundred words for snow. They’d define it down to its most minute properties! Because it’s everywhere!

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for three years, and I’m waiting to see whether Angelenos have a dozen words for palm trees. So far, I haven’t heard a peep about them. There’s the fan-shaped type, the spiky type, the fuzzy type, the smooth type, the barky type… actually, I haven’t even heard anyone say anything along those lines either.

It is all too easy to believe in the exotica of others. Imagine how amused we’d be to find that Eskimos believe that in Los Angeles, we have a hundred words for palm trees. We don’t even have that many words for dippy starlets who get DUIs while running around with no panties on.